Once Departed

chum. The professor has clammed up.”

Quint closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. “Somebody get me a brandy, huh?” When it came, he downed it, stiff wristed. “Where’d you all come from?”

Garcia said, “Your American private eye stories to the contrary, the police do sometimes get results. We’ve been checking out everybody even remotely concerned with this matter. Even our square little schoolteacher, Marylyn Worth. So it turns out that not only does she rent this king-size apartment, supposedly just for herself alone, but the apartment down below as well. So what does an old maid school teacher want with this much space? So we took a look-see, and down below we found one of the most elaborate laboratories in Madrid. With some rather gruesome specimens in the deep freeze. So we thought we might ask Miss Worth a few leading questions.”

Mike bit out, “She was really Doktor Stahlecker, wasn’t she? And that thing…” he motioned with a thumb.

Jose Garcia said, “What a stink this is going to cause. For everybody. Everybody concerned.” He looked at Quint. “Believe it or Ripley, chum. We didn’t know these two characters were in the country. Obviously, they were both eligible for the nut factory.”

Quint rubbed a hand over his mouth. “Let me think.”

Mike said happily, “What a story.”

Garcia winced.

Quint looked at his newspaperman friend. “Considering all the ramifications, maybe the story isn’t quite what you thought. Not quite so complicated. There was a madman…” he looked at Garcia “… we can’t avoid that part of it Too many people are involved. Including his last victim, an American school teacher named Marylyn Worth. But the police caught him at that point and killed him when he tried to escape. That’s the story.”

“Hey, wait a minute!” Mike protested. “You’re not going to get away with that. What happened to Martin Bormann?”

Quint looked at the dead thing on the floor, and shuddered inwardly. “Martin Bormann must have died a long time ago,” he murmured.

“Oh, yeah? And Doktor Grete Stahlecker? You’re not going to louse up the story of the century.”

Quint looked at him. “You’d have a hard time proving that poor girl over there was actually a woman of some seventy years, Mike. Especially in view of the fact that not even Albrecht Stroehlein recognized her. Whether it was because her seeming youth threw him off, I don’t know. Perhaps it was plastic surgery. Whatever, you’d have a tough time proving to your editors this faatastic yarn of Bormann and Stahlecker.”

Mike was plaintive. “What’s your point, Quint? Why not back me up on this?”

The columnist looked at Garcia. “Brett-Home, Digby and Nuriyev were all wrong. They weren’t dealing with a potential try at getting Nazis back into command of West Germany. They were dealing with a mad woman, and a brainless creature, both of whom we ought to have the decency to pity. Both of them should have—and really did— die in that bunker with Hitler, Goebbels and the dreams of the Third Reich. Why give the world one more propaganda item to jitter over? And why louse up Spain’s reputation to the point of sending a few hundred thousand tourists looking for some other bargain paradise? I think you just better make the most of a Jack the Ripper type story, Mike. You’ll have a world beat on it.”

Garcia looked at him. “Thanks, Quint. I suppose you know we’ll be tearing up this persona non grata thing?”

Quint Jones shrugged. His mouth twisted cynically. “I’ll be leaving anyway. I’m off to some island, or something, where I can just sit and think awhile. I have some planning of my life to do. And I don’t think it’s going to involve either writing snide columns, or going into politics.”

The End