“Lie down!” Dieter shouted, his face suffused. “On the floor schnell, or I will knock you down.”

John spread the fingers of the hand he had clapped to his face and peered at Dieter. “Don’t you want to boast about your cleverness before you shoot me?” he asked in wavering but encouraging tones.

“You talk about me as if I were a child,” Dieter cried. “You taunt me—you dare make fun of me! I will kill you, I will kill all of you—”

“He might at that,” I said, before John could come back with another of those cute, provocative, dangerous little quips. “Dieter, calm down. You’ve won. You are the winner, número uno, top dog, and top cheese of all time—”

“‘…the bravest by far in the ranks of the Shah,’” murmured a faint voice from behind the bloody hand.

“It would serve you right if he did shoot you,” I snarled. “Dieter, what have you done to Schmidt?”

Dieter relaxed visibly. “A few sleeping pills. It is easy to drug that fat gourmand; he will eat anything and he eats constantly.” He added in self-congratulatory tones, “It is his gun. He took it from the drawer when he felt himself succumbing to the Valium, but he was so sleepy I think he would have shot himself in the stomach if I had not taken it from him.”

I felt my throat closing up. Poor brave little Schmidt. Damn the courageous old galoot anyway. The fact that he hadn’t tried to steal the Colt back should have warned me that he had another gun.

“I was going to take him as a hostage.” Dieter gave Schmidt’s rotund and recumbent form a resentful look. “But he is too heavy to carry. So I decided to wait here for you. I knew you would come sooner or later.”

“It’s later,” I said, as John continued to watch Dieter through his first and second fingers. “We’ve already been to the police. They’ll be looking for you.”

“Not soon,” Dieter said coolly. “It is Weihnacht, and the storm has made for some confusion. But you will come with me, Vicky, and then if anyone tries to interfere with me, I will kill you.”

“Take him,” I said, indicating John.

“Right,” John said. “Take me….” And then the idiot spread both arms wide and sang, “Please do take me—’m all yours if you—”

Dieter was too smart to risk it a second time. He had caught John off guard with the first blow, but he must have seen the flexed hands, poised and ready. He stepped back.

“Over by the bed. Lie down on the floor. Hands under you.”

The barrel of the gun shifted toward me and John said, “Calm down, old chap. You don’t want to shoot anyone.”

“No, I don’t. I would rather not attract attention. But if I am forced to shoot, it will be all of you. This gun is a very nice gun.”

It was, too. Nothing but the best for Schmidt—an automatic pistol—a Beretta, as I later discovered—the kind that fires the whole clip so long as the finger remains on the trigger.