Elizabeth Peters - Trojan Gold

“All right, all right—I grovel, I apologize. Look here, Schmidt, the situation is more complicated than I thought. We are going to have to proceed with caution.”

“Oh yes, I know.” Schmidt nodded complacently. “I am very careful, Vicky, in what I say. And I have learned much. The woman in the photograph is the first Frau Hoffman—”

“I assumed it was.”

“Yes, you assume, but I know. I have seen a picture of her, it is the same woman.”

I put my hands to my head. “Schmidt. You didn’t—you haven’t seen Friedl?”

“If Friedl is the second Frau Hoffman, yes, I have seen her. By the way, that young man at the desk behaves very strangely, Vicky. When I ask for Herr Hoffman and explain I knew him once, many years ago, he turns a strange color and cannot talk sensibly. Do you suppose…What is the matter, Vicky? Have I done something wrong?”

“Yes, dammit! You shouldn’t have…Oh well, maybe it doesn’t matter. What did you say to her?”

Schmidt insisted he had given nothing away, and if his version of the conversation was correct, it was true—except that his mere presence was enough to alarm a conspirator. He had been deliberately vague about where and when he had known Hoffman, and he had ( aber natürlich !) said nothing about the gold, or about a bloodstained envelope. How he had talked Friedl into bringing out the family album I could not imagine; I was surprised that she hadn’t disposed of it as she had disposed of Hoffman’s other personal possessions.

“Poor girl, she is in a state of great distress,” Schmidt said sympathetically. “I advised her to go away for a holiday; her nerves are in terrible condition.”

“Schmidt, you are such a push-over,” I snapped. “She’s a cheap little tramp who married Hoffman for his money and is now trying to steal his—his prize possession for herself.”

“That is a terrible thing to say! How do you know?”

I gave him a brief rundown of what Friedl had said—and what she had not said. “What’s more,” I added, “I’m beginning to wonder whether she knows where—it—is. She tore that Schrank apart. Why would she destroy a valuable object unless she was looking for something?”

“It may be that she does not know for what she is looking,” Schmidt said shrewdly. “It would not be necessary to destroy a piece of furniture to make certain there was not hidden in it something so large as—as what we are seeking.”

“Good point. Maybe she hoped to find a clue—a map or a letter.”

Masticating, Schmidt shook his head mournfully. “I cannot believe so lovely a young woman would behave with such duplicity.”

“Believe it. I’ll tell you something, though—I’m beginning to suspect she is not acting on her own. She is unbelievably stupid. When I was talking to her, I felt as if I were conversing with—with a ventriloquist’s dummy, that was it. Someone had told her what to do, but not how to go about it.”

“Aha,” said Schmidt. “ Cherchez I’homme !”

“I think you’ve got it, Schmidt. A woman like that always has to have a man around. Oh, hell. I don’t want to discuss it here. Let’s go.”

Schmidt swept a measuring glance over the table, popped an overlooked morsel of cheese into his mouth, and nodded agreement. “The lunch, it is on me,” he announced, summoning the waitress with a lordly gesture.

“It sure is,” I agreed, surveying his bulging tummy.

Not until Schmidt had risen and was waddling toward the door did I get the full effect of his costume—bright red, fitting him like a second skin. It was so appalling I let out a yelp. “Schmidt!”

“ Was? Was ist los? Was ist’s ?” Schmidt spun around like a top, bellowing in alarm.

A hush had fallen over the restaurant and every eye in the place was focused on us. I grabbed Schmidt by the seat of the pants (there was very little slack to grab) and the scruff of the neck and propelled him out the door.

We stood by his car arguing. Schmidt was hurt because I didn’t like his outfit—”so fitting for the season of Weihnachten ”—and he didn’t want to go home. He was having fun.

We were still arguing when someone came running out of the hotel, calling my name. It was Freddy. “I am so glad I caught you up,” he exclaimed. “Frau Hoffman hoped you would return; she said to tell you a message. There was a bridal chest, very old, belonging to Herr Hoffman, that was given to a friend of his. Perhaps he will be willing to sell to you.”

Schmidt began bobbing up and down and gesturing at me. His face was almost as crimson as his suit, he was so excited. The word “chest” suggested an accompanying adjective—“treasure”—and he was reacting like a child reading Edgar Allan Poe.

“Where does the friend live?” I asked, hoping it was someplace like Paris or Lhasa, and that I could talk Schmidt into catching the first plane.

“Not far from here. I can tell you….”

He rattled off directions, adding helpfully, “It is only several miles from the town.”

“I know it, I know it,” Schmidt cried. “Thank you, my friend— vielen Dank .”

Freddy went running back to the hotel and Schmidt unlocked the Mercedes. “You are following me,” he insisted, forgetting his grammar in his excitement. “I the way am knowing.”

“Wait a minute, Schmidt—”

It was too late. He almost ran over my foot.

I got in my car and took off after the old lunatic, cursing aloud. If I had been on my own, I would have deliberated long and hard about pursuing that oh-so-convenient lead. I probably would have ended up pursuing it, if only for the sake of the chest, which I remembered well. It was a beauty. But I seriously doubted that it contained the gold of Troy.

The first few miles weren’t bad going. Then Schmidt, who drove with an assurance that suggested he really did know where he was going, turned abruptly into a side road that plunged steeply up the mountainside. After a while I shifted into four-wheel drive. I’d have signaled him to stop if there had been anyplace to turn around, which there wasn’t. Snowplows had carved out a single narrow lane; banks of glistening white rose high on both sides. I prayed he wouldn’t meet a car coming down. Occasionally a sidetrack would wind off through clustered pines or up rocky banks toward an isolated dwelling. Otherwise there was no sign of human life.

I wasn’t happy about the situation, but I didn’t start to get really worried until after we had gone fifteen kilometers. The road had twisted and curved so often I had lost my sense of direction, but as it turned out, we weren’t more than a mile from the town. I found out in the most direct possible fashion; rounding a sudden curve, I saw the damned place down below—straight down. The plows hadn’t had any problem disposing of the snow in this spot; they had just pushed it off the edge of the cliff.

I leaned on the horn. Schmidt responded with a cheerful beepity-beep, and the Mercedes disappeared around another steep curve, its rear end wriggling like a belly dancer’s navel. We went around a few more bends, with Bad Steinbach flashing in and out of sight down below; finally, to my relief, the road leveled out. It was then that the thing I had feared finally happened. Suddenly the Mercedes swerved, bounced off a snowbank, and headed straight for the opposite side. There was no snowbank on the side. The drop wasn’t sheer—not after the first twenty or thirty feet.

I started pumping my brakes. Luckily the process had become automatic, because every ounce of my concentration was focused on the wildly weaving vehicle ahead. Schmidt was fighting the skid, but he was losing. There was something wrong with the Mercedes, it wasn’t a simple skid…. At the last possible second, he managed to sideswipe a tree. If he hadn’t done so, he’d have gone over the edge.