It was a shot in the dark, but already he had this firm instinctive sense that there was something wrong, though he hadn’t yet attached the word ‘murder’ to the instinct. Kurtz had a cup of coffee half-way to his lips and Martins watched him. The shot apparently went wide; an unaffected hand held the cup to the mouth and Kurtz drank, a little noisily, in long sips. Then he put down the cup and said, ‘How do you mean – queer?’

‘It was convenient for the police to have a corpse, but wouldn’t it have been equally convenient, perhaps, for the real racketeers?’ When he had spoken he realized that after all Kurtz might not have been unaffected by his wild statement: hadn’t he perhaps been frozen into caution and calm? The hands of the guilty don’t necessarily tremble; only in stories does a dropped glass betray agitation. Tension is more often shown in the studied action. Kurtz had drunk his coffee as though nothing had been said.

‘Well –’ he took another sip – ‘of course I wish you luck, though I don’t believe there’s anything to find. Just ask me for any help you want.’

‘I want Cooler’s address.’

‘Certainly. I’ll write it down for you. Here it is. In the American zone.’

‘And yours?’

‘I’ve already put it – underneath. I’m unlucky enough to be in the Russian zone – so don’t visit me very late. Things sometimes happen round our way.’ He was giving one of his studied Viennese smiles, the charm carefully painted in with a fine brush in the little lines about the mouth and eyes. ‘Keep in touch,’ he said, ‘and if you need any help … but I still think you are very unwise.’ He touched The Lone Rider. ‘I’m so proud to have met you. A master of suspense,’ and one hand smoothed the toupée, while another, passing softly over the mouth, brushed out the smile as though it had never been.

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

MARTINS SAT ON a hard chair just inside the stage door of the Josefstadt Theatre. He had sent up his card to Anna Schmidt after the matinée, marking it ‘a friend of Harry’s’. An arcade of little windows, with lace curtains and the lights going out one after another, showed where the artists were packing up for home, for the cup of coffee without sugar, the roll without butter to sustain them for the evening performance. It was like a little street built indoors for a film set, but even indoors it was cold, even cold to a man in a heavy overcoat, so that Martins rose and walked up and down underneath the little windows. He felt, he said, rather like a Romeo who wasn’t sure of Juliet’s balcony.