Trojan Gold - Elizabeth Peters [114]
“He overheard us talking about the daffodil bulb.”
John’s lips curled in an elegant sneer. He had visited the facilities, as my mother always calls them, and washed the soot and dried blood from his face; the sneer was one of his best.
“He wouldn’t have wits enough to reason that one out. It’s more likely that your initial visit to the cemetery aroused his suspicions; it wouldn’t occur to him that your motives were as pure and charitable as they really were.”
“Or he located someone who saw me leaving town last night. I almost ran over a policeman when I turned into the road leading to the cemetery; I’ll bet that’s the only place it leads to.” I glanced toward the door. “Where do you suppose Schmidt is? It isn’t like him to stay away from food for more than an hour at a stretch. Maybe he’s taking a nap.” I put my napkin on the table and stood up.
“It’s the best possible place for him,” John said, sipping coffee. “If I were you, I’d leave him there.”
“No, I need him to help me convince the police to dig up that grave. He’s got more clout than I have.”
“Oh, very well.” John reached in his pocket. “Er—I seem to have lost my wallet somewhere…”
“Back to your old form,” I said, scribbling my name and room number on the check.
I knocked on Schmidt’s door. The mumbled grunt was the reply I had expected. The door wasn’t locked, so I opened it and walked in.
Schmidt was napping, all right, hands folded on his stomach, mustache vibrating with the intensity of his snores. I didn’t see Dieter until I was well inside the room. He had been behind the door.
John put his hands in his pockets and let his shoulders sag. “Stupid,” he said critically. “I should have anticipated this.”
“Neither of us is at our best this morning,” I agreed. “I wonder where he got the gun?”
“It isn’t his,” John said. “Unless he was carrying it on him the whole time. I searched his luggage—”
The barrel of the gun slashed across the side of his face and sent him reeling back against the closed door.
“Lie down!” Dieter shouted, his face suffused. “On the floor schnell, or I will knock you down.”
John spread the fingers of the hand he had clapped to his face and peered at Dieter. “Don’t you want to boast about your cleverness before you shoot me?” he asked in wavering but encouraging tones.
“You talk about me as if I were a child,” Dieter cried. “You taunt me—you dare make fun of me! I will kill you, I will kill all of you—”
“He might at that,” I said, before John could come back with another of those cute, provocative, dangerous little quips. “Dieter, calm down. You’ve won. You are the winner, número uno, top dog, and top cheese of all time—”
“‘…the bravest by far in the ranks of the Shah,’” murmured a faint voice from behind the bloody hand.
“It would serve you right if he did shoot you,” I snarled. “Dieter, what have you done to Schmidt?”
Dieter relaxed visibly. “A few sleeping pills. It is easy to drug that fat gourmand; he will eat anything and he eats constantly.” He added in self-congratulatory tones, “It is his gun. He took it from the drawer when he felt himself succumbing to the Valium, but he was so sleepy I think he would have shot himself in the stomach if I had not taken it from him.”
I felt my throat closing up. Poor brave little Schmidt. Damn the courageous old galoot anyway. The fact that he hadn’t tried to steal the Colt back should have warned me that he had another gun.
“I was going to take him as a hostage.” Dieter gave Schmidt’s rotund and recumbent form a resentful look. “But he is too heavy to carry. So I decided to wait here for you. I knew you would come sooner or later.”
“It’s later,” I said, as John continued to watch Dieter through his first and second fingers. “We’ve already been to the police. They’ll be looking for you.”
“Not soon,” Dieter said coolly. “It is Weihnacht, and the storm has made for some confusion. But you will come with me, Vicky, and then if anyone tries