Seated at a table beside Heydrich was another uniformed SS man whom I didn’t recognize. He was about thirty, slightly built, with a full head of light brown hair, a fastidious, almost feminine mouth, and the sharpest pair of eyes I’d seen outside of the leopard’s enclosure at the Berlin Zoo. The left eye was particularly catlike. At first I assumed it was narrowed against the smoke from his silver cigarette holder, but after a while I saw that the eye was permanently like that, as if he had lost his monocle. He smiled when Heydrich introduced us, and I saw that there was more than a passing resemblance to the young Bela Lugosi, always supposing that Bela Lugosi had ever been young. The SS officer’s name was Walter Schellenberg, and I think he was a major then—much later on he became a general—but I wasn’t really paying attention to the pips on his collar patch. I was more interested in Heydrich’s uniform, which was that of a reserve major in the Luftwaffe. More interesting still was the fact that his arm was in a sling, and for several nervous minutes I supposed that my presence there had something to do with an attempt on his life he wanted me to investigate. “Oberkommissar Gunther is one of Kripo’s best detectives,” Heydrich told Schellenberg. “In the new Germany, that’s a profession not without some hazard. Most philosophers argue that the world is ultimately mind or matter. Schopenhauer states that the final reality is human will. But whenever I see Gunther I am reminded of the overriding importance to the world of human curiosity, too. Like a scientist or an inventor, a good detective must be curious. He must have his hypotheses. And he must always seek to test them against the observable facts. Is it not so, Gunther?”

“Yes, Herr General.”

“Doubtless he is even now wondering why I am wearing this Luftwaffe uniform and hoping secretly that it heralds my departure from Sipo so that he might enjoy an easier, quieter life.” Heydrich smiled at his little joke. “Come now, Gunther. Isn’t that exactly what you were thinking?”

“Are you leaving Sipo, Herr General?”

“No, I’m not.” He grinned like a very clever schoolboy.

I said nothing.

“Try to contain your obvious relief, Gunther.”

“Very well, General. I’ll certainly do my best.”

“You see what I mean, Walter? He remains his own man at all times.”

Schellenberg just smiled and smoked and watched me with his cat’s eyes and said nothing. We had one thing in common, at least. With Heydrich, nothing was always the safest thing to say.

“Since the invasion of Poland,” explained Heydrich, “I’ve been volunteering as aircrew on a bomber. I was a rear gunner in an air attack on Lublin.”

“It sounds rather hazardous, Herr General,” I said.