"We're not from the newspapers," Begg told him before the drinks arrived. "We're private detectives employed by Herr Hess. Anything you tell us we will use in the processes of justice."
The lumbering half-American seemed relieved to hear this. He loosened his big coat and made himself more comfortable. As he listened to the tunes of Strauss and Lehar, he relaxed. "This isn't for publication. I have your word on it?"
"Our word as English gentlemen," said Begg.
For a while "Putzi" chatted about the old days of the Nazi Party when there were only a few of them, when Hitler had been released from prison a hero, the author of Mein Kampf, which was published here in Munich by Max Amman. "We have a concession on pictures of the Nazi hierarchy and Amman publishes what they write. It's pretty much our only business. This scandal could wreck us." Since the party's success in elections, sales had climbed. Mein Kampf was now a best-seller and it was money from royalties, Hanfstaengl insisted, not from secret financiers, which was paying for the Mercedes and the place in Prinzregensburgstrasse. He seemed to be answering questions neither Begg nor Sinclair had asked. And when Sir Seaton threw the big query at him, he was rather surprised, glad that he did not have to hide something from the detective. It was dawning on him at last who Begg and Sinclair were.
"You really are the ace sleuths they say you are," he said. "I know those Sexton Blake things are heavily sensationalized, but it's surprising how like him you are. Do you remember The Affair of the Jade Skull?"
Blake was, of course, the name said to disguise the identity of Sir Seaton Begg in a long series of stories written for The Union Jack, The Sexton Blake Library, and other popular British publications known as tuppenny skinnies and four-penny fats.
"I'm surprised they're read at all beyond the London gutters," said Begg, who made a point of never reading the "bloods."
"Speaking of which-what about that material itself? I've seen some of it, of course. The stuff Hitler was being blackmailed with? Weren't you the middleman on that?"
Only Taffy Sinclair knew that his friend had just told a small, deliberate lie.
"What earthly need is there for you to know more? If you've seen how dreadful that stuff is-?" Hanfstaengl's brow cleared. "Oh, I get it. You have to eliminate suspects. You're looking for an alibi." He sipped his drink. "Well, I, too, dealt through a middleman. An SA sergeant who had got himself mixed up in something he didn't like. Called himself Braun, I think. Nobody ever proved it, but he pretty much confirmed who the blackmailer was and nobody was surprised. It was that crazy old Heironymite. Stempfle. I'm not sure how a member of an order of hermits, like Father Stempfle, can spend quite so much time drinking in the seedier Munich beer halls, but there you are. He has a certain following, of course. Writer and editor, I think. He worked for Amman once."
"The publisher?"
"Do you know him? Funny chap. Never really took to him. He's putting Hitler up at the moment. My view is that Amman could be cheating Hitler of his royalties. What if he's covering his tracks? Could Geli have found something out, do you think?"
"You mean she knew too much?"
"Well," said Hanfstaengl, glancing up at the big clock over the bar, "she wasn't exactly an innocent, was she? Those letters! Foul. But his pictures were worse. It was my own fault. I was curious. I wish I'd never looked." He let out a great sigh. "Party funds paid the black-mailer, you know. The stuff was impossibly disgusting. I said I'd burn it-but he-Alf-wanted it back."
The orchestra had begun to play a polka. The couple on the dance floor were having difficulty keeping time. Begg studied the musicians for any sign of cynicism but found none.
Hanfstaengl's tongue, never very tight at the best of times, it seemed, was becoming looser by the moment. "After that, things were never the same. Hitler changed. Everything turned a little sour. You want to ask crazy old Stempfle about it. I'm still convinced only he could have had the inside knowledge…"
"But where could I find this hermit?"
"Well, there's a chance he'll be at home in his cottage. It's out in the Munich woods there." He jabbed his hand toward the door. "Couple of miles or so. Do you have a map?"
Sinclair produced one and Hanfstaengl plotted their course for them. "I'd go with you myself, but I'm a bit vulnerable at the moment. I think someone's already had a potshot at me with a rifle. Be a bit careful, sport. There are lots of homeless people in the woods these days. They could spell danger for a stranger. Even some of our locals have been held up at gunpoint and robbed."
Begg shook hands with Hanfstaengl and said that he was much obliged. "One last question, Herr Hanfstaengl." He hesitated.
"Fire away," said "Putzi."
"Who do you think killed Geli Raubal?"
Hanfstaengl looked down.
"You have an idea, I know," said Begg.
Hanfstaengl turned back, offering Begg a cigarette from his case, which Begg refused. "Killed that poor little neurotic girl? Almost anyone but Hitler."
"But you have an idea, I know."
Hanfstaengl drained his glass. "Well, she was seeing this SS guy…"
"Name?"
"Never heard one, but I think they planned to go to Vienna together. Hitler knew all about it, of course. Or at least he guessed what he didn't know."
"And had her killed?"
Hanfstaengl snorted sardonically. "Oh, no. He doesn't have the guts." His face had turned a terrible greenish white.
"Who does-?" Begg asked, but Hanfstaengl was already heading from the room, begging his pardon, acting like a man whose food had disagreed with him.
"Poor fellow," murmured Begg, "I don't think he has a taste for the poison or the antidote…"
CHAPTER FIVE
An hour or so later, Taffy Sinclair was shining the hand-torch down onto their map, trying to work out what Hanfstaengl had shown them. All around them in the woods were the camps of people who had been ruined by Germany's recent economic troubles. While Munich herself seemed wealthy enough, the homeless had been pushed to the outlying suburbs and woodlands, to fend for themselves as best they could. The detectives saw fires burning and shadows flitting around them, but the forest people were too wary to reveal themselves and would not respond when Begg or Sinclair called out to them.
"I suppose it's fair enough that a follower of Saint Heironymous the Hermit makes himself hard to find," declared Sinclair, "but I think this place was less populated and with fewer caves when- aha!" His torchlight had fallen on the penciled mark. "Just up this road and stop. Should be a cottage here."
The car's brilliant headlamps made day of night, picking up the building ahead as if lit for the cinema, with great, elongated black shadows spreading away through the moonlit forest. An ancient, thatched, much-buttressed cottage was revealed. The place had two main chimneys, three downstairs windows and three up, including the dormer, which had its own chimney. The whole place leaned and declined in a dozen different directions, so that even the straw resembled a series of dirty, ill-fitting wigs.
"This has got to be it." Noting shadows moving in the nearby trees, Sir Seaton climbed from the car and walked across the weed-grown path to the old door of Gothic oak and black iron, hammering on it heavily and calling out in his most authoritative tone: "Open up! Metatemporal detectives! Come along, Father Stempfle, sir! Let us in."