The Schirmer Inheritance

Miss Kolin was on her sixth after-dinner brandy, and her eyes were glazing rapidly. She was sitting very straight in her chair. At any moment now she would decide that it was time for her to go to bed. The Captain had long since departed. He had had the air of a man of whose good nature unfair advantage had been taken. However, he had not refused the hundred dollars George had offered him. Presumably he was now celebrating the occasion with his mistress. For George, there was nothing more to be done in Florina.

“We’ll leave tomorrow morning, Miss Kolin,” he said. “Train to Salonika. Plane to Athens. Plane to Paris. All right?”

“You have definitely decided?”

“Can you think of one reason for going on with the thing?”

“I never had any doubt that the man was dead.”

“No, that’s right, you didn’t. Going to bed now?”

“I think so, yes. Good night, Mr. Carey.”

“Good night, Miss Kolin.”

Watching her meticulous progress to the door of the cafe, George wondered gloomily if she kept her rigid self-control until she got into bed or whether, in the privacy of her room, she allowed herself to pass out.

He finished his own drink slowly. He felt depressed and wished to account for the fact. According to the lights of the ambitious young corporation lawyer who, only a few weeks back, had been pleased to watch his name being painted on an office door in Philadelphia, he should have been delighted by the turn of events. He had been given an irksome and unrewarding task and had performed it quickly and efficiently. He could now return with confidence to more serious and useful business. Everything was fine. And yet he was deriving no pleasure from the fact. It was absurd. Could it be that, in his heart, he had hoped, ludicrously, to find the Schneider Johnson claimant and take him back in triumph to that juvenile dotard, Mr. Sistrom? Could it be that what was now troubling him was merely an idiotic feeling of anticlimax? That must be it, of course. For a moment or two he almost succeeded in convincing himself that he had discovered the reason for his state of mind. Then the even less palatable truth of the matter dawned on him. He had been enjoying himself.

Yes, there it was. The talented, ambitious, pretentious Mr. Carey, with his smug, smiling family, his Brooks Brothers suits, and his Princeton and Harvard degrees, liked playing detectives, liked looking for nonexistent German soldiers, liked having dealings with dreary people like Frau Gresser, disagreeable people like Colonel Chrysantos, and undesirables like Phengaros. And why? For the value of such experiences in a corporation law practice? Because he loved his fellow men and was curious about them? Rubbish. More likely that the elaborate defences of his youth, the pompous fantasies of big office chairs and panelled boardrooms, of hidden wealth and power behind the scenes, were beginning to crumble, and that the pimply adolescent was belatedly emerging into the light. Was it not possible that, in finding out something about a dead man, he had at last begun to find out something about himself?

He sighed, paid the bar bill, got his key, and went up to his room.

It was in the front of the hotel on the second floor, and at night the light streaming down from unshuttered windows across the street was almost strong enough to read by.

When he opened the door, therefore, he did not immediately look for the light switch. The first thing he saw as he took the key out of the lock was his briefcase lying open on the bed, with its contents scattered about the covers.

He started forward quickly. He had taken about two steps when the door slammed behind him. He swung round.

A man was standing just beside the door. He was in the shadow, but the pistol in his hand was clearly visible in the light from across the street. It moved forward as the man spoke.

He spoke very softly, but, even for George’s scattered senses, the strong Cockney accent in the voice was unmistakable.

“All right, chum,” it said. “Gently does it. No, don’t move. Just put your hands behind your head, keep absolutely quiet, and hope you won’t get hurt. Got it?”

9

George’s experience of extreme danger had been gained in the cockpits of heavy bombers and in circumstances for which he had been carefully prepared by long periods of training. Of dangers such as those which lurk behind doors in Macedonian hotels, dangers unrelated to the wearing of a uniform and the organized prosecution of a war, he had had no experience, and neither Princeton nor Harvard Law School had done anything to prepare him for one.

As, therefore, he raised his hands obediently and put them behind his head, he was suddenly aware of an overwhelming, unreasoning, and quite impracticable desire to run away somewhere and hide. He struggled against it for a moment; then the man spoke again and the desire went as suddenly as it had arrived. The blood began to pound unpleasantly in his head.