After she left, Tony and I discussed the interview. We agreed on one thing: the Gräfin almost certainly knew about the shrine. One of the most common motives assigned to restless spirits is their desire to tell their descendants where the gold is buried. The Gräfin must have been familiar with the whole corpus of supernatural literature; her failure to mention this point was significant.

“She knows,” I summarized, “but she doesn’t know where. If she had the shrine, she’d throw us out of here. She has every excuse; our snooping has been outrageous.”

“I don’t know.” A visit from the Gräfin always depressed Tony. “She might let us stay on just for the fun of watching us stumble around. We must look pretty ridiculous, and her sense of humor is decidedly macabre.”

“She couldn’t risk it,” I argued. “If we find the shrine, we’ll turn it over to Irma—unless Elfrida can lift the loot before we make the discovery public. She’d have to silence us, in that case. Why should she take such a chance unless she had to? I’m sure she hasn’t found it. Not yet.”

Tony looked more cheerful.

“I guess you’re right. Shall we have a look at Burckhardt’s room?”

“Right now?”

“Right now. No more roaming by night. That’s when all the kookie things happen.”

“Okay,” I said agreeably.

But when we reconnoitered, we found Schmidt’s room occupied by a buxom chambermaid who was scrubbing the floor. It was clear that the process would take some time, so we retreated. I tried to console Tony—not, of course, by telling him I had already searched the room—but by pointing out an unpalatable fact that had just occurred to me.

If the Gräfin knew about the shrine, she had certainly searched Burckhardt’s room and all the other obvious hiding places. She wasn’t stupid; if she had not located the shrine, it must be concealed in a more obscure spot than we had anticipated.

The idea didn’t cheer Tony much. It didn’t cheer me either. My reasoning was not invalidated by the fact that I had found the secret drawer. Its contents held no useful clue, and the Gräfin would have no reason to remove them. Perhaps the scraps of parchment and the mutilated bag had not even belonged to Burckhardt, but to one of his many successors or predecessors.

Since there was nothing else to do, we went sightseeing. By Tony’s definition, this activity includes frequent stops for liquid refreshment. The drinking places of Rothenburg are all charming; you can guzzle beer or drink tea in dark, raftered rooms or sit in a cobblestoned square admiring the view. We tried both, and since we couldn’t decide which ambience was preferable, we tried both several times.