The Schirmer Inheritance

The Lieutenant went to the official and held a whispered conversation with him. Then he returned to George.

“The information might be obtained for you, Mr. Carey,” he murmured, “but it would take time to do so.”

“How do you mean?”

“This Phengaros is a difficult man to persuade, it seems, but, if you wish, some disciplinary pressure might be applied-”

“No, no.” George spoke hastily; his knees were beginning to tremble. “Unless he gives the information quite voluntarily it can have no legal value as evidence.” It was a dishonest excuse. Phengaros’s evidence had no legal value anyway; it was the evidence of eyewitnesses (if any) that would be important. But George could think of nothing better.

“As you please. Is there anything else you wish to ask?” The Lieutenant’s manner was bored now. He had seen through George. If the inquiry could be pursued with such lily-livered timidity, it could not be of very great importance.

“I don’t think so, thanks.” George turned to Miss Kolin. “Ask this prison man if it’s against the rules to give the prisoner some cigarettes.”

The official stopped picking his nose when he heard the question. Then he shrugged. If the American wished to waste cigarettes on such an un-co-operative type he might do so; but they must be examined first.

George took out a packet of cigarettes and handed it to him. The official glanced inside, pinched the packet, and handed it back. George held it through the grille.

Phengaros had been standing there with a faint smile on his face. His eyes met George’s. With an ironic bow he took the cigarettes. As he did so be began to speak.

“I understand the feelings of embarrassment that prompt you to offer this gift, sir,” translated Miss Kolin. “If I were a criminal, I would gladly accept them. But the fate of my comrades at the hands of the fascist reactionaries already rests too lightly on the conscience of the world. If your own conscience is troubling you, sir, that is to your credit. But I am not yet so corrupted here as to allow you to ease it for the price of a packet of cigarettes. No. Much as I should have enjoyed smoking them, sir, I think that their destination must be that of all other American aid.”

With a flick of his wrist he tossed the cigarettes to the warder behind him.

They fell on the floor. As the warder snatched them up, the official began shouting to him angrily through the grille and he hastened to unlock the door.

Phengaros nodded curtly and went out.

The official stopped shouting and turned apologetically to George. “Une espece de fausse-couche,” he said; “je vous demande pardon, monsieur.”

“What for?” said George. “If he thinks I’m a lousy crypto-fascist-imperialist lackey, he’s quite right in refusing to smoke my cigarettes.”

“Pardon?”

“He also had the good manners not to heave the cigarettes right back in my face. In his place, I might have done just that.”

“Qu’est ce que Monsieur a dit?”

The official was looking desperately at Miss Kolin.

George shook his head. “Don’t bother to translate, Miss Kolin. He won’t get it. You understand me, though, don’t you, Lieutenant? Yes, I thought so. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get the hell out of here before something very in-inconvenient happens inside my stomach.”

When they got back to the hotel, there was a note from Colonel Chrysantos awaiting them. It contained the information that a search of all the relevant lists had failed to discover anybody named Schirmer who had been either killed or captured in the Markos campaign; nor had an amnesty been granted to anyone of that name.

“Miss Kolin,” George said, “what can you drink when you have this stomach thing?”

“Cognac is best.”

“Then we’d better have some.”

Later, when the experiment had been tried, he said: “When we were in Cologne my office gave me permission to go on with the investigation for three more weeks if I thought we were making progress. One of them’s gone, and all we’ve found out is that Franz Schirmer most likely didn’t get taken prisoner by the people who shot up the trucks.”

“Surely, that is something.”

“It’s mildly interesting at best. It doesn’t get us anywhere. I’m giving it one more week. If we’re no nearer the truth by then, we go home. O.K.?”

“Perfectly. What will you do with the week?”

“Do what I have an idea I should have done before. Go to Vodena and look for his grave.”

8

Vodena, which used to be called Edessa and was once the seat of the kings of Macedon, is some fifty miles west of Salonika. It hangs, amid lush growth of vine and wild pomegranate, fig, and mulberry trees, in the foothills of Mount Chakirka six hundred feet above the Yiannitsa plain. Sparkling mountain streams cascade lyrically down the hillsides into Nisia Voda, the tributary of the Vadar which flows swiftly past the town on its way to the parent river. The old tiled houses glow in the sun. There are no tourist hotels.