The Schirmer Inheritance

The photograph “handed to R. L. M. by Father Weichs at Bad Schwennheim” proved to be a dog-eared, postcard-size portrait of a young man and a young woman sitting side by side on a professional photographer’s rustic bench. The woman had a certain fluffy prettiness and was possibly pregnant. The man was nondescript. Their clothes were of the early 1920’s. They looked like a prosperous working-class couple on their day off. There was a painted background of snow-covered pines behind them. Across the corner of it was written, in German script: “Johann und Ilse.” The photographer’s imprint on the mount showed that it had been taken in Zurich. There was nothing else in the envelope.

Charlie, the janitor, came in with a piece of adhesive plaster on his forehead and another load of parcels, and George got back to work on the claims. But that night he took the contents of the deed box back to his apartment and went through them carefully again.

He was in a difficulty. He had been asked to check on the claims to the estate received by the former administrator; nothing else. If the deed box had not fallen and cut the janitor’s head, he would probably not have noticed it. It would have been moved out of the way of the parcels of claims files and then left in the vault. He would have worked his way through the claims and then, no doubt, simply reported to Mr. Budd what Mr. Budd wanted to hear: that there were no outstanding claims worth discussing and that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania could go ahead. Then he, George, would have been free of the whole wretched business and ready to be rewarded with an assignment more suited to his abilities. Now it looked as if he had a choice of two ways of making a fool of himself. One was by forgetting about the contents of the deed box and so running the risk of allowing Mr. Sistrom to make a serious blunder; the other was by plaguing Mr. Budd with idle fancies.

High political office and the presidencies of railroads seemed very far away that night. It was not until the early hours of the morning that he thought of a tactful way of putting the thing to Mr. Budd.

Mr. Budd received George’s report with impatience.

“I don’t even know if Bob Moreton’s still alive,” he said irritably. “In any case, all that this cipher stuff suggests to me is that the man was in an advanced stage of paranoia.”

“Did he seem O.K. when you saw him in ’44, sir?”

“He may have seemed O.K., but from what you show me it looks very much as if he wasn’t.”

“But he did go on with the inquiry, sir.”

“What if he did?” Mr. Budd sighed. “Look, George, we don’t want any complications in this business. We just want to get rid of the thing, and the sooner the better. I appreciate that you want to be thorough, but I should have thought it was very simple, really. You just get a German translator on these photographed documents, find out what they’re all about, then check through the claims from people named Schneider and see if the documents refer in any way. That’s straightforward enough, isn’t it?”

George decided that the time for tactful handling had arrived. “Yes, sir. But what I had in mind was a way of speeding up the whole thing. You see, I haven’t got through to the Schneider claims yet, but, judging by the volume of paper in the vault, there must be at least three thousand of them. Now, it’s taken me nearly four weeks to check through that number of ordinary claims. The Schneider files are certain to take longer. But I’ve been looking into things and I have a hunch that if I can check with Mr. Moreton it may save a lot of time.”

“Why? How do you mean?”

“Well, sir, I checked through some of the reports on that case he fought against the Rudolph Schneider claim and the German government. It seemed to me quite clear that Moreton, Greener and Cleek had a whole lot of facts at their disposal that the other side didn’t have. I think they had very definite information that there was no Schneider heir alive.”

Mr. Budd looked at him shrewdly. “Are you suggesting, George, that Moreton as administrator went on and established beyond doubt that there was no heir, and that he and his partners then kept quiet about the fact so that they could go on drawing fees from the estate?”

“It could be, sir, couldn’t it?”

“Terrible minds some of you young men have!” Mr. Budd suddenly became jovial again. “All right, what’s your point?”

“If we could have the results of Moreton’s confidential inquiries, we might have enough information to make any further examination of all these claims unnecessary.”

Mr. Budd stroked his chin. “I see. Yes, not bad, George.” He nodded briskly. “O.K. If the old chap’s alive and in his right mind, see what you can do. The quicker we can get out from under the whole thing, the better.”

“Yes, sir,” said George.