The doctor appeared quite composed. After medical-school dissections, this probably looked like a relatively tidy specimen. He busied himself with the body. I found, to my disgust, that I didn’t want to watch.

“We are all mad,” he said finally. “But if madness has any method, I have what I require. Shall we…”

Tony helped him with the coffin lid. They got it, and the slab, back into place, though not without effort. Blankenhagen tucked his specimens into an envelope.

“I wonder under what law they will imprison me,” he muttered, as we climbed the stairs into the chapel.

“If you get in trouble, we’ll say we forced you,” I said. “But I doubt if the Gräfin will make an issue of this.”

Blankenhagen stopped under a trumpeting angel and looked at me.

“Professorin…”

I tried not to look pleased. I love that title.

“I am only flesh and blood,” said Blankenhagen, thumping theatrically at his chest. “I am wild with curiosity. You must tell me the truth.”

“I don’t know the whole truth myself. How soon can you give me some test results?”

“If I give you these, you will in turn give me your confidence?”

“Well—okay. That’s fair enough. I—what was that?”

Tony whirled around.

“Nothing. What did you see?”

“I could have sworn something moved behind the altar.”

“Nerves,” Tony said. “Mine are shot to hell.”

Blankenhagen thought for a moment and then said decisively,

“Also gut. I will tell you results tonight. Come, we go to the town.”

“Not the police,” I said apprehensively.

“Ha, ha,” said Blankenhagen, without humor. “I should go to the police with this story? No. I know slightly a man in Rothenburg, a chemist with whom I attended university. He has the equipment we need.”

Blankenhagen’s friend lived in a modern area outside the walls, on a street paralleling the Roedertor. He was a youngish man with quizzical eyebrows and nocturnal habits; there was a light in the upper window of the house, and our soft knock was promptly answered.

Blankenhagen’s explanation of our errand was decidedly sketchy, but it was accepted with no more than a lift of the chemist’s eccentric eyebrows. He ended up doing the experiment himself, after watching Blankenhagen fumble with his equipment for a while. He didn’t even look surprised when the significant dark stain appeared in the test tube.

“You expected this?” he asked amiably.

Blankenhagen’s eyes were popping.

“Amazing,” he muttered. “Expected? It is what she expected.”

Tony was staring at me as if I’d grown an extra head.

“I didn’t think of it,” he mumbled, as if denying an accusation of crime. “Only a real weirdo would think of a thing like this.”