“Yes, yes, that would probably be best,” he said. “All things considered.” He leaned back in his chair and, with his elbows on the armrests, brought the ends of his fingers together like the poles of a tent. “In your telegram you said that it was your intention to liquidate your holdings in Gruen Sugar.”

“Yes.”

“Might I suggest that the announcement be delayed until perhaps you have left the city?” he said carefully. “It’s just that such a sale will attract a certain amount of attention. And with you being as private a man as you are, some of that attention may, perforce, be unwelcome. Vienna is a small city. People talk. The very fact of your being here at all will occasion a certain amount of comment perhaps. Perhaps even, dare I say, some notoriety.”

“All right,” I said. “I don’t mind delaying the announcement for a few days. As you said.”

He tapped his fingers together nervously as if my presence in his office unsettled him. “Might I also inquire if it is your intention to remain in Vienna for very long?”

“Not very long,” I said. “I have a private matter to attend to. Nothing that need concern you. After that I shall probably go back to Garmisch.”

He smiled in a way that left me thinking of a small stone Buddha. “Ah, Garmisch,” he said. “Such a lovely old town. My wife and I went there for the Winter Olympics, in ’thirty-six.”

“Did you see Hitler?” I asked, managing at last to light my pipe.

“Hitler?”

“You remember him, surely? The opening ceremony?”

The smile persisted but he let out a sigh, as if he had adjusted a small valve on his spats. “We were never very political, my wife and I,” he said. “But I think we did see him, albeit from a great distance away.”

“Safer that way,” I said.

“It all seems such a long time ago, now,” he said. “Like another life.”

“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” I said. “Yes, I know exactly what you mean.”

A silence ensued and finally Bekemeier’s smile evaporated like a smudge on a windowpane.

“Well,” I said. “I had better sign these papers, hadn’t I?”

“Yes, yes, of course. Thank you for reminding me. With all of this pleasant reminiscence I’m afraid I had almost forgotten our main business.”

I doubted that. I couldn’t envisage Bekemeier forgetting anything, except perhaps Christmas, or his infant daughter’s birthday, always assuming that a creature with just one pair of chromosomes could reproduce anything more than a gelatinous specimen of legal pond life.