Trojan Gold - Elizabeth Peters [67]
That was when I knew Schmidt was drunk—really bombed out, stinking drunk, not just mildly inebriated. He never challenges people to duels when he’s just mildly inebriated. At my urging, Tony apologized; we sat down; Schmidt stopped rocking and relaxed. A look of mild perplexity replaced his indignant frown, and he muttered, “Now what was it I had to tell you? So much has happened, but Sir John must know—”
“How long have you been waiting?” I asked, trying to get his mind off the engrossing subject of Sir John.
“Hours,” Schmidt grumbled. “Hours and hours and…No one knew where you had gone. Since I did not know where you had gone, I could not follow.”
“True, O Schmidt,” I said.
“I had a little to drink and to eat,” Schmidt said, like a suspect under police interrogation trying to remember the activities of a long-past day. “I talked to the pleasant lady at the desk—she is the housekeeper, you know…. But she intends to resign as soon as Frau Hoffman can find a replacement. I fear the poor young lady is not popular with the employees. It was expected that the hotel would be taken over by the nephew of the first Frau Hoffman, since it has belonged to her family for two hundred years. There is much resentment, I believe, since the second Frau Hoffman—”
“Schmidt,” I said. “What are you talking about?”
Schmidt blinked. “About the nephew—or perhaps it is the grandnephew—”
“Why are you talking about him?”
“Now that,” said Schmidt, “is a pertinent question. Why am I talking about him? I do not know. I should not be talking about him. There is a matter of greater importance—of consuming importance—of an importance demanding immediate action…. Ach, ja, now I remember! Come, come quickly, I will show you. He is there—I saw him go in. He has not come out. I staked myself here to watch.”
He surged to his feet, accompanied by the chair. Tony plucked it off his posterior and put it down. Schmidt ignored this with the lofty unconcern of a man who has more important matters on his mind. “There,” he hissed. “He is there. I saw him go in. He has not come out.”
He pointed toward the door of the bar. “But, Schmidt,” I began. “There’s another door—”
“Who?” Tony asked blankly.
“I will show you.” Schmidt beamed. His face looked like the harvest moon hanging low over the hills of Minnesota. A pang of homesickness swept over me. Oh, to be in Minnesota now—away from intoxicated German professors and slippery English crooks and miscellaneous people trying to kill me….
We followed Schmidt to the bar. I fully expected that his suspect—some innocent householder who had beady eyes or a nose like Peter Lorre’s—had had his beer and gone home via the street door. I was wrong. “There,” said Schmidt, in the hissing shriek that is his idea of a whisper. “See—he is there!”
He was there, all right. There was no doubt as to whom Schmidt meant; his quivering forefinger and his intent stare pilloried a man sitting alone at a corner table.
He was worth looking at—tall and broad-shouldered, with a profile like that of a brooding eagle. A Wyatt Earp-type mustache framed a pensive, thoughtful mouth; brown hair curled over his ears and his high, intellectual brow.
“I’ve never seen him in my life,” Tony said blankly.
I said nothing.
“Ho,” shrieked Schmidt. “I told you I never forget a face. Only once have I met him. Only once, but I remember, and you, who have known him better, do not recall him. It is lucky for you I came here, nicht.”
“If you don’t get to the point, I am going to kill you, Schmidt,” I said.
“It is Perlmutter,” Schmidt said triumphantly. “The assistant curator from East Berlin.”
“You’re crazy,” Tony stuttered. “Perlmutter is a blond, this guy is brunet. Perlmutter doesn’t have a mustache, this guy—”
It was Perlmutter. The outlines of that splendid profile were burned