“I’m the one who feels like a monkey.” I tugged the sheet and the carbons off Seldte’s typewriter and crushed them up. “I think maybe I should go and yodel in a few ears, like Johnny Weissmuller, and see what comes running out of the jungle.” I took Dr. Stock’s crime sheet from the police file. “Mind if I borrow this, Otto?”

Otto glanced at Seldte, who shrugged back at him. “It’s okay with us, I guess,” said Otto. “But you will let us know what you find out, Bernie. Ming Mong dynasty theft is a special investigative priority for KRIPO right now. We have our reputation to think of.”

“I’ll get right on it, I promise.”

I meant it, too. It was going to be a pleasure to feel like a real detective again instead of a hotel carpet creeper. But, as Immanuel Kant once said, it’s funny how categorically wrong you can be about a lot of stuff you think just has to be true.

MOST OF BERLIN’S MUSEUMS stood on a little island in the center of the city, surrounded by the dark waters of the River Spree, as if the people who built them had decided that Berlin needed to keep its culture separate from the state. As I was about to discover, there should have been a lot more importance attached to this idea than anyone might have thought.

The Ethnographical Museum, however, formerly in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, was now located in Dahlem, in the far west of Berlin. I traveled there on the underground railway—on the Wilmersdorf line as far as Dahlem-Dorf—and then walked southeast to the new Asiatic Museum. It was a comparatively modern three-story redbrick building surrounded by expensive villas and manor houses with large gates and even larger dogs. Laws were made for the protection of suburbs such as Dahlem, and it was hard to see why there should have been two Gestapo men parked in a black W out front of the nearby confessing church until I remembered there was a priest in Dahlem called Martin Niemöller who was well known for his opposition to the so-called Aryan paragraph. Either that or the two men just had something to confess.

I went into the museum, opened the first door marked PRIVATE, and found myself looking down at a rather fetching stenographer sitting behind a three-bank Carmen, with Maybelline eyes and a mouth that was painted better than Holbein’s favorite portrait. She wore a checked shirt; a whole souk’s supply of brass bangles, which tinkled on her wrist like tiny telephones; and a rather severe expression that almost had me checking the knot on my tie.

“Can I help you?”

I felt sure she could, but I hardly liked to mention exactly how. Instead, I sat on the corner of her desk and folded my arms, just to keep my hands off her breasts. She didn’t like that. Her desk looked as neat as a display in a department-store window.

“Herr Stock about?”