"Ah, but I like the cold. And the damp reminds me of the sea, which I also like." He stepped back from the window, toying with the sash. "Of course there are tangible obstacles. Margaretha, for example, would probably not like it. And there would always be the matter of earning a living. You see, I am not financially independent. Consequently I would need some sort of employment. Selling art, for example." A beat. "Or information. What do you think?"

"I think that I'm not the one you should ask, Herr Spangler." He should not, he reasoned, be too eager. Besides, it was a small outlet for the anger Spangler stirred up in him.

He left at about midnight with a closing view of his host and hostess smiling out of the porch light. The suburbs were dead, but there were lights in every tavern window along the Bismarckstrasse. Closer to the park there were prostitutes and loitering youths with shaved heads.

Beyond the park lay a block of apartment houses: iron-gray and severe, but stuck at intervals with concrete foliage and faces of dwarves. There were no signs of life except a piano playing from a basement window and a discarded doll on the stoop. But Sykes was waiting just inside the doorway, while Southerland and Dunbar were in a room at the top of the staircase.

A room that was long and low, possibly once a nursery or a servant's quarters. The furniture was a table and three chairs. The walls were bare and yellowed. The light was so poor that at first Gray saw only Dunbar's motionless outline. In any case, it was Southerland who spoke first—quietly from the darkened corner.

"I'm afraid we have nothing to offer you except a chair."

Gray faced them from across the table. He spoke slowly but steadily, as if recounting a dream he had just awakened from. Dunbar took furious notes. There was an occasional question, an occasional point when Southerland asked him to clarify, but mostly it was a monologue.

The discussion did not begin until later. By then it was very still and dark. Gray had moved to the window, where he could see Sykes beneath the fire escape. Southerland had lit a cigarette, and Dunbar had laid his fountain pen down.

"He knows," Gray said. "You realize that, don't you? Spangler knows precisely why I've come."

"Yes," Southerland replied. "He's probably known from the start—"

"Then why the bloody hell didn't you tell me?"

"Because at the time we didn't know. Not for certain, in any case. You see, I think we've underestimated the man. But then, if he comes over . . ."

Dunbar smiled from across the room. "You've done very well, Nicky. You've done very well indeed."

There were strains from that piano again, a clumsy sonata. Gray finally said, "Christ, you really don't get it, do you?"

"What's that?" Dunbar asked. "What don't we get?"