Ross Thomas - The Eighth Dwarf

“What is his profession?”

She shook her head. “He said he was a teacher before the war — in Düsseldorf. But he said they came and got him and put him away in one of the camps — the one at Dauchau. At first I believed him, but later I didn’t.”

“Why?”

“When the others came to see him, I could never hear what they talked about. But always when they thought I was not listening they called him Herr Doktor.”

“How long did you stay with him?”

“Almost a year.”

“Why did you stay with him so long?”

She raised her eyes from her lap then. They stared directly into Ploscaru’s. “Because he paid me,” she said. “He paid me very well.”

“And what made you decide to leave?”

“My mother became ill. I had to go and stay with her.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Last week.”

“Is your mother still sick?”

“No.”

“But you have not gone back to the man who says he was a teacher?”

“No. Not yet.”

“What does he call himself?”

“Gloth. Martin Gloth.”

“And his address?”

“Are you going to give me money?”

Ploscaru nodded. “We’ll give you money. Perhaps a lot of it.”

“The address is Fourteen Mirbachstrasse.”

The dwarf wrote it down and, after it, Martin Gloth.

“He is crazy,” the girl said.

“Yes. What else can you tell us about him?”

“One night when these men came to see him they stayed up all night and talked until dawn. Then the men left and he came to my room and made me do bad things. He had a new bandage on his arm right about here.” She indicated where the bandage had been. “He kept it on for almost a week. And then one night when he made me watch him take off his clothes and put on a dress the bandage was gone. There was no scar where the bandage had been. There was something else.”

“A tattoo,” Jackson said.

The girl looked disappointed. “How did you know?” she said. “He had numbers tattooed on his arm — right about here.”

“Pay her the money, Nick,” Jackson said.

After the girl had gone, her shabby briefcase almost stuffed with marks, Jackson paid off the last would-be informer in the corridor and came back into the room. The dwarf was standing near the table brushing his hands together. The smile on his face made him look almost ecstatic.

“Tell me how brilliant I am, Minor. I must hear it.”

“You’re brilliant.”

“More.”

“Shrewd, clever, cunning, smart, crafty, and a credit to your race. How’s that?”

“Better. Sometimes I need praise as others need drugs. It’s my one failing. Otherwise I’m quite perfect.”

“I know.”

“Now, then, you understand what we must do.”

“I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

“When?”

“They used to lecture us that the wee hours of the morning were best.”

“The OSS, you mean.”

“Right.”

Ploscaru nodded thoughtfully. “Around four, I’d say.”

“Let’s make it three-thirty. Oppenheimer might have heard the same lecture.” Jackson looked at his watch. “It’s twelve-thirty now. That’ll give me time to wake up his sister and tell her what we’re up to.”

“I’m not sure that that’s terribly wise.”

Jackson stared down at the dwarf for several moments. All friendliness had deserted the gray-haired man’s face. In its stead was a cold, hard wariness.

“Up until now we’ve done it your way, Nick,” he said. “I’ve been Tommy Tagalong, not too bright, but loyal, plucky, and loads of fun. Now we’re going up against some guy who wears dresses at teatime, but who also just might know how to use a gun. And then there’s Oppenheimer, although I don’t have to tell you about him. And finally there’s you, Nick, and that double-cross you still think you’re going to pull off. That worries me too, so I’m going to tell you again just what I told you at the train station in Washington. Think twice.”

The dwarf nodded, almost sadly, and started brushing his hands together again. His gaze wandered around the room. “I’m sorry to learn that you still don’t trust me, Minor,” he murmured. “It comes as quite a blow. It really does.”

For a moment, Jackson almost believed him. Then he grinned and shook his head. “You’ll recover.”

“Yes, of course,” Ploscaru said. “But you’re quite right about Oppenheimer and the Gloth person. Caution shall be our watchword. Now, just what do you plan to tell Miss Oppenheimer?”

“That she’d better have her bag packed, because her brother and I might be heading from hither to yon very quickly.”

“In the roadster?”

“Uh-huh. In the roadster. That’s why we bought it, wasn’t it?”

“To be sure. Now, we all know where hither is. But where might yon be?”

Jackson shrugged. “Holland, maybe. It’s close. But she must have some safe spot in mind where she can stash him for a while until things calm down. I’ll ask her.”

The dwarf looked up at the ceiling. “You said, I believe, that you and Oppenheimer will be speeding off. Just what will I be doing in the meantime?”

“You?” Jackson said with a grin. “Why, you’ll be sitting on his lap, Nick.”

Eva Scheel sat up in bed in the room at the Gasthaus that had been established in 1634 and looked down at Bodden. It was chilly in the room, and she covered her bare breasts with her arms and hugged herself. Bodden watched the smoke rise from his cigarette.

“So, printer,” she said softly. “Killing does not excite you.”

He sighed and shook his head. “It was a bad business.”

“You have a conscience,” she said. “I’m glad.”

“And you?”

She shrugged. “He’s dead. Perhaps he deserved it. Perhaps not. But I feel nothing.”

He looked at her. “Are you really quite so hard, little one?”

“No, but I pretend to be. There will be time for remorse later — when we can afford it. It’s quite a luxury, you know.” She shivered again and wondered whether it was really the cold that made her do so.

Bodden sat up in bed and reached over to a small table for the bottle. “Here,” he said, pouring some clear Schnapps into a glass. “This will warm you up.”

She accepted the glass gratefully, drank, and shivered again as the harsh liquor went down. “We could, of course, just run with the money we have.”

He drank from the bottle. “They would find us. You know that. Your plan is better.”

“Yes, if it works.” She rose and turned. Only the cold made her conscious of her nakedness. He stared at her with interest, if not with desire.

“You still like what you see, printer?”

“Very much.”

“We must find something that will excite you.”

“Counting a great deal of money might do it.”

“Has it before?”

“I don’t know,” he said, smiling for the first time. “I’ve never tried it”

She set the glass down and started putting on her clothes. “Leah gave me the name of the hotel where the American said they’d be staying. It will be best to avoid him, so when I get there, I’ll send a note up.”

“To the dwarf?”

“Yes.”

Bodden reached down to rub his still-throbbing knee. “That one I owe a little something to.”

“Revenge, like remorse, is another luxury that we can’t yet afford.”

“Someday.”

“Someday,” she agreed, and slipped into her fur coat. From its deep pocket she brought out a pistol. She looked down at it curiously for a moment and then handed it to him.

“Well,” he said. “A Walther.”

“Satisfactory?”

“Perfectly.”

Her head tilted to one side a little as she stared down at him. “You may have to use it.”