A Bavarian teenager trying to stash his skis in the rack beside the door narrowly missed decapitating Tony. Bawling the boy out relieved some of Tony’s spleen; he turned back to me and said in a milder voice, “Suppose we have a beer and a little heart-to-heart talk. Friedl is anxious to see you, but not as anxious as I am.”

The bar was crowded; we wedged ourselves into a quiet corner, mugs in hand. Sunset reddened the slopes of the Zugspitze and draped the sky with gaudy cloths of scarlet and purple, but Tony wasn’t moved by the beauty of the scenery. I let him talk. I wanted to find out how much he knew before I contributed to his store of information. That was fine with Tony, who seldom got a chance to conduct a monologue when he was with me. As I recall, the lecture went something like this:

“I don’t mind participating in these mad extravaganzas of yours. Not at all. I’m always happy to give a friend the benefit of my superior expertise. A lesser man might resent being shoved into a mess like the one you’ve obviously got yourself into without some warning; I mean, the words ‘sitting duck’ come to mind. Or possibly ‘decoy.’ What I really resent is the insult to my intelligence. I knew something was going on. You and Schmidt and that—that effeminate character, with your heads together…who is that guy? Never mind, don’t tell me, I’m not finished. You might at least warn a person that he’s putting his head in a noose instead of pretending this was just a social visit—”

“Now wait a minute,” I said, indignantly. “I didn’t invite you to come. It was your idea.”

“You could have warned me off.”

“I could have,” I admitted. “At the time I didn’t know—”

“Is that the truth?” Tony scowled at me over his mug. “Nobody tried to mug you, murder you, or burglarize you until the day before yesterday?”

I was glad he had phrased the question that way, because I could look him straight in the eye and say firmly, “No. Nobody.” Not that I wouldn’t have looked him straight in the eye and denied anything he accused me of.

“Oh. All the same, you might have mentioned it.”

“It could have been an accident. Some drunken hunter.”

“Yeah. But Friedl seems to think not. Are you sure you never got a letter or a package or anything from her husband?”

I looked him straight in the eye and said firmly, “No. I mean, yes. How about you?”

“Me? Why would I…” Tony considered the question. “No reason why it shouldn’t have been me, come to think about it. According to Friedl, the object in question is a work of art—she didn’t seem to know more than that. I met Hoffman last year, chatted with him…Hey. What about the rest of them—Dieter, Elise, Rosa…”

“I’m sure he liked you best,” I said.

“I might not have taken notice of a letter,” Tony muttered. “We get a lot of crank mail.”