the smile would not have beguiled an oversexed schoolboy; but in Germany it seemed to work. Its final triumph was the persuasion of a dour functionary in the police department to telephone to Baden-Baden for the court records of the disposal of Friedrich Schirmer’s estate.
It was all very satisfactory, and George said so as handsomely as he could.
She shrugged. “It does not seem necessary for you to waste your time with these simple, routine inquiries. If you feel you can trust me to take care of them I am glad to do so.”
It was that evening that he found out something rather more disconcerting about Miss Kolin.
They had fallen into the habit of discussing the next day’s work briefly over dinner. Afterwards she would go to her room and George would write letters or read. This particular evening, however, they had been drawn into conversation with a Swiss businessman in the bar before dinner and were later invited by him to sit at his table. His motive was quite evidently the seduction of Miss Kolin, if that could be accomplished without too much trouble and if George had no objection. George had none. The man was agreeable and spoke good English; George was interested to see how he would make out.
Miss Kolin had had four brandies before dinner. The Swiss had had several Pernods. With dinner she drank wine. So did the Swiss. After dinner he invited her to have brandy again, and again ordered large ones. She had four. So did the Swiss. With the second of them he became coyly amorous and tried to stroke her knee. She repelled the advance absently but efficiently. By the time he had finished his third, he was haranguing George bitterly on the subject of American fiscal policies. Shortly after his fourth he went very pale, excused himself hurriedly, and did not reappear. With a nod to the waiter Miss Kolin ordered a fifth for herself.
George had noticed on previous evenings that she liked brandy and that she rarely ordered anything else to drink. He had even noticed when they had been going through the customs in Basel that she carried a bottle of it in her suitcase. He had not, however, observed that it affected her in any way. Had he been questioned on the point he would have said that she was a model of sobriety.
Now, as she sipped the new arrival, he watched her, fascinated. He knew that had he been drinking level with her, he would by now have been unconscious. She was not even talkative. She was holding herself very upright in the chair and looking like an attractive but very prudish young school-mistress about to deal for the first time with a case of juvenile exhibitionism. There was a suspicion of drool at one corner of her mouth. She retrieved it neatly with her tongue. Her eyes were glassy. She focused them with care on George.
“We go, then, tomorrow to the sanatorium at Bad Schwennheim?” she said precisely.
“No, I don’t think so. We’ll go and see Father Weichs at Stuttgart first. If he knows something it may be unnecessary to go to Bad Schwennheim.”
She nodded. “I think you are right, Mr. Carey.”
She looked at her drink for a moment, finished it at a gulp, and rose steadily to her feet.
“Good night, Mr. Carey,” she said firmly.
“Good night, Miss Kolin.”
She picked up her bag, turned round, and positioned herself facing the door. Then she began to walk straight for it. She missed a table by a hairsbreadth. She did not sway. She did not teeter. It was a miraculous piece of self- control. George saw her go out of the restaurant, change direction towards the concierge’s desk, pick up her room key, and disappear up the stairs. To a casual observer she might have had nothing stronger to drink than a glass of Rhine wine.
The Hospital of the Sacred Heart proved to be a grim brick building some way out of Stuttgart off the road to Heilbronn.
George had taken the precaution of sending a long telegram to Father Weichs. In it he had recalled Mr. Moreton’s visit to Bad Schwennheim in 1939 and expressed his own wish to make the priest’s acquaintance. He and Miss Kolin were kept waiting for only a few minutes before a nun appeared to guide them through a wilderness of stone corridors to the priest’s room.
George remembered that Father Weichs spoke good English, but it seemed more tactful to begin in German. The priest’s sharp blue eyes flickered from one to the other of them as Miss Kolin translated George’s polite explanation of their presence there and his hope that the telegram (which he could plainly see on the priest’s table) had arrived to remind him of an occasion in 1939 when…
The muscles of Father Weichs’s jaws had been twitching impatiently as he listened. Now he broke in, speaking English.
“Yes, Mr. Carey. I remember the gentleman, and, as you see, I have had your telegram. Please sit down.” He waved them to chairs and walked back to his table.
“Yes,” he said, “I remember the gentleman very well. I had reason to.”
A twisted smile creased the lean cheeks. It was a fine, dramatic head, George thought. You were sure at first that he must hold some high office in the church; and then you noticed the cracked, clumsy shoes beneath the table, and the illusion went.
“He asked me to give you his good wishes,” George said.
“Thank you. Are you here on his behalf?”
“Unfortunately, Mr. Moreton is now an invalid and retired.” It was difficult not to be stilted with Father Weichs.
“I am sorry to hear that, of course.” The priest inclined his head courteously. “However, it was not the gentleman himself who gave me special cause to remember him. Consider! A lonely old man dies. I am his confessor. Mr. Moreton comes to me asking questions about him. That is all. It is not as unusual as you think. An old person who has been neglected by relatives for many years often becomes interesting to them when he dies. It is not often, of course, that an American lawyer comes, but even that is not remarkable in itself. There are many German families who have ties with your country.” He paused. “But the incident becomes memorable,” he added dryly, “when it proves to be a matter of importance for the police.”
“The police?” George tried hard not to look as guilty as he suddenly felt.
“I surprise you, Mr. Carey?”
“Very much. Mr. Moreton was making inquiries on behalf of a perfectly respectable American client in the matter of a legacy-” George began.
“A legacy,” interposed the priest, “which he said was for a small amount of money.” He paused and gave George a wintry smile before he went on. “I understand, of course, that size is relative and that in America it is not measured with European scales, but even in America it seems an exaggeration to call three million dollars a small amount.”
Out of the corner of his eye George saw Miss Kolin looking startled for once; but it was a poor satisfaction at that moment.
“Mr. Moreton was in a spot, Father,” he said. “He had to be discreet. The American papers had already caused trouble by giving the case too much publicity. There had been a whole lot of false claims. Besides, the case was very complicated. Mr. Moreton didn’t want to raise anybody’s hopes and then have to disappoint them.”
The priest frowned. “His discretion placed me in a very dangerous position with the police. And with certain other authorities,” he added bleakly.
“I see. I’m sorry about that, Father. I think if Mr. Moreton had known-” He broke off. “Do you mind telling me what happened?”
“If it is of interest to you. A little before Christmas in 1940 the police came to me to ask questions about Mr. Moreton’s visit of the year before. I told them what I knew. They wrote it down and went away. Two weeks later they came back with some other men, not of the police, but the Gestapo. They took me to Karlsruhe.” His face hardened. “They accused me of lying about Mr. Moreton’s visit. They said that it was a matter of highest importance to the Reich. They said that if I did not tell them what they wished to know, I would be treated as some of my brothers in the church had been treated.” He had been looking at his hands. Now he raised his head, and his eyes met George’s. “Perhaps you are able to guess what they wanted to know, Mr. Carey.”
George cleared his throat. “I should say they wanted to know about someone named Schneider.”
He nodded. “Yes, someone named Schneider. They said that Mr. Moreton had been searching for this person and that I was concealing my knowledge. They believed that I knew where this person was who was entitled to the American money and that Mr. Moreton had bought my silence so that the money could go to an American.” He shrugged. “The sadness of evil men is that they can believe no truth that does not paint the world in their colours.”
