“Sometimes it seems you just can’t shut it up. I’m a hotel detective because I have to be, Noreen, not because I want to be. I’m broke, angel. When I quit KRIPO, I left behind a reasonable salary and a pension, not to mention what my father used to call ‘good prospects.’ I don’t see myself rising to the rank of hotel manager, do you?”

Noreen smiled. “Not in the kind of hotel I’d ever want to stay in.”

“Exactly.”

“How does twenty marks a day sound?”

“Generous. Very. But it’s a different kind of dialogue I’m looking for.”

“Pulitzer Prizes don’t pay that much, you know.”

“I’m not after a slice. Just a loan. A business loan, with interest. What with the Depression, the banks aren’t lending. Not even to each other. And I can hardly ask the Adlons to stake me enough to hand in my notice.”

“To do what?”

“To do this. Be a private investigator, of course. It’s about the one thing I’m good at. I figure about five hundred marks would let me set up on my own.”

“How do I know you’d stay alive long enough to pay me back?”

“That would be an incentive, of course. I’d hate to lose my life. And I’d hate to see you lose your money as a result of that, of course. Fact is, I could probably pay you a twenty-percent return on your investment.”

“You’ve obviously given this some thought.”

“Ever since the Nazis came into power. Human tragedies like the one we just witnessed in front of the town hall back there are happening all over this city. And it’s going to get worse before it gets better. A lot of people—Jews, Gypsies, Freemasons, communists, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses—they already figure they can’t go to the cops and get a hearing from anyone. So they’re going to go somewhere else. Which just has to be good for someone like me.”

“So you could end up making a profit under the Nazis?”

“That’s always a possibility. At the same time, it’s just possible I might actually end up helping someone as well as myself.”

“You know what I like about you, Gunther?”

“I sure could use a bit of reminding.”

“It’s that you can make Copernicus and Kepler look so very short-sighted and impractical and yet still cut a convincingly romantic figure.”

“Does that mean you still find me attractive?”

“I don’t know. Ask me later when I’ve forgotten that I’m no longer just your employer but your banker, too.”

“Does that mean you’re going to give me the loan?”

Noreen smiled. “Why not? But on one condition. You never tell Hedda that you got the money from me.”

“It’ll be our secret.”

“One of two, it now looks like.”