He turned and walked away. Krempel followed, and in the absence of a personal cuspidor, I spat after them.

Dora gave me some more water. I drank it down greedily. “Guess I’ll have all the water I can drink in a little while,” I said.

“That’s not even funny.” She wiped my mouth with my tie.

“I’d forgotten how beautiful you are.”

“Thanks.”

“Nope. You’re still not laughing. I guess that wasn’t funny, either.”

She glared at me like I was dermatitis.

“You know, in Grand Hotel, Joan Crawford’s not supposed to fall for Wallace Beery,” I said.

“Max? He’s not so bad.”

“I’ll try to remember that when I reach the bottom of the lake.”

“I suppose you think you’re like John Barrymore.”

“Not with this profile. But I do think I’d like a cigarette, if you have one. You can call it one last request, since I’ve already seen you naked. At least now I can be sure when you’re wearing a wig.”

“A regular Curt Valentin, aren’t you?”

Under the fur she was wearing a lavender-colored knitted dress that hugged her figure like a coat of emulsion, and over her wrist was a drawstring pouch bag that contained a handsome gold cigarette case and lighter.

“It looks as if Saint Nicholas has been here already,” I said as she pushed a cigarette between my cracked lips and lit it. “At least someone thinks you’ve been a good girl.”

“By now anyone would think you’d learned to keep your nose out of other people’s business,” she said.

“Oh, I’ve learned that, all right. Perhaps you’d like to tell him that. Maybe a good word from you has a better chance of success than one from me. Better still, perhaps you still have that gun. I’d say that where Max Reles is concerned, a Mauser has an even better chance than any amount of good words.”

She took the cigarette from me, drew in smoke, and then put it back in my mouth with cool fingers that were almost as heavily perfumed as they were ringed. “What makes you think I’d ever betray a man like Max for a dog like you, Gunther?”