The Schirmer Inheritance (24 page)

“I should think it would considerably affect his value in court.”

“That’ll be his attorney’s headache, not mine, and he can deal with it how he pleases. Anyway, why should you worry?”

“I thought that you believed in justice.”

“I do. That’s why Franz Schirmer is going to Philadelphia if I can get him there.”

“Justice!” She laughed unpleasantly.

George was already tired; now he began to get annoyed.

“Look, Miss Kolin. You are engaged as an interpreter, not as a legal adviser or my professional conscience. Let’s both stick to our jobs. At the moment, the only thing that matters is that, incredible as it may seem, this man is Franz Schirmer.”

“He is also a German of the worst type,” she said sullenly.

“I’m not interested in what type he is. All I’m concerned with is the fact that he exists.”

There was silence for a moment and he thought that the argument was ended. Then she began to laugh again.

“Quite a guy, the Sarge!” she said derisively.

“Now look, Miss Kolin,” he began, “I’ve been very …”

But she was not listening any more. “The swine!” she exclaimed bitterly. “The filthy swine!”

George stared at her. She began pounding her knees with her fists and repeating the word “filthy.”

“Miss Kolin. Don’t you think …”

She rounded on him. “That girl in Salonika! You heard what he did?”

“I also heard what she did.”

“Only for revenge after he had seduced her. And how many more has he treated that way?”

“Aren’t you being a bit silly?”

She did not hear him. “How many more victims?” Her voice rose. “They are always the same, these beasts—killing, and torturing, and raping wherever they go. What do the Americans and British know of them? Your armies do not fight in your own lands. Ask the French about the Germans in their streets and in their houses. Ask the Poles and Russians, the Czechs, the Yugoslavs. These men are filthy slime on the land that suffers them. Filth! Beating and torturing, beating and torturing, bearing down with their strength, until they—until they—”

She broke off, staring blankly ahead as if she had forgotten what she had been going to say. Then, suddenly, she crumpled into a passionate storm of weeping.

George sat there as stolidly as his embarrassment and the lurching of the car would allow, trying to remember how many drinks he had seen her have since they had left Florina. It seemed to him that her glass had never once been empty while they had been at the Sergeant’s headquarters, but he could not quite remember. Probably she had kept refilling it. If that were so, she must have had the best part of a bottle of plum brandy, as well as her after-dinner cognacs. He had been too preoccupied to pay much attention to her.

She was sobbing quietly now. The old man driving had merely glanced round once and then taken no further interest. Presumably he was accustomed to distracted women. George
was not. He was feeling sorry for her; but he was also remembering her pleasure in the anecdotes of Colonel Chrysantos, the man who knew “how to deal with Germans.”

After a while, she went to sleep, her head cushioned in her arms against the back of the seat. The sky was beginning to lighten when she awoke. For a time she stared at the road, taking no notice of the wind blowing her hair about; then she took out a cigarette and tried to work her lighter. The breeze in the car was too strong for it and George, who was already smoking, passed his cigarette to her to light hers from. She thanked him quite normally. She made no reference to her outburst. No doubt she had forgotten about it. With Miss Kolin, he had decided now, anything was possible.

He finished his report to Mr. Sistrom and sealed it in an envelope. The post office might be open now he thought. He took the report and the cable and went downstairs.

He had left Miss Kolin over an hour before, when she had gone to her room. To his surprise, he saw her sitting in the café with the remains of a breakfast on the table in front of her. She had changed her clothes and was looking as if she had had a good night’s sleep.

“I thought you were going to bed,” he said.

“You said you were going to send a cable to your office. I was waiting to take it to the post office. They make so much chi-chi about cables there. They have so few. I did not think you would like to deal with them yourself.”

“That’s very good of you, Miss Kolin. Here it is. I’ve done my report, too. Air-mail that, will you?”

“Of course.”

She left some money on the table for the breakfast and was going through the lobby to the street when the desk clerk came after her and said something in French. George caught the word
“téléphone.”

She nodded to the clerk and glanced at George—in an almost embarrassed way, he thought.

“My call to Paris,” she said. “I had cabled my friends that I was on my way home. I wished to tell them that I would be delayed. How long do you think we will be?”

“Two or three days, I’d say.” He turned to go. “Pretty good work that, to get through to Paris from here in an hour,” he added.

“Yes.”

He saw her enter the telephone booth and begin speaking as he went upstairs, back to his room to sleep.

At eight o’clock that evening they met the old man with the Renault again, and began their second journey to the Sergeant’s headquarters.

George had slept fitfully for most of the day and felt a great deal wearier for having done so. In the faint hope that there might be a reply cable in from Mr. Sistrom, he had risen in the late afternoon and gone down to check. There had been nothing in. He had been disappointed but not surprised. Mr. Sistrom would have some thinking to do and some inquiries to make before he could send a useful reply. Miss Kolin had been out and, sitting beside her in the car, he noted that the leather satchel which she carried slung by a strap from her shoulder looked bulkier than usual. He decided that she had bought a bottle of brandy with which to fortify herself on the journey. He hoped, uneasily, that she would not hit it too hard.

Arthur was waiting for them at the same place and took the same precautions about shutting them in the back of the truck. The night was even warmer than the previous one and George protested.

“Is all that still necessary?”

“Sorry, chum. Got to be done.”

“It is a wise precaution,” said Miss Kolin unexpectedly.

“Yes, that’s right, miss.” Arthur sounded as surprised as George felt. “Did you bring the Sarge’s papers, Mr. Carey?”

“I did.”

“Good. He’s been worrying in case you’d forget. Can’t wait to know about his namesake.”

“I brought along a copy of an old photograph of him as well.”

“You’ll get a medal.”

“What’s been decided?”

“I don’t know. We had a chat last night after you’d gone but—anyway, you talk to him about it. There we are! All tucked up now. I’ll take it quiet.”

They set off up the twisting, rock-strewn road to the ruined house and went through the same routine as before when they reached it. This time, however, as they stood waiting among the pine trees while Arthur warned the sentry of their approach, George and Miss Kolin had nothing to say to one another. Arthur returned and led them to the house.

The Sergeant greeted them in the hall, shaking hands with George and clicking heels to Miss Kolin. He smiled, but seemed secretly ill at ease as though doubtful of their goodwill. Miss Kolin, George was relieved to note, was her usual impassive self.

The Sergeant led them into the dining-room, poured out drinks, and eyed George’s briefcase.

“You have brought the papers?”

“Sure.” George opened the case.

“Ah!”

“And a photo of the Dragoon,” George added.

“This is true?”

“It’s all here.” George took out a folder which he had brought from Philadelphia. Inside it there was a photostat or photograph of every important document in the case. “The
Corporal didn’t have time to read the interesting part when he searched my room,” he added with a grin.

“Touché,”
said Arthur, unmoved.

The Sergeant sat down at the table, glass in hand, his eyes gleaming as if he were about to be served with some ambrosial meal. George began to lay the documents one by one in front of him, explaining as he did so the origin and importance of each. The Sergeant nodded understandingly at each explanation or turned to Miss Kolin for guidance; but George soon saw that there were only certain documents in which he was genuinely interested—those which directly concerned the first Franz Schirmer. Even a photograph of Martin Schneider, the soft-drinks potentate who had amassed the fortune which the Sergeant might inherit, produced no more than a polite exclamation. The photostats of Hans Schneider’s Account, on the other hand, the church-register entries relating to the marriage of Franz, and the record of the baptism of Karl, he studied minutely, reading the German aloud to himself. The copy photograph of old Franz he handled as if it were a holy relic. For a long time he stared at it without speaking; then he turned to Arthur.

“You see, Corporal?” he said quietly. “Am I not like him?”

“Take away the beard and he’s your spitting image,” Arthur agreed.

And, indeed, for one who knew of the relationship, there was a strong resemblance between the two Schirmers. There was the same heavy strength in the two faces, the same determination in the two mouths, the same erectness; while the big hands grasping the arms of the chair in the daguerreotype and those grasping the photographic copy of it might, George thought, have belonged to the selfsame man.

There was a rap on the door and the sentry put his head in. He beckoned to Arthur.

Arthur sighed impatiently. “I’d better see what he wants,” he said, and went out, shutting the door behind him.

The Sergeant took no notice. He was smiling now over Hans Schneider’s account of Eylau and the photostat of a page of the Dragoon’s war diary, the one recording Franz Schirmer’s desertion, which George had placed beside it. That old act of desertion seemed to give him special pleasure. From time to time he would glance at the old man’s photograph again. George supposed that the Sergeant’s own failure to return to Germany when an opportunity presented itself (he could have taken advantage of one of the amnesties) had been a kind of desertion. Perhaps, what the Sergeant was enjoying now was the reassuring intimation from the past that, contrary to the beliefs of his childhood, sinners were not obliged to dwell with devils always, and that outlaws and deserters, no less than fairy princes, might live happily ever after.

“Have you decided yet what you’re going to do?” George asked.

The Sergeant looked up and nodded. “Yes. I think so, Mr. Carey. But first I would like to ask you some questions.”

“I’ll do my best to …” he began.

But he never learned what the Sergeant’s questions were. At that moment the door was flung open and Arthur came back into the room.

He slammed the door behind him, walked over to the table, and looked grimly at George and Miss Kolin. His face was pinched and grey with anger. Suddenly he threw two small, bright yellow tubes down on the table in front of them.

“All right,” he said. “Which of you is it? Or is it both of you?”

The tubes were about an inch and a half long and half an inch thick. They looked as if they had been cut from bamboo
and then coloured. The three round the table stared at them, then up at Arthur again.

“What is this?” snapped the Sergeant.

Arthur burst into an angry torrent of Greek. George glanced at Miss Kolin. Her face was still impassive, but she had gone very pale. Then Arthur stopped speaking and there was silence.

The Sergeant picked up one of the tubes, then looked from it to George and Miss Kolin. The muscles of his face set. He nodded to Arthur.

“Explain to Mr. Carey.”

“As if he didn’t know!” Arthur’s lips tightened. “All right. Someone left a trail of these things from the culvert up here. One every fifty metres or so for someone else to follow. One of the lads coming up with a light spotted them.”

The Sergeant said something in German.

Arthur nodded. “I put the rest out collecting them all before I came to report.” He looked at George. “Any idea who might have dropped them, Mr. Carey? I found one of these two wedged between the canvas and the body of the truck, so don’t start trying to play dumb.”

“Dumb or not,” George said steadily, “I don’t know anything about them. What are they?”

The Sergeant got slowly to his feet. George could see a pulse going in his throat as he drew George’s open briefcase towards him and looked inside. Then he shut it.

“Perhaps one should ask the lady,” he said.

Miss Kolin sat absolutely rigid, looking straight in front of her.

Suddenly, he reached down and picked up her satchel from the floor by her chair.

“You permit?” he said, and, thrusting his hand into it, drew out a tangle of thin cord.

He pulled on the cord slowly. A yellow tube came into
view and then another, then a handful of the things, red and blue as well as yellow. They were strings of wooden beads of the kind used for making bead curtains. George knew now that it was not a bottle of brandy that had made the satchel so bulky. He began to feel sick.

“So!” The Sergeant dropped the beads on the table. “Did you know of this, Mr. Carey?”

“No.”

“That’s right, too,” Arthur put in suddenly. “It was Little Miss Muffet here who wanted the canvas over the truck. Didn’t want him to see what she was up to.”

“For God’s sake, Miss Kolin!” George said angrily. “What do you think you’re playing at?”

She stood up resolutely, as if she were about to propose a vote of no-confidence at a public meeting, and turned to George. She did not even glance at Arthur or the Sergeant. “I should explain, Mr. Carey,” she said coldly, “that, in the interests of justice and in view of your refusal to take any steps yourself in the matter, I considered it my duty to telephone Colonel Chrysantos in Salonika and inform him, on your behalf, that the men who robbed the Eurasian Credit Bank were here. On his instructions, I marked the route from the culvert, so that his troops could …”