I slapped the edge of the desk with the photograph. It cracked, like a pistol shot. Gerda jumped. “What’s the idea of opening my mail?” I shouted. “How many times have I told you not to open my mail?”

I yelled in German. It’s a good language to yell in, and I added a few expletives to my rhetorical question. Gerda answered in her meticulous, stilted English.

“That is impossible to calculate. It is also a meaningless question. To open the mail, it is my duty. In order to direct each piece of mail to the proper destination within the museum, it is necessary that I should investigate—”

We went on that way for a while, in a mixture of languages. My voice kept rising; Gerda’s remained studiously calm, but her cheeks got pinker and pinker till she looked like a kewpie doll. The whole thing was ridiculous. Yelling was making my head ache, and I regretted having started the fight. We all knew Gerda’s habits, and we all made damned good and sure none of our personal mail was directed to the museum. I wondered why I was doing this and how I could stop.

I was saved from retreat by Schmidt, who came barreling out of his office and added his bellow to the general uproar.

“Was ist’s, ein Tiergarten oder ein Museum? Cannot a man absorb himself in study without two screaming females interrupting his thoughts? Die Weiber, die Weiber, ein Mann kann nicht—”

“You sound like The Merry Widow,” I said. “Calm yourself, Herr Direktor.”

“I calm myself? Whose screams were they that interrupted my contemplation?”

“Not mine,” said Gerda smugly.

“I knew that,” Schmidt said. “What is it this time?”

“You know,” I said. “You’ve been listening at the keyhole. You couldn’t have heard us unless you were listening. That door is six inches thick.”

Schmidt’s pudgy little hand stole to his mustache. He started growing it to compensate for the complete absence of hair on his head, and it has got out of hand. I think his initial model was Fu-Manchu, for Schmidt has a deplorable taste for sensational literature. Unfortunately, Schmidt’s mustache came out pure-white and bushy. He’s about Gerda’s height, a foot shorter than I, and that damned mustache was the only touch needed to turn him into a walking caricature of a quaint German kobold or brownie—round tummy, twinkling blue eyes, and an adorable little pink mouth, like that of a pouting baby.

He didn’t deny the charge. “The post,” he said. “Again the post. What is it today—a letter from, er, grr, hm, a close friend, vielleicht?”

He leered and sidled around the desk trying to sneak a peek at what I was holding. I handed it to him.

“Sorry to disappoint you, Schmidt. My er, grr, close friends don’t send passionate love letters to me at this address. If they did, they would cease to become close friends. I don’t know who sent this, because Gerda has removed the outer envelope and, probably, an enclosed explanatory letter. Now I haven’t the faintest idea what it means or what I’m supposed to do about it.”