He ordered a double Peter Dawson, and left her to continue.
“I hoped you would come back here,” she said. “I was so ashamed of myself after last night. It’s terrible what money will do to your thinking. Can you ever forgive me?”
“That depends,” he said calmly. “How much am I offered?”
“I found the house,” she said. “With the directions, it wasn’t so hard.”
He sat down.
“Where?”
“In St Pauli. I asked questions, and found out it was the oldest part of Hamburg. So I looked there, and I found it. But it was not for sale.”
“Very likely.”
“But I rang the doorbell. The man was most unpleasant. He said he was happy there, and he didn’t want to sell his house to anyone. Then I had a wonderful idea. I said I was from a movie company, and we would like to rent it for a little while, just for a few shots... Then he began to be a little interested.”
Simon’s drink came, and he raised the glass to her and sipped.
“And you made a deal?”
“Well, yes and no. He talked a lot about what a nuisance it would be for him to move out, and the personal things he’d have to pack up, and the damage that might be done, and his invalid mother who would be so upset at being moved, and why should he have so much inconvenience when he was not hard up for a few marks. But at last he said that we could rent it for two weeks for fifty thousand marks.”
Simon’s lips shaped a whistle.
“Twelve thousand five hundred dollars — that’s probably half what the house is worth.”
“At least a quarter. But he said it would be as much trouble for him as if he was renting it for two years, and he would not do it for anything less. And he said for a movie company it was a bargain, it would cost them twice as much to build a reproduction, and there was something wrong with them if they couldn’t spend such a small amount. I could see that nothing would change him. I know how stubborn a German can be.”
“And I know you’re a good bargainer,” he said. “So that’s what you’re going to have to pay?”
“I told him I would have to talk to the producer. I shall have to talk to somebody. I told you, I am only a girl who works in an office. Perhaps with all my savings I can find ten thousand marks. I don’t have rich friends. I was such a fool to think I could do this all by myself.”
He gazed at her thoughtfully.
“So you’d like to go back to our old deal, and go Dutch again?”
“If you could forgive me. And you have the best right to share the treasure.”
He shook his head callously.
“We still haven’t found any treasure. But if you want to start again now, with me putting up four marks to your one, we’re not fifty-fifty anymore. We’re eighty-twenty.”
Her eyes swam before she covered them.
“All right,” she said. “It’s my own fault. But I can’t come as close as this and give it all up. I accept.”
“And I hope it’s a lesson to you,” he said virtuously. “But before I put up this dough, I’d like to see the house and be sure you’ve found the right one. That is, if you think you can trust me now not to burgle it on my own.”
“I will show it to you whenever you like.”
“Why not now?” said the Saint. “Pay for the drinks, and let’s go.”
They went out and took a taxi. She gave the driver directions in which he heard “St Pauli Hafenstrasse”; the route seemed at first to be heading towards the Reeperbahn again, but turned down towards the river and the docks. When they stopped and got out, he could see the spire of a small church, but it was not at all individuaclass="underline" almost any church with a steeple would have had some resemblance to the one in the map-drawing.
“It is just along here, on the Pinnasberg,” Eva said. There was no question about the house when he saw it. Although it was wedged into a single facade by its neighbors on either side, instead of standing alone, the complicated woodwork and the steep gabled roof capped with the unique round tower were exactly as he recalled them from the crude sketch he had seen the night before, even before Eva produced the parchment and unrolled it for him again under a street lamp.
“It certainly seems to fit,” he admitted to her, and had to admit to himself a way-down temblor of excitement that was no longer such a frequent symptom to him as it had been in less hardened days.
“It does — even the distance and direction from the church, I measured them.”
“What does all the writing say?”
“The first part tells where the house is. It seems easy to you now, of course, but it was not easy for me the first time to know where he was talking about. In five hundred years, there are many changes... Then it tells what to look for inside the house. The treasure is in one of the cellars which lead towards the river, in a closed-up tunnel. He gives all the measurements and the marks to follow.”
Simon surveyed the edifice broodingly.
“I still say the rent is inflated,” he remarked. “It might be much cheaper to burgle the joint.”
“But then we would still have to dig. It would take more than just a few minutes, and suppose we were caught? The other way, we have plenty of time, two weeks, and nothing to worry about.”
“Except fifty thousand marks,” said the Saint. “Before we put our shirts on this, let’s be certain there isn’t any other way to swing it.”
Without waiting for her compliance, he crossed the street and mounted the steps and hammered on the door of the house they had been looking at. She caught up with him before it opened.
“What are you going to do?”
“See if we can’t make a better deal. Just introduce me as your boss the movie producer.”
It was Franz Kolben himself who opened the door, for that was where he lived, and he had made it a most profitable residence since he took over the management from his father-in-law, with the help of such intermittent interruptions. Although he had not expected a visit at precisely that moment, he was quick to put on the curmudgeonly expression which it called for.
“Excuse me for disturbing you at such an hour,” said the Saint, when Eva had made the necessary presentation, “but I must call Hollywood tonight and give them all the information.”
“Come in,” Kolben said grudgingly.
“You might be interested to know that the new star we’re introducing in this picture is a German.” Simon chattered on, once they were all inside the hallway and the street door was closed again. “I wonder if you’d recognize him.”
He took from his pocket the card with a silhouette on it which was not his own, and showed it. Kolben scarcely batted an eyelid — but to Simon Templar a much more infinitesimal flicker of reaction than that would have been enough. Without an instant’s hesitation, without even waiting for any verbal rejoinder, he brought his fist up under Kolben’s helpfully extended chin in the shortest and wickedest uppercut in the business.
“Have you gone mad?” Eva gasped, as Kolben descended to the floor with the precipitate docility which the standard cliché compares with being pole-axed.
“That’s what I’ll have to try to sell the jury, darling, if I’m wrong about this,” Simon answered, and as she suddenly flew at him he hit her reluctantly but accurately on the back of the neck with the minimum of essential force.
That gave him a few minutes with nothing to worry about except the chance that they might have other friends in the house, but as he sped swiftly and softly from room to room he found no one except, at last, trussed to an iron cot in an attic, the one man he had been seeking.
“Herr Roeding,” he said reproachfully, as he was removing the cords and adhesive tape, “it’s all right for you to poke around in antique shops and accept free guide-books, but a research chemist of your age shouldn’t escort young women to the hot spots of the Reeperbahn.”