I approached, not with trepidation—because who was he, to resent my presence?—but with curiosity. I wasn’t sure how he was going to receive me.

He looked up when I stopped by his chair, and a broad grin split his face. Then I felt trepidation. I didn’t like the gleam in his eye. He looked smug. I wondered what he knew that I didn’t.

“Greetings,” I said. “I hope you have been saving a seat at your table.”

“Grüss Gott,” said Tony. “Let us use the local greeting, please, in order to show our cosmopolitan characters. Sure, I saved you a place. I knew you’d be along. What kept you?”

With a wave of his hand he indicated the chair next to his. I took it, without comment; if he wanted to continue the childish pattern of noncourtesy he had established back home, that was fine with me. I put my elbows on the table and studied him. No doubt about it: jaunty was the word for Tony.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

“Couple of days.”

“You must have made good use of your time. What have you—”

“Quiet,” said Tony, scowling. “Not now.”

He was trying to look like James Bond again. It’s that loose lock of hair on his brow. I didn’t laugh out loud because it was expedient to keep on good terms with him, for a time. I turned my head away and glanced around the room.

If the tables in the dining room were any guide, the hotel part of the Schloss wasn’t large, but it was doing a good business. There were a couple of dozen places laid, four to a table. Most of them were occupied.

“Fill me in on our fellow guests,” I said.

“Two American high school teachers,” Tony began, indicating a couple at the next table. “A German family from Hamburg—two kids. The honeymoon couple are French; the old miserable married couple are Italian. There are some U.S. Army types from Munich, and a miscellaneous bevy of Danes.”

“You’ve been busy,” I said, smiling at him. He looked pleased, the naïve thing.

“The little fat guy who looks like Santa Claus without the beard is a professor,” he went on complacently. “What he professes I don’t know; he keeps trying to corner me, but I’ve avoided him so far. The middle-aged female with the face like a horse is English. She’s a crony of the old countess’s.”

“Old countess? Is there a younger one?”

“You must have met her. If she wasn’t carrying your suitcases, she was scrubbing your floor. She does all the work around here.”

“Her?” I gasped ungrammatically.

“Sure. Irma. The last frail twig on the Drachenstein family tree.”

“Irma!” It was some name for a girl who looked like a Persian houri. I was about to express this sentiment—and get some additional insight into Tony’s attitude toward her—when a man walked up to the table. He was a stocky young man with brown hair and blue eyes, a deeply tanned face, and an expression as animated as a block of wood. He distributed two brusque nods and a curt “Abend” around the table, and sat down.