“Not very nice weather, is it?” he remarked to the aloofly efficient bartender.
“No, sir,” said the bartender pleasantly, but with the same aloof sufficiency, and left it at that.
It was evident that he either had been schooled against fraternizing with the customers or had no basic urge to do so beyond the fullest requirements of civility, and Simon felt no need to make a Herculean labor of changing that pattern of life. He pulled the Introduction to Hamburg from his pocket and began to read it.
It was much the same as any other guide-book of its type, except that it was free from any of the fractured English commonly found in such publications, which usually seem to have been prepared by some ambitious local school-teacher too jealous of his infallibility to submit to revision by a native-born Englishman or American. A note on the title-page said, “Translated by Franz Kolben,” but Mr. Kolben’s style sounded more like Milwaukee than Heidelberg. Otherwise its thirty-two pages contained the usual descriptions of churches, museums, and monuments, listings of restaurants and cabarets, and a brief history of the town from the settlement established by Charlemagne in 811 AD.
Simon Templar was not much of an aficionado of pure historical history, as you might call it, but here there was one paragraph which caught his eye as inevitably as a white nylon jig hooks a mackereclass="underline"
Pirates controlled the Elbe until 1402, when Klaus Störtebeker, the greatest, of them, was captured and beheaded on the Grasbrook. What happened to the treasure he extorted in gold and silver and jewes is still a mystery. He is said to have hidden a map of its whereabouts in the base of a pewter goblet on which he carved his initials suspended from a gallows, but it has never been found.
The Saint sighed invisibly. Perhaps it was an encouraging symptom of inexhaustible youth that he could still feel a quickening of the pulse at such a romantic image. Yet there was a somber index of maturity in the fact that he was content to pigeonhole it as an amusing legend, instead of being inspired to set out on the trail of the clue.
Nevertheless, Franz Kolben, who had created the myth entirely out of his own head, would have felt highly complimented by the tribute to his invention.
Simon read through to the end of the brochure without finding anything else of comparable interest. In the meantime a young woman had come in and sat down at the other end of the short counter. He had glanced up automatically, and noted with pleasure that she was blonde and shapely of both face and figure: it would have been easier to label her “a girl,” but she had the confidence of the mid-twenties and her outfitting had been assembled with well-seasoned sophistication. He was too old a hand to stare any longer, but had heard her order a champagne cocktail in English that had an American intonation but still seemed to have a slight Germanic accent. He had philosophically refrained from speculating any further. No doubt she would soon be joined and abducted by some upper-echelon American salesman on the European circuit, or some equally crass Rhineland industrialist — or something similarly cut, dried, and pre-emptive. He was a long time past building daydreams on her obvious foundations.
But now, as he put the pamphlet back in his pocket and gave her another studiously casual glance, he found her looking directly at him with a candor which disclaimed all such prior commitments.
“Would you help me?” she said.
He smiled with just the right degree of diffidence — not eagerly enough to look like a bumpkin, but not so distantly as to be discouraging.
“Tell me how.”
“Are you on your own here? I mean, do you have a wife with you, or anything?”
“Not even anything.”
“I only ask,” she explained, “because I don’t want to give you a problem because of mine.”
He was a trifle puzzled.
“You mean you have a husband — or something?”
“Oh, no. If I had, I wouldn’t have to do this. I have a problem because I want someone to go out with for the evening, and I don’t know anyone here. I don’t want you to take me out and pay for everything, because that would give you the wrong idea. But I can’t offer to pay, because that would insult you. Would it be all right if we went Dutch?”
If that was the local line, it at least had an element of novelty. Now that it was permissible to scrutinize her more thoroughly, however, he was able to observe that her dress was smartly but soberly tailored, and she wore none of the usual coloration of a professional lady of the evening. Perhaps that also was a local custom — but what could he lose by going along with it a little farther?
“Let me buy a drink, anyhow,” he said, “and we could sit down and talk it over.”
Until then they had been the only two customers, but now a trio of Italian salesmen had come in and were piling on to the intervening barstools, noisily debating their designs upon the Common Market. The Saint’s new acquaintance moved quietly to a table in a corner, where he joined her. The disinterested bartender brought the drinks, and Simon listened to her.
“I know this must all sound a little crazy, but I’m a tourist too, and I’ve heard that there’s a street here which is much wilder than Montmartre, and I wanted to see it, but I can’t go there alone.”
“Hardly, from what I’ve been reading,” he agreed. “And you want someone to chaperone you on a sightseeing tour of the dens of iniquity.”
“Could you stand it? I’m curious, that’s all, and a woman is so handicapped in some ways, if she is a little respectable.”
“I shall treasure the implied compliment,” he murmured. “And I’d be delighted to see the sights with you. I must admit that I’m curious too, even if I’m not as respectable as I look.”
With his rakehell profile and impudent blue eyes, this was a statement of highly questionable validity, but she refrained from taking issue with it. Although her pink and white and flaxen allure was happily not built upon operatic proportions, she seemed to have a certain Wagnerian solemnity which was a piquant contrast to what she was proposing.
“And you are free tonight?” she asked. “Or would you prefer another time?”
“Tonight. If we put it off, you might lose your curiosity — or your nerve.” His gaze continued to analyze her shrewdly but not antagonistically. “But if you won’t mind my asking, what kind of tourist are you? You speak English perfectly, but you still have just a little accent, and a way of putting things—!”
“Of course. I’m half German. I was born in Munich. My mother was an American, but when the last war came she stayed here with my father. But she would talk only English to me, so I never forgot it. Sometimes when I come in a place like this I forget which language I should be talking.”
“But you said you were a tourist here.”
“You make me feel so foolish — like someone from Chicago who must admit she’s in New York for the first time. But in Europe everyone hasn’t always been everywhere.”
“Nor has everyone in America,” said the Saint consolingly. “In fact, there are several people in New York who’ve never been to Brooklyn.”
“I’d like to go to New York. And Brooklyn, too — I think I’d feel much more at home there than in Hamburg, with all I’ve heard about them and seen in American movies.”
“Do you still live in Munich?”
“Yes. I work there, for a shipping company. So I’m answering letters from America all the time.” It seemed to remind her of a formality that had so far been omitted from their informal acquaintance. “My name is Eva.”