Trojan Gold

and enjoy it” school of perversion. However, she has had quite a few narrow escapes, and I wouldn’t exactly claim she was celibate. I have given up any idea of submitting the book to a publisher, since it has become too absurd even for a historical romance, which, believe me, is very absurd indeed. I go on with it because it amuses Schmidt —and me.

Some instinct told me that Schmidt had an ulterior motive that day, but I accepted anyhow. After I had put on my boots and coat, I looked at the sink.

The water was a sickly, sickening brownish red. I pulled the plug and let it run out.

Schmidt never climbs the tower stairs except in cases of dire emergency, which is one of the reasons why I chose that particular office. He was waiting for me in the Hall of Armor, adjoining the tower; as I descended, I heard him talking to the guard on duty. I caught the punch line—“But, mein Herr, it is your mustache!”—followed by a chorus of guffaws from Schmidt and his stooge. Everybody laughs at Schmidt’s jokes, even though they are all culled from the Bavarian equivalent of Joe Miller’s book. A director has certain prerogatives.

I stepped over the velvet rope with its “Eintritt verboten” sign, greeted the guard, tucked Schmidt’s scarf into his collar, and led him out. It was still snowing. There was almost no wind, and the soft white flakes fell gently from the tarnished silver bowl of the sky. Traffic had stirred the streets into a sloppy slush, but the towers of Munich’s myriad churches looked as if they had been frosted with vanilla icing.

We went to our favorite Bierstube, which specializes in a particular variety of heavy dark beer to which Schmidt is addicted. (There are few varieties of beer to which Schmidt is not addicted.) Schmidt ordered Weisswurst and got it, even though the church bells had already chimed twelve. He ordered a lot of other things, too, including an entire loaf of heavy black bread and a pound or so of sweet butter. I sipped daintily at my own beer and waited for him to get to the point, knowing it wouldn’t take long. Schmidt thinks he is sly and subtle, but he is mistaken.

After the waiter had brought the first course, Schmidt tucked his napkin into his collar and stared fixedly at me.

“That was not Frau Schliemann in the photograph.”

“I know.”

“You know? Oh yes, you, you always know.” Schmidt stuffed his mouth with wurst and masticated fiercely. Then he mumbled, “Mrshwenill.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Miss Know-It-All.”

“Ms. Know-It-All, bitte.”

Schmidt grinned. I reached across the table and removed a speck of wurst from his mustache.

“So what shall we do?” he asked.

“What can we do?”

“Have the wrapping examined to see if the stain is blood,” Schmidt said promptly.

“We could.” And of course I would. I had known that ever since I saw the brown-red water. Since we did a lot of work with fabrics, we had a fairly well-equipped lab at the museum. If that particular test was beyond our chemist, I had several pals in the police department.

“But what if it is blood?” I went on.

“Human blood!”

“So what if it is human blood? We can’t trace the damned thing; there is no return address. Perhaps the sender will follow up with a letter.”

“And perhaps he is no longer in a position to do that,” said Schmidt. “It took a lot of blood to make a stain that size, Vicky.”

His illogical, melodramatic conclusion irritated me all the more because it was exactly what I had been thinking.

“You ought to write thrillers for a living, Schmidt,” I snarled. “Which reminds me. Madly jealous at being supplanted in the affections of the King, Madame de Maintenon has accused Rosanna of practicing witchcraft. Would you like to hear—”

“No, I would not. At least not at the present time. Why do you refuse to discuss this matter? Most probably the photograph is a childish joke, but if there is the slightest chance it is anything else…. You have a flair for such things, Vicky. All of us develop a certain instinct, which is nothing more than long years of experience working with antiquities; but yours is stronger than most. If the jewelry in the photograph is not the original, it is an excellent copy, nein?”

“Yes,” I said.

Schmidt’s fork, with its impaled chunk of sausage, stopped midway to his mouth. Weisswurst is really quite revolting in appearance; I will spare you the comparisons. I averted my eyes.

“What is it?” Schmidt asked solicitously. “There is in your voice a note of grief, of tears repressed—”

“There is nothing of the sort. Your imagination is getting out of hand.”

“Ach, so? Then with the tactfulness for which I am well known, I will pass on to matters of documented fact. Since you are this Ms. Know-It-All, I presume you are well acquainted with the details of the fall of Berlin in 1945.”

“No, I am not, and what’s more, I don’t want to be. Art history may be a cop-out, but at least it enables me to focus on the positive achievements of the human race.”

I had meant the statement as a criticism—an indictment, if you will—of myself; but Schmidt’s sudden sobriety showed I had hit a nerve. Then, too late, I remembered something I had been told by Gerda, who really was Ms. Know-It-All. Schmidt had been a member of the White Rose, the Munich student conspiracy against Hitler—and he had lost many of his friends, including the girl he had hoped to marry, when the plot was discovered and the ringleaders were savagely executed. If the story was true, and I had no reason to suppose it was not, Schmidt had even stronger reasons than I to retreat from the contemplation of man’s inhumanity to man.

I didn’t apologize, since that would only have made things worse. After an interval, Schmidt’s cherubic countenance returned to its normal, cheerful expression. He went on without referring to what I had said.

“The most valued exhibits from the Berlin museums had been removed to a bunker in the Tiergarten—the zoo.”

“I know what Tiergarten means.”

“Ha! But you don’t know, I will bet you, that many of the objects taken away by the Russians when they entered the bunker have now been returned. The Gobelin tapestries, the Pergamum sculptures, the coin collection of Friedrich the Great…”

One up for Schmidt. I had known of the Pergamum sculptures, but not the other things. Naturally, I wasn’t going to admit my ignorance.

“All right,” I said, with an exaggerated sigh. “Let’s admit for the sake of argument that both preposterous premises are right. The gold in the photograph is the genuine article and the stain on the envelope is human blood. We’re still up the creek without a paddle. We have no idea where that photograph came from.”

Schmidt’s cheeks gyrated as he tried to chew and nod at the same time. Swallowing, he patted his mouth daintily with the tail of his napkin and then remarked, “Too true. What a pity that the one man who might lead us out of our dilemma is no longer among the living.”

I reached for a piece of bread and busied myself breaking and buttering it.

Schmidt is so classically, overpoweringly cute that people tend to forget how intelligent he is. And I swear there are times when I think he can read my mind. Not that a high degree of ESP was required in this case. The word “copy” inevitably brought John to mind. Also the words “fraud,” “fake,” and “crook.”

Sir John Smythe he called himself, among other names—none of them his real one. The title was equally apocryphal. He had once admitted that John was his first name—not very informative, even if it was true, which it might not be. He was the most accomplished liar since Baron Munchausen.

His physical appearance varied as extravagantly as his name. The underlying structure, the basic John Smythe, was inconspicuously average—about my height, rather slightly built, with no identifying characteristics. In repose his features could only be described as pleasantly unmemorable, but they were capable of a rubbery flexibility any actor would have sold his soul to possess. The color of his hair and eyes varied, according to the