“Yes, she married,” Schmidt said with a sigh; he was talking about Ilse, Countess Drachenstein, who had figured prominently in the case. “A fine young fellow—he was a chemist in Rothenburg. I attended the wedding. I wore my white linen suit I bought in Rome—”

“Chemist?” Tony echoed. “Not the same guy we rousted out of bed in the small hours?”

“The same,” I said.

John listened with bright-eyed interest. “Speaking of chemists,” he began, and went on to tell an outrageous story about an art forgery that had made headlines a few years earlier. The part of the story he told had not been in the newspapers. “And,” he ended, “it turned out he had latent diabetes; it was the sugar that did that trick.”

Schmidt laughed so hard he turned purple. Tony laughed too, but he was still suspicious. “You seem to know quite a lot about detecting forgeries, Sir John.”

John lowered his eyes modestly. “I’m just a dilettante, Professor. Jack-of-all-trades, master of none, as they say. As a matter of fact, I became interested because we had a slight problem with one of the family portraits—a Romney…. But that’s another story. It’s getting late. Shall we go, Herr Direktor?”

“Yes, yes.” Schmidt chug-a-lugged his beer and bounced to his feet. “Where is my coat? Did I have a briefcase?”

Caesar went to help him look for them, and I followed John into the hall. “What are you up to now?”

“You wanted Schmidt out of the way, didn’t you? Leave him to me.”

“Oh, God,” I said hopelessly, and said no more, because Schmidt appeared, trying to get into his coat, which was complicated by the fact that Caesar had hold of one sleeve.

We got Schmidt into his coat and convinced him he had not had a briefcase, and then they left, arguing about who was going to drive. Eventually Schmidt got in the passenger side and they drove off.

I returned to the living room. “Alone at last,” I said.

Tony was looking at photographs. “I’d never seen these,” he said, pleased. “We had a good time, didn’t we? Why don’t we spend a few days at that hotel in Bad Steinbach?”

It was all John’s doing, of course. When he had found time to corrupt Tony, I did not know; but he had left the snapshots in plain sight, and that had finished the job.

Why did I give in? Not because I thought there was the slightest possibility that John’s vile hints had a basis in fact. I knew Tony. He was so damned honest it hurt. Even during the Rothenburg incident, he hadn’t wanted the treasure for himself; he just wanted the fun and the prestige of finding it.

“And suppose,” said a small evil voice inside my head, “that is what he wants now?”

The voice had a pronounced English accent. I countered, “So badly that he would shoot out the tires of Schmidt’s car and endanger me?”

“I thought we agreed that was an impetuous, unpremeditated gesture. There are obviously several malefactors.”