Eric Ambler - The Schirmer Inheritance

“Does she know that the body was not there when the German patrol came along afterwards?”

“Yes, but her informant can offer no explanation of this.”

George thought again. This was awkward. An experienced man would probably know that the N.C.O. in charge of a German column would ride in the leading truck; and certainly anyone who had taken any part at all in the ambush would know that the leading truck had hit a mine. The informant might well have been farther down the road, firing on the other trucks. With the prospect of earning a few dollars for his trouble, however, he would be ready to oblige with a reasonable guess.

“Ask her if her friend knows what the Sergeant’s injuries were.”

“She cannot say exactly. The Sergeant was lying in a pool of blood.”

“Is she absolutely sure in her own mind-?” Then he broke off. “No, wait a minute. Put it another way. If the Sergeant were her own son, would she be satisfied in her own mind that he was dead from what her friend has told her?”

A smile appeared on the delicately curved lips and a chuckle shook the massive body as their owner understood his question. Then, with a grunting effort, she heaved herself up from the divan and waddled to a drawer in the table. From it she took a slip of paper, which she handed to Miss Kolin with an explanation.

“Madame anticipated your doubts and asked for proof that her friend saw the body. He told her that they stripped the dead Germans of their equipment and that he got the Sergeant’s water bottle. He still has it. It has the Sergeant’s number and name burned into the strap. They are written on this paper.”

Madame Vassiotis sat down again and sipped her wine as George looked at the paper.

The army number he knew well; he had seen it before on several documents. Beneath it in block letters had been written: “SCHIRMER F.”

George considered it carefully for a moment or two, then nodded. He had not mentioned the name Schirmer to the Captain. Trickery was quite out of the question. The evidence was conclusive. What had happened afterwards to the body of Sergeant Schirmer might never be known, but there was no shadow of doubt that Madame Vassiotis and her mysterious acquaintance were telling what they knew of the truth.

He nodded and, picking up his glass of wine, raised it politely to the woman before he drank.

“Thank her for me, please, Miss Kolin,” he said as he put the glass down, “and tell her that I am well satisfied.”

He got out a fifty-dollar bill and put it on the table as he stood up.

He saw an expression of hastily concealed amazement flicker across the fat woman’s face. Then she rose to her feet bowing and smiling. She was clearly delighted. If her dignity had permitted it she would have picked up the bill to have a closer look. She pressed them to have more wine.

When, eventually, they were able to bow themselves out of the shop, George turned to Miss Kolin. “You’d better tell her not to mention that fifty dollars to Monsieur Kliris,” he said; “I shan’t mention it to the Captain. With any luck she may get paid twice.”

Miss Kolin was on her sixth after-dinner brandy, and her eyes were glazing rapidly. She was sitting very straight in her chair. At any moment now she would decide that it was time for her to go to bed. The Captain had long since departed. He had had the air of a man of whose good nature unfair advantage had been taken. However, he had not refused the hundred dollars George had offered him. Presumably he was now celebrating the occasion with his mistress. For George, there was nothing more to be done in Florina.

“We’ll leave tomorrow morning, Miss Kolin,” he said. “Train to Salonika. Plane to Athens. Plane to Paris. All right?”

“You have definitely decided?”

“Can you think of one reason for going on with the thing?”

“I never had any doubt that the man was dead.”

“No, that’s right, you didn’t. Going to bed now?”

“I think so, yes. Good night, Mr. Carey.”

“Good night, Miss Kolin.”

Watching her meticulous progress to the door of the café, George wondered gloomily if she kept her rigid self-control until she got into bed or whether, in the privacy of her room, she allowed herself to pass out.

He finished his own drink slowly. He felt depressed and wished to account for the fact. According to the lights of the ambitious young corporation lawyer who, only a few weeks back, had been pleased to watch his name being painted on an office door in Philadelphia, he should have been delighted by the turn of events. He had been given an irksome and unrewarding task and had performed it quickly and efficiently. He could now return with confidence to more serious and useful business. Everything was fine. And yet he was deriving no pleasure from the fact. It was absurd. Could it be that, in his heart, he had hoped, ludicrously, to find the Schneider Johnson claimant and take him back in triumph to that juvenile dotard, Mr. Sistrom? Could it be that what was now troubling him was merely an idiotic feeling of anticlimax? That must be it, of course. For a moment or two he almost succeeded in convincing himself that he had discovered the reason for his state of mind. Then the even less palatable truth of the matter dawned on him. He had been enjoying himself.

Yes, there it was. The talented, ambitious, pretentious Mr. Carey, with his smug, smiling family, his Brooks Brothers suits, and his Princeton and Harvard degrees, liked playing detectives, liked looking for nonexistent German soldiers, liked having dealings with dreary people like Frau Gresser, disagreeable people like Colonel Chrysantos, and undesirables like Phengaros. And why? For the value of such experiences in a corporation law practice? Because he loved his fellow men and was curious about them? Rubbish. More likely that the elaborate defences of his youth, the pompous fantasies of big office chairs and panelled boardrooms, of hidden wealth and power behind the scenes, were beginning to crumble, and that the pimply adolescent was belatedly emerging into the light. Was it not possible that, in finding out something about a dead man, he had at last begun to find out something about himself?

He sighed, paid the bar bill, got his key, and went up to his room.

It was in the front of the hotel on the second floor, and at night the light streaming down from unshuttered windows across the street was almost strong enough to read by.

When he opened the door, therefore, he did not immediately look for the light switch. The first thing he saw as he took the key out of the lock was his briefcase lying open on the bed, with its contents scattered about the covers.

He started forward quickly. He had taken about two steps when the door slammed behind him. He swung round.

A man was standing just beside the door. He was in the shadow, but the pistol in his hand was clearly visible in the light from across the street. It moved forward as the man spoke.

He spoke very softly, but, even for George’s scattered senses, the strong Cockney accent in the voice was unmistakable.

“All right, chum,” it said. “Gently does it. No, don’t move. Just put your hands behind your head, keep absolutely quiet, and hope you won’t get hurt. Got it?”

George’s experience of extreme danger had been gained in the cockpits of heavy bombers and in circumstances for which he had been carefully prepared by long periods of training. Of dangers such as those which lurk behind doors in Macedonian hotels, dangers unrelated to the wearing of a uniform and the organized prosecution of a war, he had had no experience, and neither Princeton nor Harvard Law School had done anything to prepare him for one.