“How did you get away from dear old Anton?” I said, trying to keep her talking while I found a weapon. My hand found a box of Kleenex on the table behind me.
“I didn’t tell him,” she said. “We have separate rooms, and I told him I was sick and wanted to go to sleep. Then I climbed out the window. I’ve done that several times.”
“I know how agile you can be,” I said. She didn’t smile.
“I used to do a lot of mountain climbing back in Germany,” she said.
“I know what a good climber you are too,” I continued. My double entendres were going far beyond her but I had the nervous desperation of a third-rate stand-up comic who can’t keep the lousy jokes from coming, even though the last customers are walking out on him. “Where did you learn to shoot, and where did you get that gun?”
“I learned to shoot in Germany too. My father was a Field Marshall, and Anton’s company manufactures silencers for these guns. Now, I really have to …”
The gun came up and leveled at my stomach.
“At least you owe me an explanation,” I said, leaning back as unthreateningly as I could. “No one’s here but a drunken engineer and an all-night music player.”
She thought about it, glanced at her watch, and agreed.
“I didn’t want to do any of this,” she said. “Schell didn’t know I was Anton’s wife. He saw me the night of the party. He was there to try to get Hughes’ plans. That’s why he took the butler job. When he saw me with Anton, he had a better idea. He and his brother Wolfgang knew me before I met Anton. I had run away from home and was working in a … a.…”
“House?” I tried.
“Yes, a bowdy house. Is that how you say it?”
“Well, I don’t but that’s close enough.”
“I was a young girl. I was stupid. I thought it was fun. Music. And the brownshirts spending money. It was during the Depression in Germany too. That must have been when Brecht saw me. I remember him from his poems and plays. I remember once they arrested him for a poem saying Christ wasn’t divine. Maybe that’s when he saw me. I don’t know. Then when Schell saw me at Hughes’ house, he told me I had to get into Hughes’ room and take photographs of any papers there. He had tried but couldn’t get to them. Hughes had never left them alone. If I didn’t, he said, he would tell Anton what I had been. I had nowhere to go, Toby Peters. I couldn’t go back to my father in Germany. He wouldn’t have me.”
I tried to nod sympathetically. As far as I was concerned, she could become Shaharazad and go on till an engineer showed up for work in the morning.
“Well, Schell gave me a small camera. I knew how to use it. I left the party to go up to the bathroom and went into Hughes’ room.”
“And Major Barton saw you coming out,” I tried. “You didn’t see him coming out. You pleaded with him not to tell, told him you would explain and promised sweet nothings. How was he in the dental chair?”
“Major Barton drank too much,” she said softly.
“His loss,” I consoled.
“You told Schell and gave him the camera with the plans?”
“No,” she said. “I kept the camera and told Schell that Barton had gotten it from me. It was the only thing I could think to say to keep it from Schell. I didn’t want him to have it. I didn’t want it turned over to the Nazis.”
“Very noble of you,” I said, moving my sore and bloody foot slowly off the sharp point of a black disc on the floor. “Then I came in investigating everybody at the party, and you knew I would get to Barton soon. So, you got to me first and told me it was you who had seen Barton, not the other way around.”
“Yes,” she said, “but you must believe.…”
“Lady,” I said. “You’ve got the gun. I’ll believe any damn thing you tell me. If you’re going to tell me about the wonders of our moment of love, you might prove it by putting that gun away.”
“I can’t,” she said. “You’d tell.”
“How about if I crossed my heart?”
“How can you keep joking? You are joking, aren’t you?”
“I think so,” I said. “I can’t really analyze what fear does to me. I might even start giggling soon. So, you got to Barton?”
“Yes,” she went on, dropping her gun slightly. “He told me that Schell had come to him and demanded the photographs. Schell offered him a price. Barton said he didn’t tell him I had the camera.”
“That’s why Schell had Barton’s phone number in his wallet,” I added. “Go on.”
“Barton was thinking of going to the Air Force,” she went on, “after you and Mr. Rathbone had been to see him. I arrived at his house when you had left. He was afraid and he had been drinking. I could not appeal to his. …”
“Emotions,” I supplied.
“Yes,” she said, “emotions. So I had to shoot him.”
“And Martin Schell?” I said.
“At first he thought you had gotten the camera from Barton. Then he decided I might have the camera and photographs after all, and he told me to come and see him immediately. I was afraid, but I went. I walked over on the beach. It’s not far.”
“And.…” I urged her.
“I told him I didn’t have them. He hit me and said I had been no good in Berlin and was no good now, and he was going to tell Anton if I did not give him the photographs. I was going to give them, but his face was so twisted. He hurt me. The knife was his. He had taken it out and put it on the pool playing table to threaten me. I grabbed it and stabbed him hard. I am strong.”
“I know,” I said.
“I didn’t mean any of it,” she shrugged. “It just happened. It was
“What?”
“Fate,” she said. “That’s the English word.”
“And Fate is going to make you put a couple of bullets in me? What about Brecht? He’ll still talk about having seen you with the Schells, or are you planning to find him and put a few bullets or a knife in him? I have a better idea. Why don’t you go to the library and get a Berlin telephone directory from 1933 and start with the A’s and work through the
“I can only do what I can do,” she said helplessly. “If I stop now, Anton finds out. Maybe I go to jail. He would not help if he knew what I had been. No, I must keep going. I’m sorry, Toby Peters.”
“No sorrier than I am, lady,” I said, deciding on a pitiful leap and the hope of a stray bullet. Even if I was lucky, survived the leap and knocked the gun away, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to handle her. She was one tough lady and I was one weak private eye with a half a head and a swollen foot. But what choice did I have?
The question was answered for me by the door flying open and a body leaping into the room. It was a beautiful blur in which a foot licked out, hitting Trudi’s hand and sending the gun flying against the wall. I went down covering my head, expecting the gun to discharge and spit out a silent bullet ricocheting around the little room till it stopped in something solid, like my head, which seemed to hold an unaccountable attraction for projectiles.
Trudi turned, and the blur hit her on the side of the neck. She staggered back and would have been painfully pinned on a turntable if I hadn’t hurried upright to catch her. Her unconscious weight almost dropped us both to the floor, but I managed to put her down more or less gently and hobble to the now harmless Luger in the corner.
“You were just in time,” I said.
“No,” said Toshiro. “I was listening at the door. I could have come in much sooner. I’ve been watching you since you got here.”
I looked at Trudi, whose neck was at a clearly uncomfortable angle. I turned her head and her face went limp.
“To what do I owe this last minute rescue?” I said, sitting on the table in the corner and ministering to my sore leg.
“Curiosity and perhaps a touch of concern for your safety. This has been a difficult experience for me, Mr. Peters,” Toshiro said, stepping forward to look at the foot. “You’d better have a doctor take a look at that. Why are
