ELIZABETH PETERS

 

The first book in the Vicky Bliss series

Copyright © 1973 by Elizabeth Peters

 

 

For Betty and George
who don’t believe
in ghosts either

 

 

 

 

Foreword

 

As all lovers of Rothenburg will realize, I have had the temerity to add Schloss Drachenstein to the genuine attractions of the town. Like all the characters in this book, the Counts and Countesses of Drachenstein are wholly fictitious and bear no resemblance to any persons living or dead. Equally fictitious, sad to say, is the legend of the Riemenschneider shrine. Apart from this single aberration, the sculptor’s life and works were as I have described them.

 

One

 

WHEN I WAS TEN YEARS OLD, I KNEW I WAS never going to get married. Not only was I six inches taller than any boy in the fifth grade—except Matthew Finch, who was five ten and weighed ninety-eight pounds—but my IQ was as formidable as my height. It was sixty points higher than that of any of the boys—except the aforesaid Matthew Finch. I topped him by only thirty points.

I know—this isn’t the right way to start a narrative, if I hope to command the sympathy of the reader. A narrator should at least try to sound modest. But believe me, I’m not bragging. The facts are as stated, and they are a handicap, not a cause for conceit. If there is anything worse than being a tall girl, it is being a tall smart girl.

For several years my decision didn’t give me much pain. I wasn’t thinking seriously of marriage in the fifth grade. Then I reached adolescence, and the trouble began. I kept growing up, but I grew in another dimension besides height. The results were appalling. I won’t quote my final proportions; they call to mind one of those revolting Bunnies in Playboy. I dieted strenuously, but that only made matters worse. I got thin in all the right places and I was still broad where, as the old classic says, a broad should be broad.

Mind you, I am still not bragging. I am not beautiful. I admire people who are slender and fine-boned and aesthetic-looking. The heroine of my adolescent daydreams had a heart-shaped face framed in clouds of smoky black hair. She was a tiny creature with an ivory complexion and a rosebud mouth. When she was enfolded in the hero’s brawny arms, her head only reached as high as his heart.

All my genes come from my father’s Scandinavian ancestors—big blond men with rosy cheeks and blazing blue eyes. They were about as aesthetic-looking as oxen. That’s what I felt like—a big, blond, blue-eyed cow.

The result of this was to make me painfully shy. I suppose that seems funny. Nobody expects a bouncing Brunhild to be self-conscious. But I was. The intelligent, sensitive, poetic boys were terrified of me; and the ones that weren’t terrified didn’t want to talk about poetry or Prescott. They didn’t want to talk at all. Rubbing my bruises, I became a confirmed misandrist. That attitude left me lots of time in which to study. I collected degrees the way some girls collect engagement rings. Then I got a job as a history instructor at a small Mid-western college which, in view of what is to follow, had better be nameless. It was there I met Tony. Tony teaches history too. He’s bright; very bright. He is also six feet five inches tall, and, except for his height, he rather resembles Keats in the later stages of consumption.

I met Tony on the occasion of the first departmental faculty meeting. I was late. Being late was a mistake; I hate walking the gauntlet of all those male eyes. There was one other woman present. She looked the way I wanted to look—thin, dark, and intellectual. I smiled hopefully at her and received a fishy stare in return. Most women take an instant dislike to me. I can’t say I don’t know why.

I spotted Tony amid the crowd because of his height. There were other things worth noticing—big brown eyes, broad shoulders, and black hair that flopped over his forehead and curled around his ears. His face was fine-boned and aesthetic-looking. At that moment, however, it had the same expression that was on all the other male faces, except that of Dr. Bronson, the head of the department. He had interviewed me and had hired me in spite of my measurements. I’m not kidding; it is a common delusion, unshaken by résumés and grades, that a woman with my proportions cannot have anything in her head but air.

I sat down with an awkward thump in the nearest chair, and several men gulped audibly. Dear old Dr. Bronson smiled his weary smile, brushed his silvery hair back from his intellectual forehead, and started the meeting.

It was the usual sort of meeting, with discussions of schedules and committees and so on. After it was over I headed for the door. Tony was there ahead of me.

I don’t remember how he got me out of the building and into the Campus Coffee Shoppe, but I have never denied he is a fairly smooth talker. I remember some of our conversation. I hadn’t encountered a technique quite like his before.

The first thing he said was,

“Will you marry me?”

“No,” I said. “Are you crazy?”

“Haven’t you ever heard of love at first sight?”

“I’ve heard of it. I don’t believe in it. And if I did, love and marriage don’t necessarily go together. Au contraire.”

“So beautiful and so cynical,” said Tony sadly. “Doesn’t my honorable proposal restore your faith in my sex?”

“It merely reinforces my impression that you are crazy.”

“Look at it this way.” Tony put his elbows on the table. The table wasn’t very clean, but neither were Tony’s elbows; I deduced that this pose was characteristic. “All my life I’ve been looking for my ideal woman. I’m pushing thirty, you know; I’ve had time to think about it. Beauty, brains, and a sense of humor, that’s what I want. Now I know you’re intelligent or old Bronson wouldn’t have hired you. He’s above the sins of the flesh, or thinks he is. You are obviously beautiful. Your sense of humor—”

“Ha,” I said. “You deduced that from the twinkle in my eye, I suppose.”

Tony cocked his head and considered me seriously. A lock of black hair fell over his left eyebrow.

“Is that a twinkle? It looks more like a cold, steely glint. No, I’m willing to take the sense of humor on trust.”

“You’d be making a mistake. I am not amused. And even if I were amused, I wouldn’t marry you. I’m not going to marry anyone. Ever.”

“If you prefer that arrangement,” said Tony, with a shrug.

So it went, for most of the winter. The demoralizing thing about Tony was that he wasn’t kidding. He really did want to get married. That didn’t surprise me; any man with a grain of sense knows that marriage is the only way, these days, to acquire a full-time maid who works twenty-five hours a day, with no time off and no pay except room and board.

Naturally Tony wouldn’t admit to these motives. He kept babbling about love. He couldn’t help it. His background was hopelessly conventional. He came from a big jolly family out in the Bible Belt, with a fat jolly mother and a tall, thin jolly father—he showed me their pictures, which he kept on his desk. That shows you what he was like. He was crazy about his parents. He even liked his brothers and sisters, of whom there seemed to be an indeterminate number. He had a half-ashamed and inarticulate desire for children of his own. Oh, his ostensible motives were admirable—and his attractions were considerable. To say we were physically compatible is to put it mildly, but that wasn’t all; we had a hundred interests in common, from European history to basketball. (He had been the star of his high school team, and so had I.) He shared my passion for medieval sculpture, and he was crazy about old Marx Brothers movies. I couldn’t imagine finding anyone I liked better. But I didn’t weaken.

“Why not?” Tony demanded one day. It was a day in January or the beginning of February, and he was getting exasperated. “Damn it, why not? Are you down on marriage just because it’s out of fashion? I didn’t think you were so conventional!”

“That has nothing to do with it. I’m not against marriage per se. I’m against it for me. I’m not going to get married. Why the hell do I have to repeat it every other day? I think I’ll make a tape.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“What, the tape? It would save the wear and tear on my vocal cords. Now listen, Tony—” I put my elbows on the table, and then removed them; I was certainly not going to imitate his vulgar habits. “Your attitude is a perfect illustration of the reason why I don’t intend to marry. I state a point of view, and you attack it. You don’t listen, you don’t try to understand, you just say—”

Tony said it.

“Obscenities will get you nowhere,” I said. “My feelings are a fact, not a personal delusion. They are valid for me. What business have you got trying to tell me how I ought to feel? You think you want an intellectual wife, who can discuss your work with you. But it wouldn’t last. After awhile you’d start expecting apple pie instead of articles, and then you’d want me to quit work, and if I got promoted and you didn’t, you would sulk, and then if we had a baby you wouldn’t get up in the middle of the night and change its dirty diapers—”

I stopped, not because I had finished my monologue, but because Tony wasn’t listening. His elbows were on the table, his face was hidden in his hands, and he was laughing so hard that the table shook.

Since he wasn’t looking, I permitted myself a sour smile. So maybe it did sound funny. But the basic premise was sound. I knocked one of Tony’s elbows out from under him so that his chin splashed into his coffee cup, and that ended that discussion.

But it wasn’t the end of the argument. I could tell by the speculative gleam in Tony’s eye that for the first time he was really thinking about the problem. It was amusing to watch him ponder my hang-up, as he called it, as methodically as he would consider an abstract academic question. At least it was amusing until he came out with his conclusions.

We were at Tony’s apartment. He had built a fire in the fireplace and had carefully seated himself in a chair across from the couch where I was sitting. He hadn’t touched me all evening, which was enough of a change to make me wary. He sat there for a long time staring at me, and finally he said,

“I’ve figured it out.”

“Oh, have you?”

“Yes. What you need is to be dominated.”

“Is that right,” I said.

“That tough exterior is a defense,” Tony explained. “Underneath, you are looking for a stronger shoulder to lean on. But since you are a superior female, you need to be convinced that the male is even more superior.”

“All right,” I said, between my teeth. “You may be stronger than I am, you ape, but just try those gorilla tactics on me and you’ll get something you—”

“No, no, I’m not talking about anything as crude as physical domination. I intend to convince you of my intellectual superiority.”

“Ha, ha,” I said.

“You doubt that I am your intellectual superior,” Tony said calmly. “Of course you do. That’s your trouble.”

I bit back the yell of outrage that was right on the tip of my tongue. He wanted me to lose my temper; that would prove my emotional immaturity.

I leaned back on the couch, crossed my legs, and took a deep breath. Tony’s eyes glazed, but he didn’t move.

“And how,” I inquired, practicing deep breathing, “do you propose to convince me?”

Tony was a funny color. With some effort he dragged his eyes away from my torso and stared at the fire.

“I haven’t figured that out yet,” he admitted. “But I will.”

“Let me know when you do.” I fell back onto the couch, hands clasped behind my head. I kicked off one of my shoes. “Did I tell you I expect to have two articles published by the end of the year? How are you coming with the one you started last fall?”

That was too much. Tony growled and lunged. I was ready for him; I slid out from underneath and stood looking fondly down on him as he sprawled awkwardly across the couch.

“Since you are going to dominate me mentally, there’s no point in this sort of thing,” I said, slipping my foot back into my shoe. “Call me when you’re ready to start dominating.”

He was ready sooner than I expected.

It was one of those awful March days in the Midwest, when ice and snow and sleet seem doubly outrageous because they follow a few days of mild weather. Slogging along through the slush, I was not in my best mood, even though the evening ahead looked interesting. Tony was about to share one of his finds with me—a man, not a theory of history. Jacob Myers was one of the big wheels in our little town. Actually, he was the only wheel of any size. One of his ancestors had donated the land on which the university was built; the family automobile plant was the leading industry. The public library, the main street, and the park were all named after members of the clan. Having too much money (if that is possible) and a weakness for culture, Myers dispensed fellowships and research grants with a lavish hand. Oddly enough, one of the few faculty members who hadn’t profited from this generosity was Tony, though his father and Myers were lodge brothers, or something. I happened to know—though not from Tony—that he had even paid back the money Myers had loaned him to finish graduate school. Myers hadn’t liked that. My informant declared the old man used to light his cigars with Tony’s checks until Tony threatened to leave the town and the university.

I never said Tony lacked good qualities.

Anyhow, this was the night on which I was destined to meet the great man. And if he was inclined to throw any research money my way, I was fully prepared to accept it.

Tony should have picked me up that night, but that was one of his weapons in our not-so-unarmed cold war: no concessions to femininity, not even common politeness. If I wanted to be liberated, Tony’s manner implied, I could damned well be good and liberated. I had no intention of engaging in a vulgar debate on the subject; if he couldn’t see for himself that basic courtesy has nothing to do with sexual competition, I was not the girl to point it out. I would have picked him up if I had owned a car, on such a stinking wet, dreary night.

With my thoughts running along those lines and my face covered with a thin sheet of ice, I cannot be blamed for greeting him with a snarl instead of a smile. He was as rosy and warm as a nice baby when he opened his door; behind him a cheerful fire crackled on the hearth, and the half-empty bottle on the coffee table indicated that he had been lightening his heavy labors with bourbon. That was his ostensible excuse for not picking me up; he had a dozen books to read and review for the next issue of the university history journal.

He gave me a beaming smile and let me take off my own coat. I threw it, soggy wet as it was, onto the couch. That was wasted effort; I should have thrown it at his notes. He was as neat as a cat about his academic work, and a complete slob otherwise. He pushed the coat off onto the floor and sat calmly down in the damp patch it had left. He started typing.

“I’ve got two more books to do after this one,” he said, pecking away. “Take a load off.”

I poured a drink since he hadn’t offered me one, and sat down on the floor near the fire. Books were scattered all over the place, where he had presumably flung them after looking them over.

The fire and the bourbon gradually restored my equanimity, and I felt a faint stir of affectionate amusement as I watched poor, unsubtle Tony pecking away at his antique typewriter. He typed with four fingers—two on each hand—and the effort made his tongue stick out between his teeth. His hair was standing on end, there was a black smudge across one cheek, and beads of perspiration bedewed his upper lip. He looked about eighteen, and damned attractive; if I had had the slightest maternal instinct, I’d have gone all soft and marshmallowy inside. I seem, however, to be totally lacking in maternal instincts. It’s one of the reasons why I fight marriage. I watched Tony sweat with the kindliest feelings, and with certain hormonal stirrings, but I didn’t have the slightest urge to rush over and offer to do his typing for him. I type sixty words a minute. Tony knows that.

“We’re supposed to be there in half an hour,” I said.

“If you’ll keep quiet, we’ll make it easily.”

“You plan to read two books and type out a review of each in twenty-five minutes?”

“Read?” Tony stopped typing long enough to give me a look of honest indignation. “Nobody reads these things. Don’t be silly.”

He started typing again.

I picked up the nearest book and glanced at it.

“I see what you mean,” I admitted.

All the books were inches thick; I don’t know why scholars judge accomplishment by weight instead of content. This one was the heaviest of the lot, and its title, in German, was also ponderous.

“The Peasants’ Revolt: A Discussion of the Events of 1525 in Franconia, and the Effects of the Reformation,” I translated. “Is it any good?”

“How would I know? I haven’t seen that one yet.”

Tony went on typing. Casually I began leafing through the book. Scholarly prose is generally poor, and scholarly German prose is worse. But the author had gotten hold of some new material—contemporary letters and diaries. Also, the subject interested me.

In recent years, students have done a lot of complaining about “relevance.” No one can quarrel with the basic idea: that education should have something to do with real life and its problems. The trouble comes when you try to define the word. What is relevant? Not history, according to the more radical critics. Who cares what happened in ancient Babylon or medieval England? It’s now that counts.

They couldn’t be more wrong. Everything has happened before—not once, but over and over again. We may not be able to solve our problems through what are pompously called “the lessons of history,” but at least we should be able to recognize the issues and perhaps avoid some of the solutions that have failed in the past. And we can take heart in our own dilemma by realizing that other people in other times have survived worse.

Social upheaval and revolution are old issues, as old as society itself. The Peasants’ Revolt, in the southern and western provinces of Germany, is not one of the better-known revolutions, but it has some interesting parallels with our own times. The peasants are always revolting, says the old joke. It’s a sick old joke. The peasants had plenty to revolt about. There had been many rebellions, by groups driven to desperation by conditions that make modern slums look like Shangri-La, but in the sixteenth century social discontent and misery found a focus. The focus was a real rebel—a renegade monk who called the Pope bad names and loudly proclaimed the abuses of the Establishment. He even married an ex-nun, whom his bad example had seduced from her vows. His name was Martin Luther.

Although his teachings gave the malcontents a mystique, Luther was against violence. “No insurrection is ever right, whatever the cause.” And, in the crude style which was typical of the man at times, “A rebel is not worth answering with arguments, for he does not accept them. The answer for such mouths is a fist that brings blood to the nose.”

The autocratic princes of the rebellious provinces agreed with both comments. Many of them approved of Luther’s attacks on the Church, since that institution restrained their local powers, but they definitely did not like complaints from their ungrateful subjects. They applied the fist to the nose. The Peasants’ Revolt was savagely suppressed by the nobles and the high clergy, many of whom were temporal princes as well as bishops of the church.

Today the province of Franconia is one of the loveliest parts of Germany. Beautiful old towns preserve their medieval walls, their Renaissance houses and Gothic churches. It’s hard to imagine these quaint old streets as scenes of violence, and yet this region was the center of the rebellion; blood literally flowed like water down the paved gutters. The city of Würzburg, with its lordly fortress looming over the town, was the seat of a prince-bishop whose subjects rose up and besieged him in his own castle. Another center of revolt was Rothenburg, now the most famous of the medieval cities of Germany.

I visited Rothenburg on a summer tour one year and promptly fell in love with it. Among its numerous attractions is a castle—Schloss Drachenstein, the home of the Counts von und zu Drachenstein. Although I admit to a sneaking weakness for such outmoded relics of romanticism, I was not collecting castles that summer. It was one of those coincidences, which Tony and other romantics like to think of as Fate, that Tony had spent a summer doing the same thing I did. We were both in search of Tilman Riemenschneider.

A sculptor and woodcarver, Riemenschneider was probably Germany’s greatest master of the late Gothic. The tomb sculptures and altarpieces he created are concentrated in the area around his home town of Würzburg, where for many years he served as a councilor. At the time of the Peasants’ Revolt he was an elderly man, prosperous and honored—a good, respectable member of the Establishment. It wouldn’t have been surprising if he had supported the Church which had commissioned many of his works, and shaken his graying locks over the depravity of the rebels. Instead, he joined his fellow councilors in support of the peasants’ cause. When the rebellion was suppressed, he ended up in the bishop’s dungeon; and although he came out of it alive and lived for six more years, he never again worked with his hands. The altar at Maid-bronn, finished in 1525, was his last work.

Yet there were tantalizing references to another work by Riemenschneider, which had vanished during the turmoil of the revolt. A reliquary, or shrine, it incorporated three great jewels that had been “liberated” from the Saracens by a Count of Drachenstein. According to an old chronicle, the shrine had been commissioned by a descendant of this nobleman in the early fifteen hundreds.

Art historians derided this tradition. No trace of the reliquary had ever been found, and there was no mention of it except in the monkish chronicle—a species of literature which is not noted for factual accuracy. I never gave the story a second thought—until that winter afternoon when I found myself translating the letter of a Count of Drachenstein, written at a time when Riemenschneider was a prisoner in the dungeons of the Bishop of Würzburg.

 

I must tell you, my beloved wife, that the old man remains obdurate. I saw him today, in the prison of the Katzenwickers, where he has lain since the fourth day of July, daily subjected to the question. It would be thought that the fear of outraged God, whom he has so greatly offended, would soften his guilty heart. Yet he refuses to tell me where he has hidden it. This, though it was commissioned by my late noble father, whom God hold in his keeping. It is true that my father promised him payment, as well as the return of the bond he gave for the gems, but there can be no payment now, since the wretch is traitor and rebel. I return to the prison tomorrow, with better hopes. The Lord God will support the right, as He supported me in the battle.

 

I sat there with the fire warm on my back, holding the book with fingers that had gone a little numb. The room faded from my sight, and the uneven patter of Tony’s typewriter went unheard. I was seeing another century and hearing other voices.

The old man.

Riemenschneider was born in 1455. He would be seventy years old in 1525. He had been imprisoned, and tortured—“put to the question,” as the pretty euphemism of the day had it.

I glanced at Tony, who was still hunched over his typing. Without looking up he threw down the book he had finished, and groped for another. I slid the remaining volume into his hand. He muttered an absent word of thanks and went on working; and I returned to The Peasants’ Revolt.

There were two more letters from Count Burckhardt of Drachenstein. He had been one of the knights called up by the Bishop of Würzburg when that worthy’s subjects got out of hand. Not all the knights fought against the peasants. Götz von Berlichingen, the romantic robber knight known as Götz of the Iron Hand, had led a group of rebels from Oden-wald. True, he maintained later that he had been forced into this action, and an imperial court acquitted him of treason. One is justified in being cynical about both the avowal and the acquittal.

For Burckhardt von und zu Drachenstein, radical chic had no appeal. He marched out to defend the status quo and the Church. His description of the siege, where he had wielded his battle-ax with bloody effect, made me wince, not so much because of the descriptions of lopped-off heads and split carcasses as because of the tone in which they were couched. He counted bodies the way kids count the stamps in their collections.

The clincher came in the third letter.

 

Today, my beloved wife, the old man finally broke under the question. I have the thing itself now in my hands. I will make plans to send it home, but this will not be easy, since the countryside is still unsafe. The old man cursed me as I left. I care nothing for that. God will protect his true knight.

 

The glittering vision that had taken shape in my imagination faded, to be replaced by another picture, equally vivid and far less appealing. My imagination is excellent, and it had plenty of information to work with; in my naïve youth I had visited several torture museums, before it occurred to me that my subsequent nightmares might have some connection with the grisly exhibits. You don’t forget things like that—ugly things like thumbscrews and the rack, the iron boot that crushed flesh and bone, the black metal shape of the Maiden, with her sickly archaic smile. I could see the old man in my mind’s eye too. There is a self-portrait of Riemenschneider on the altarpiece he did for the church at Creglingen. His face is jowly and a little plump in that carving. It wouldn’t have been plump after a few weeks in the bishop’s prison. It would have been emaciated and smeared with filth, like his aging body—marred by festering rat-bites and the marks of pincer, awl, and fire. Oh, yes, I could see the whole thing only too clearly, and I could see Burckhardt standing by, cheering the torturers on. One of the great creative artists of his century, gloated over by a lout whose skull was as thick as his armor—who couldn’t even write his own name.

I worked myself into such a state of rage and horror that I made a fatal mistake. I didn’t feel Tony’s breath on the back of my neck until he let it out in a windy gasp.

Clutching the book to my bosom, I turned my head. My forehead hit Tony on the nose. A blow on that appendage hurts; it maddens the victim. Holding his nose with one hand, Tony grabbed with the other. Instinctively I resisted. An undignified struggle ensued. I gave up the book, finally, rather than see it damaged. Tony was mad enough to tear the pages apart.

He was panting when he sat back, clutching his prize and eyeing me warily.

“Don’t worry,” I said coldly. “You’re safe from me.”

“Thanks. You female Benedict Arnold, were you going to keep this a secret?”

“Keep what a secret?”

“Don’t be cute, it doesn’t suit you. I was reading over your shoulder for some time, Vicky. And I know my Riemenschneider as well as you do.”

I maintained a haughty silence while he read the letters again. When he looked up from the book, his eyes were shining.

“Hey,” he said, grinning like a boy idiot. “Hey. Do you realize—”

“I realize that we are late. That we are going to be even later. If you want to offend Mr. Myers—”

“All right,” Tony said. “All right!”

He got to his feet—always a fascinating process to watch, because of the length of his arms and legs—and glowered down at me.

“All right,” he repeated monotonously. “If that’s how you’re going to be, then that’s how—uh—you’re going to be. Let’s go.”

He was still carrying the book when he stormed out the door.

I turned off the lights and made sure the door was locked. I put on my coat. I had seen Tony’s overcoat slung over a chair, and I left it there. They say righteous indignation is very warming, and I am nobody’s keeper. By the time I got downstairs, I decided I’d better calm Tony. He is the world’s most maniacal driver even when he’s in a good mood, and the combination of icy streets and Tony’s rage could be fatal—to me.

He was in the car, waiting, when I reached the street. That was a relief; I half expected him to drive off and leave me. As I got in I said meekly.

“Okay, Tony, I apologize. Of course I wasn’t going to hold out on you. You startled me, that’s all.”

“Oh, sure,” said Tony. But he was mollified; we started off with only a little skid, turning halfway around. Tony straightened the car out and we proceeded at a moderate fifty.

“I know you’re thinking what I’m thinking,” I went on. “But I also think we’re both going off half-cocked. It’s pretty vague, isn’t it?”

“Oh, sure,” said Tony.

He’s about as sly as Christopher Robin. His tone and his prompt acquiescence told me all I needed to know about where Tony was going to spend the summer.

I took advantage of his silence to make a few plans of my own. The evidence was far from conclusive. Burckhardt had not been specific about details, which was not surprising; I didn’t suppose for a moment that he had penned the letter with his own mailed fist. He was probably semiliterate, like many of his noble contemporaries. No, the letter had been dictated to a secretary or public letter writer, and Burckhardt would naturally avoid names. But the given details fit the case. How many objects of value could there be, belonging to a Count of Drachenstein, that had been “commissioned” from an old man of Würzburg? The letter even mentioned a bond, or surety, given by the old man for jewels such as the legend described.

I winced as Tony narrowly avoided a scuttling pedestrain, and went on thinking. The author of the book had not been concerned with art history or offbeat legends. He had only quoted Burckhardt because, in other parts of the letters, the count had described the fighting. Unless someone knew the legend, he wouldn’t notice the vital details, thanks to Burckhardt’s caution. But I was reasonably certain that the letters did indeed refer to Riemenschneider’s lost masterpiece. Burckhardt mentioned sending “it” home. Even with a strong guard, the trip would be hazardous. It was quite possible that the caravan had been ambushed and the shrine seized and broken up for the sake of the jewels set in its carving. It was also possible…

I hadn’t made any plans for the summer. If Riemenschneider’s shrine still existed, anywhere on the face of the earth, there was one obvious place in which to look for it. And there was nothing to prevent me from looking.

I had reached that point in my meditations when we skidded into a gatepost, bounced off, and continued along a dark, tree-lined drive. We had arrived, only half an hour late.

 

 

I was prepared to dislike Jacob Myers on sight, the way we always hate people who have more money than we do. He was bald and fat. His stomach hung out over his cummerbund. He came up to my chin. He had the mouth of a shark and the eyes of a poet. I felt an immediate rapport—with the shark, as well as the poet.

Myers’ house was something of a surprise. I knew his reputation as an art patron and collector, but that didn’t mean he had good taste; rich people can afford to buy taste. In size and sheer opulence the house was what I had expected, but the overall impression was unorthodox. The most unexpected objects were juxtaposed and somehow they looked right together. They had only one thing in common. They were all beautiful, from the faded Persian rug on the dining-room floor to the little glazed blue pot on the table. I recognized the pot by its glaze; one of the girls in the college makes them as a hobby, and they sell, in local specialty shops, for about six bucks.

Jake—he told me to call him that—answered the door himself. There was a butler. Jake called him Al, and so did Tony. He looked like a heavyweight boxer and addressed me in tones reminiscent of Sir Laurence Olivier. I was staggering slightly as Jake led us into the living room, bawling out orders for cocktails as we went.

It would take a couple of chapters to describe that living room, so I won’t try. There were more Persian rugs—I hated to walk on them—and pictures that could have hung in the Uffizi. There was also a man. He rose from a chair by the hearth as we entered. I had plenty of time to study him as we marched from the door to the fireplace; the room was about sixty feet long.

He was a big man. The breadth of his shoulders and chest made Tony look like an adolescent. He had crisp auburn hair, cut shorter than is fashionable, and his features were more notable for strength than harmony. He radiated animal vitality, plus that indescribable air of—how do I describe it? Competence is the word that comes to mind. He looked like a man who could do anything, and do it well. But maybe I was reading things into his face. I knew him, even before Jake introduced us. He told me to call him George. Everybody was very matey that night—everybody but Tony. He hadn’t expected this guest, and didn’t bother concealing his lack of enthusiasm.

“Hi, Nolan,” he said. “Climbed any more mountains lately?”

“Not since Everest,” said George, his smile broadening.

As a put-down, it was pretty good. He had climbed Everest. He had also won the amateur tennis singles and sailed the Atlantic in a one-man canoe, or a raft, or some stupid thing. Sports Illustrated loved to feature his activities. Certain less naïve publications had described other aspects of his expeditions—the Sherpa who didn’t get back down Everest, the animals whose pelts and heads decorated Nolan’s walls in defiance of protective laws.

I wondered at first how such disparate personalities as George and Jake Myers had become acquainted. As the conversation proceeded, I realized that it was not business or social interests that made them friends, but a common passion. They were both art collectors, and the rivalry between them added to the appeal of beauty for its own sake. Jake was brutally frank about the rivalry. No sooner had we been served with drinks than he burst out in a childish explosion of spleen. George had beaten him out in acquiring a van der Weyden painting, and the loss rankled.

“How much did you bribe that dealer?” he inquired. “He promised it to me, you know. That was the dirtiest piece of crummy underhanded swindling—”

“Since you stole the Sienese triptych out from under my nose,” George interrupted. “This makes us even. Keep cool, Jake; I told you I’d let you have the van der Weyden.”

“At a neat profit to yourself.”

“Naturally.”

Looking back, I can see that what transpired that evening was as inevitable as a chemical formula. If you mix the right amounts of the right chemicals (chemistry was never my forte), you always get nitroglycerin. You don’t sometimes get Caesar salad and sometimes Chanel Number Five. Here we had two men, each massively arrogant in his own fashion, who enjoyed their rivalry with the blind passion of nasty little boys; a third man, who was viewed by the other two with varying degrees of good-natured contempt; and little me. Poor Tony had obviously taken a lot from George Nolan; I could tell by the way they looked at each other, and by the barbed comments. Now I am not being a female chauvinist when I maintain that some men get awfully silly in the presence of a woman. They start showing off. Roosters and little boys fight; human males try to put the other guy down in more subtle ways.

George started moving in on me. He did it very well, but I knew his heart wasn’t in it; he was only trying to aggravate Tony. Jake saw what was going on, and sat back to watch. He liked Tony and he didn’t much care for George; but he loved dissension.

I never said he was a nice guy.

I don’t know when I saw the gleam in Tony’s eye and realized what he was going to do. It must have been before dinner, because apprehension ruined the meal for me. I was so annoyed with all three men that I munched my way grimly through a magnificent spread, wishing I could get my teeth into somebody’s hand. I couldn’t figure out any way of stopping Tony, short of falling on the floor in a fit, and that seemed a trifle drastic. George kept needling Tony; there were frequent references to ivory towers and effete scholars and muscles that had grown flabby from too much study. Yet in a way, what happened was my fault. If Tony and I hadn’t been feuding…

Sure enough, with the dessert, the inevitable name was introduced, by Tony, with all the subtlety of a bulldozer.

“Speaking of sculpture”—which nobody was—“how much would you give for a Riemenschneider?”

George had the face of an actor or a con man, beautifully schooled; but I saw him blink before he readjusted his mask. Then I knew. The guy was a fake. He’d never heard of Riemenschneider, and I felt sure his passion for art was not genuine. For him it was a device to outdo lesser men. As a kid he had probably collected rocks or bottles with the same single-minded fury, chiseling and outbidding other kids in order to get the biggest collection in town.

I would have tripped him up, then and there—and I had thought of a couple of ways in which to do it—but Jake outmaneuvered me.

“Riemenschneider,” he rumbled, in his bass bullfrog voice. “Yes—the German woodcarver. Saint Stephen in the Cleveland Museum. God that’s a masterpiece. That’s really great. Yeah, yeah; there was a theft, couple years ago. The Madonna from Volkach. German government ransomed it.”

“Not the government; the editor of Der Stern.”

“Shut up,” Myers said, glaring at Tony. “Twenty-five thousand ransom. That’s a lot of money. Yeah, sure, I remember the case. Nothing wrong with my memory. You just stop interrupting me, Tony.”

George, for one, had no intention of interrupting. He sat tapping his fingers gently on the table, a faint, knowing smile on his face. But the smile didn’t fool me. I couldn’t expose his ignorance now; foxy Grandpa had already told him what he needed to know. Myers really did have a fabulous memory. His enthusiasm was genuine, even if it was amplified by the old acquisitive instinct.

“Tony,” I said gently, “do you think you ought—”

Jake leaned forward, elbows planted squarely on the table, and squinted at me.

“So you’re in on this.” His voice was unexpectedly genial. It made a chill run up my spine. “Well, well. That makes it even more interesting. Now don’t you interrupt me again, young woman! Let me talk. Let me think. Sure, I know Riemenschneider. I also know it would be virtually impossible to get hold of a major piece. Most of his stuff is in churches or museums. And you wouldn’t dangle a minor work in front of my nose….”

He wasn’t talking to us. He was thinking aloud. His squinty little black eyes shone like jet. Another chill explored my backbone. The old devil was smart, smart and hard as nails. With one halfhearted question Tony had set a bloodhound on the trail.

Tony, who knew him better than I did, was thinking the same thing. His mouth had dropped open, and there were two parallel lines between his eyebrows. He caught my eye, and his mouth tightened. He looked away.

“You’re not a dealer,” Myers went on. “Private collectors wouldn’t approach you. Which one are you planning to steal, and how do you propose to go about it?”

George laughed. My jaw dropped, in its turn. I shouldn’t have been taken aback. I know enough about rabid collectors to realize they will stop at nothing, including homicide, to get what they want. A little matter of robbery doesn’t bother them a bit. It’s common knowledge that dozens of “lost” art treasures, stolen from the world’s great museums, now repose cozily in locked and hidden vaults, where the millionaire owners can gloat over them in secret.

“Damn it, Tony,” I burst out. “Why can’t you keep your big mouth shut?”

George laughed again, and Jake grinned at me. He looked more like a shark than ever.

“Don’t blame him, honey. If you hadn’t stuck your two cents in, I wouldn’t have paid any attention to Tony. I know he goes off half-cocked all the time. But if there are two of you in this deal—and one of them is a girl like you—”

“Oh—” I began; but before I could get the dear old Anglo-Saxon word out, George interrupted. His face was purple with amusement.

“You’re the one who’s going off half-cocked, Jake. You know our moral laddy here; he isn’t going to steal anything. He’s a good boy. No; if I were to hazard a guess—and I always do hazard—I would say that our two experts have stumbled on an unknown work. Or,” he added, watching my face, “on a clue to such a work. Isn’t there a story…?”

He let the word trail off suggestively.

I was torn between self-reproach and admiration at the guy’s technique. He didn’t know a bloody thing about the legend of the shrine. He was guessing; but it was inspired guessing, the method of a skilled fortune-teller who uses his victim’s facial expressions as a guide to the accuracy of his surmises. And heaven knows my big, round, candid face was as readable as print.

I tried to freeze the face, and I watched Jake, who had responded to the hint as a fish to the lure. His brow wrinkled as he searched his capacious memory. My heart sank. I didn’t realize until then how deeply my emotions were involved. It was my discovery, damn it, and nobody was going to take it away from me.

“Nope,” Jake said finally. “Seems to me I did read something, once…. But I’ve forgotten. Can’t remember everything. Is that it, Tony? Found yourself a clue, boy?”

I felt like sagging with relief. Jake had accepted George’s reasoning, and, as a result, he was less excited. A robbery made sense to him. A vague, unspecified clue to an unknown work was not in his line.

His tone maddened Tony, as did George’s superior smile. He sat up straight in his chair and looked directly at Jake. His hair was hanging down over one eyebrow, but I must admit he had a kind of dignity.

“Are you interested?” he said. “Yes or no.”

“Sure I’m interested.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re going to get it,” George said gently. He smiled at me. “It’s a matter of pride not to let Jake get things away from me.”

“Now wait a minute,” I said indignantly. “Who’s offering what to whom? It’s just as much my idea as Tony’s, more so, because I saw the book first, and furthermore—”

Tony let out a yelp, but I didn’t need that to know what I had done. I shut up, thankful I hadn’t said more. Jake, who was shaking all over, let out a loud “haw-haw.”

“I should let you two go on arguing,” he said, when he had gotten his mirth under control. “It’s not only funny, it could be informative. But the information is apt to help Nolan more than it does me. So shut up, the pair of you. Tell you what I’ll do. I don’t know what you’ve got on your minds, or what your plans are, but if either of you turns up with a Riemenschneider, I’ll buy it. Fair price, no questions asked. I’ll even stake you, if you need money.”

“No,” Tony said.

“No, thanks,” I snapped.

We glared at each other.

The rest of the evening was not notable for the wit and intellectuality of the conversation. I had taken Jake’s warning to heart, and so had Tony; since neither of us could control our mouths, it was better not to discuss the subject at all. But it was impossible to think about anything else. By the time we got into the car to go home, I had been suppressing my thoughts long enough. Tony was fumbling with the key and the ignition when I exploded.

“Of all the stupid, conceited, dumb…One indefinite comment in an old letter, and you promise him a Riemenschneider! The chances are a thousand to one that it’s been destroyed. And even if it hasn’t—”

Tony dropped the key. Turning, he grabbed me by the shoulders. He shook me. Then he kissed me. Then he shook me again. Taking unfair advantage of my temporary lack of breath, he said,

“It’s all your fault. You got me into this, and by God, I’ll get myself out with no help from you. I can read your sneaky underhanded female mind. I know what you’re planning. Go ahead. I’ll beat you to it. We’re starting out fair and square, with the same information.”

“Ah,” I said. “A challenge. Is that it?”

“That’s it.”

“It’s the dumbest thing I ever heard of. The chances of success for either of us are infinitesimal. Even if we found the thing, it doesn’t belong to us. You can’t promise Jake—”

“I don’t give a damn about Jake. I’m going to find the shrine just to prove to you that you aren’t as smart as you think you are.”

 

 

Tony and I continued to meet socially, but neither of us mentioned any subject that had the remotest bearing on late Gothic sculpture. This tacit restriction limited conversation considerably. It also cast a pall over our nonvocal activities. I finally figured out why Tony was behaving like a desert anchorite harassed by voluptuous female demons, and I didn’t know whether to laugh or sneer. He thought he might babble, under the softening influence of sex. And he might have, at that. I never got the chance to find out. We were both busy.

I wasn’t surprised when George started calling me, nor was I particularly worried. If he was more interested in picking my brains than pursuing my body, it made a restful change from my usual dates. He was a wonderful dancer, an epicure, a connoiseur of fine wines, and he spent money like water. He was also witty and amusing. Even his hints about sculpture were thrown out with a grin and a tongue in the cheek, and no expectation of success. But I knew that behind the grin and the charm lay a will of iron. He had announced his intentions of beating both of us to the treasure; and if he lacked Tony’s and my special knowledge, he had a lot of other things going for him. Money, for instance, and a high degree of ruthlessness. As a rival for the shrine he was much more dangerous than Tony, and I didn’t underestimate him for a second. But that didn’t keep me from enjoying the country club and the weekends in New York.

Don’t misunderstand those weekends. I spotted George right away; women were very low down on his list of temptations. He wasn’t gay, in the usual sense; he just wasn’t interested in people at all—people of either sex. Of course Tony, the goop, didn’t know that. Men are such suckers for externals; they think a bass voice and a broad chest make a male. We could tell them a few things; but why give away an advantage? Anyhow, George’s professed interest in me was just one more irritation for Tony, and George knew it. As the months went on, Tony withdrew altogether. I only saw him at faculty meetings, or in the halls. But I knew what he was doing. And, of course, vice versa. I was hooked, and I had been, from the beginning. The challenge was enough to arouse any red-blooded, six-foot American girl, but that wasn’t the only reason I was making plans to head for Germany in June. I was caught by the sheer romance of it. Hidden treasures—lost masterpieces—castles—jewels—and those beautiful melancholy faces only Riemenschneider could carve. To rescue something like that from the dust and darkness of centuries…

Furthermore, if that long, lanky male chauvinist thought he could outsmart me, he had another think coming.

 

Two

 

THE VIEW FROM THE BUS WINDOW COULDN’T have been more charming — an old town square with a fountain in the middle, a Gothic church on one side, and on the other a tall house whose Wedgwood-blue facade had curves and curlicues as dainty as those of a china shepherdess. As I looked, an airy cascade of soap bubbles floated by, iridescent in the sunlight. Like so many Bavarians, the bus driver was a frustrated comedian. Ever since we left Munich, he had been playing games. He wore funny hats, tooted on horns and whistles, and blew bubbles whenever the bus stopped. His nickname, according to the hostess, was Charlie Brown—a pleasing testimonial to the international appeal of the best of American Kultur.

I joined the other passengers in applauding the soap bubbles, and Charlie, wearing a tall black opera hat, acknowledged our appreciation with a burlesque bow as the hostess announced that we would have an hour to spend in Nördlingen before the bus continued on its way.

The passengers filed out and dispersed. Many of them were Americans, taking advantage of one of the cheapest and most convenient tours in Europe. The bus runs from Munich to Frankfort, and its route takes in the greater part of what is called the Romantic Road. From Augsburg, founded by the Romans in 15 B.C., up to Würzburg on the River Main, the road includes castles and ancient towns, imperial cities and beautiful scenery. Nördlingen, Dinkelsbühl, and Rothenburg on the Tauber are the most interesting towns; the bus stops in each.

For ordinary sightseers this is all very well, but one might reasonably inquire what the Hades I was doing on that bus, along with the starry-eyed barefoot American kids and the earnest tourists. I was on my way to Rothenburg; but this might seem a rather roundabout way of getting there.

It isn’t as roundabout as it seems. Rail connections are complicated, and being an underpaid serf of an educator I couldn’t afford to rent a car. As it was, the trip cleaned out my paltry savings account. I must admit, however, that I had other reasons for taking that bus. I was playing fox and hounds.

My departure from home had been a masterpiece of subterfuge, based on all the spy stories I had ever read. I had not made reservations through a travel bureau. I wrote directly to airlines and hotels, and burned every letter I got back. I left in the middle of the night, wearing a black stretch wig and a friend’s coat, and hid out in New York under a false name for two days.

All this was childish fun and games, and possibly pointless. Tony knew where I was going; I felt sure he was heading for the same place, if he wasn’t there already. But there was a slim chance that George hadn’t figured things out. Hence my cunning maneuvers. I hoped Tony had managed to elude George, though I doubted it. Tony has a very open nature.

However, there was no reason for me to be naïve, just because Tony suffers from that weakness. I took a plane to Munich. There I confused my trail by going east instead of west. I went to Salzburg. Salzburg is a lovely town, and I had always wanted to see it again. Coincidentally, there was a good exhibit of late Gothic art in the city museum. Strolling through its halls, admiring illuminated manuscripts and the paintings of Rueland Freuauf the Elder, I pictured George Nolan skulking after me, completely baffled. There were no works by Riemenschneider in the exhibit. I got back to Munich just in time to catch my bus.

It was a glorious day, warm and sunny. The first part of the trip, via autobahn to Augsburg, was fairly dull, except for Charlie Brown’s antics. I spent most of the time peering out the back window to see if any one car stayed constantly behind us. Naturally, none of them did. After we hit the Romantic Road I forgot this nonsense and enjoyed the scenery—the castles perched strategically on hilltops, the churches with their oriental domes, like shiny black radishes, the manicured green fields and little red-roofed villages.

After Nördlingen we stopped again in Dinkelsbühl, whose ancient moat is now a playground for white swans. Then the road began to climb, and as we swung around a curve I saw my goal ahead. It was only visible for a moment; crowning its own high hill, before the lower hills closed in and shut it off—a jumble of turrets and gables and mellow red-brown roofs, enclosed by the stone ramparts of the medieval city wall. Rothenburg is the quintessence of Romance—not the watered-down love stories that pass under that name today, but Romance in the old sense—masked desperadoes lurking in the shadow of a carved archway, to intercept the Duke before he can reach his lady love; conspirators gathered in a raftered tavern room, plotting to restore the Rightful Heir; Cyrano and D’Artagnan, striding out with clanking swords to defend the Honor of the Queen.

I refuse to apologize for that outburst; Rothenburg is that kind of place. The spirit has survived even the cheap gimcrackery of tourism. Over the rooftops I could also see the spires of the church where, on a summer day in 1505, Tilman Riemenschneider had supervised the installation of his altar of the Holy Blood.

The bus joined an ugly jumble of other monsters in a parking lot just inside the walls, and disgorged its passengers. I extracted my suitcases from its belly and started walking. The hostess was summoning taxis for other disembarking passengers, but she didn’t offer me one. I wasn’t surprised. I look as if I could carry a steamer trunk. I didn’t want a taxi anyhow. You can walk clear across Rothenburg in half an hour.

It took me longer, because I kept stopping to admire the sights. The town was just as charming as I remembered. Perhaps the souvenir shops had multiplied—certainly the tourists had—but that was only to be expected. The essential beauty hadn’t changed.

The old houses of Rothenburg are tall, six or seven stories in height. The style is like that of the black-and-white Tudor houses of England, with wooden timbering forming complex patterns across the stuccoed facades. The stucco is painted in pastel colors—cream, pale blue, buff. The high roofs taper steeply to the ridgepole; set in the faded rust-red tiles are odd little windows, like half-closed eyes peeping slyly. Some of the houses have oriels with leaded windows and roofs like kobold’s caps.

Against the sober antiquity of the houses, flowers blaze like rainbow-colored fires. Everybody in Rothenburg must have a green thumb. Red geraniums spill out of window boxes; white and purple-blue petunias cascade over ledges; emerald-green ivy and vines climb the crumbling walls. From over the shop doors wrought-iron signs, delicate as starched lace, indicate the wares to be found within. Most of the signs are gilded; in the sunlight they shine like webs spun by fabulous spiders.

I went through the marketplace, with its Renaissance Rathaus and fifteenth-century fountain, and took Herrngasse across town toward the castle—my home away from home for the next couple of weeks.

I still couldn’t get over that piece of luck—that Schloss Drachenstein had been converted into a hotel. It wasn’t unusual. Many stately homes and ruined castles have been turned into guest houses by noble families whose bank statements are shorter than their family trees. But that Schloss Drachenstein should be one of the number—that I had a reservation, confirmed by a letter bearing the Drachenstein crest—it was almost too good to be true. I am not superstitious—not much—but I couldn’t help regarding that as an omen.

The Schloss hadn’t even been open to visitors when I was in Rothenburg the first time. I had viewed the tangled weeds of the park through the closed and padlocked gates, which were worth a visit in themselves, being gems of the wrought-iron work for which the region is famous. There were other things to see, so I hadn’t lingered, but now I could find my way around without having to ask directions.

The roughly oval plateau on which the town is built juts out, at several points, in long rock spurs. At the westernmost point of one such spur, the first Count of Drachenstein, Meninguad by name, had constructed a massive keep that looked down on the valley, and had protected its eastern side with walls and moats. Over the centuries the castle had grown, and peasants seeking protection from marauders had built their huts under its walls, in the spot that would one day become a prosperous merchant town.

The moat had been filled in long before; but I was surprised, when I reached the park, to discover that the gates I remembered were gone. The weeds had been cropped, and as soon as I passed through the stone gateposts I could see the Schloss ahead.

From the guidebook I knew the general plan of Schloss Drachenstein. It was built in the form of an open square enclosing an inner court. An eighteenth-century count, inspired by a visit to Versailles, had torn down one side of the old castle and constructed his version of a château on the foundations. It was not a good idea. The facade, which now faced me, was leprous with decay, and the very roofline seemed to sag. Behind this monstrosity I had a tantalizing glimpse of older walls built of rough brown stone.

The door was a graceless modern replacement, with a bright brass knob. The hinges squeaked, though, when I pushed on it; somewhat cheered by this Gothic note, I went in and found myself in a hall that ran straight through the château from front to back, with doors opening on both sides and a staircase at the far end. There was a desk under the arch of the stairs. Someone was sitting at the desk; I couldn’t see clearly after the transition from sunlight to the shadowy interior. As I tramped down the hall I felt self-conscious, as I always do when I have to make an entrance like that. And when I got a good look at the girl behind the desk, I felt even more bovine than I usually do.

Honest to God, she was the image of my adolescent heroines. She had a heart-shaped face, ivory pale, and framed by clouds of dark hair so fine the ends floated out in the still air. Her eyes were big and wide-set, framed by long, curling lashes. Her mouth was a pink-coral masterpiece; her nose was narrow and aristocratic. She was sitting down, but I knew she wasn’t tall. She wouldn’t be tall. She probably had a figure as petite and fine-boned as her face.

I thought things I prefer not to admit, much less write down. I said, “Guten Tag. I have reserved a room.”

“Guten Tag, gnädige Frau. Ihr Name, bitte?”

Her voice was a false note in the picture of perfect grace. It was flat and hoarse, and quite expressionless. Her lovely face was blank, too. The big dark eyes regarded me without favor.

I gave her my name, and she nodded stiffly.

“We have your letter. I am sorry to say we cannot offer the luxury to which you Americans are accustomed. The Schloss is being renovated and the rooms in the chateau are all occupied. You requested a chamber in the older portion of the Schloss, but—”

“No, that’s fine,” I said heartily.

My big friendly grin won no response. If anything, the girl’s expression became slightly more hostile.

“Aber, I forget. Americans like the old, the ruinous, the decayed, do they not? Come, then, and I will show you the room.”

She insisted on carrying both my suitcases. As I had expected, she was a tiny little thing, and her refusal to let me touch my heavy bags made me feel like a boor as well as a big lumbering clod. I suspect that was what she had in mind. She didn’t seem to like me much. But short of wrestling her for the suitcases, I couldn’t do anything but follow meekly.

We went out the back entrance into the central court. The walls forming the other three sides of the court were a marvelous mixture of architectural styles—not surprising in a place that had had nine centuries in which to develop. The wing to my left was of the timber-and-stucco type, like many of the houses in town, but bigger and more elaborate. Scaffolding shielded its face, and there were pieces of lumber and miscellaneous tools scattered around—the renovations of which the girl had spoken, I gathered.

The right wing was a four-story sixteenth-century construction, with richly carved window frames and an ornate Renaissance roofline. But the wall straight ahead was old—old enough to have been standing long before Count Burckhardt’s time. Its great doorway had a massive stone lintel with a crumbling bas-relief in the shape of a shield bearing the Drachenstein device—a dragon crouched on a rock.

The courtyard was beautifully tended, and as pretty as a postcard. The grass was a rich, velvety green, and shrubs and flower beds were scattered about. A thick hedge hid the part of the court to my right. From behind its shelter came a murmur of voices. Other guests, I thought—and I wondered whether I knew any of them.

Her shoulders bent under the weight of my bags, the girl led me through the door into the Great Hall of the Schloss. It was two stories high, roofed with enormous dark beams. Along one wall was a row of armor, with swords and spears and other deadly weapons hanging on the paneled wall above. A huge stone fireplace filled one corner of the room, which was unfurnished except for a carved chest, big enough to hold a body or three…. I wondered why that particular idea had flipped into my mind. Suggestion, no doubt, from the arsenal on the wall.

We went up a flight of stairs to a gallery that ran around three sides of the hall. From this a door opened onto a corridor. On the stairs I tried to take one of the suitcases, and was promptly squelched; but I took no pleasure in the drag of the girl’s shoulders as she trudged ahead of me along the corridor into an intersecting passage. It was a relief when we finally reached the room she had selected for me.

The room was lit by a pair of tall windows that opened onto the west side of the castle grounds, a wilderness of tangled bushes and weeds. Also visible were the moldering ruins of a structure older than the Schloss itself. It was, I decided, the original keep of the first castle ever built on the plateau; it had to be a thousand years old. I guess Americans are bemused by sheer age; the words dug into my mind and reverberated, awesomely. One thousand years…It looked its age. The top floor, or floors, were missing; the ruined walls were as jagged as rotten teeth. Beyond the keep, the ground dropped abruptly, in a series of steep steps, to a wooded and verdant valley half veiled by the mists of afternoon heat.

The view was the only good part of the room. Hilton would have turned faint. The brown stone walls were bare except for a few old paintings, which were so blackened by time that it was hard to see what they were meant to represent. The bed was modern; the pink spread and canopy were new, and their bright cheapness clashed badly with the dignified antiquity of the walls. An ugly green overstuffed chair and a cheap bedside table were also new. They were dwarfed by the dimensions of the room, which contained no other furniture except a flat kitchen-type table, a massive wardrobe which served as a closet, and a bureau with a load of chinaware. I viewed this last item morosely. I used to spend summers on a farm. I also noted, with a pessimistic eye, that the lamp on the bedside table was an oil lamp.

I turned to meet the eye of my guide. She had seen my negative reaction, and it pleased her; but she was rubbing her sore shoulders, and my sense of pity for small things—which includes so many things—overcame my annoyance.

“Lovely,” I said. “Delightful, Fräulein—er—may I ask your name?”

There was an odd little pause.

“Ich heisse Drachenstein,” she said finally. “Dinner is at seven, Fräulein.”.

And out she went. She didn’t slam the door, but I think she would have done so if her arms hadn’t ached. The door was about eight inches thick and correspondingly heavy.

“Drachenstein,” I muttered, reaching for my suitcases at last. “Aha!”

She couldn’t be the present countess. From what I had learned, that lady was the widow of the former count, who had passed on some years earlier at the biblical age of three score and ten. Daughter? Niece? Poor relation? The last sounded most plausible; she was concierge and porter, and heaven knows what else.

I shrugged and walked over to the bed to start unpacking. Then my eye was caught by one of the dusty paintings which hung opposite the foot of the bed. For some reason the face—and only the face—had been spared the ravages of time. It stood out from the blurred canvas with luminous intensity. And as the features came into focus, I got the first shock of what was to be a week of shocks.

The face staring back at me, with an unnerving semblance of life, was the face of the girl who had just left. Under the picture, a label read: “Konstanze, Gräfin von und zu Drachenstein. 1505?-1525.”

 

Three

 

IT WOULD HAVE BEEN FUN TO THINK I HAD been shown to my room by the family ghost, but after consideration I abandoned the idea. For some reason, the only logical alternative disturbed me almost as much as the ghost theory. Family resemblances like that do crop up, though I had never seen one quite so startlingly close. But it is distasteful to me to think that a random rearrangement of genes can duplicate me, or anyone else, at the whim of whatever power controls such things.

I unpacked, and then kicked off my shoes and lay down on the bed. It was surprisingly comfortable. I didn’t mean to doze off, but excitement and travel had tired me out. When I woke up, the sun was declining picturesquely behind the plateau and my stomach was making grumpy noises. It was almost seven. I didn’t meet a soul as I retraced my steps, through the Great Hall and across the courtyard. Apparently the rest of the guests had already gone to dinner. I was looking forward to that meal, and not only because of my hunger pangs. I had every expectation of seeing at least one familiar face.

The dining room had been one of the drawing rooms of the château wing. Its painted ceiling and plastered walls were extravagantly baroque, and not very good baroque. The westering sun, streaming in through floor-to-ceiling windows, freshed the gilt of the smirking naked cupids and cast a rosy glow over the shapes of pulchritudinous pink goddesses. At a table by the window, looking neither cherubic nor pulchritudinous, was the person I had expected to see.

I approached, not with trepidation—because who was he, to resent my presence?—but with curiosity. I wasn’t sure how he was going to receive me.

He looked up when I stopped by his chair, and a broad grin split his face. Then I felt trepidation. I didn’t like the gleam in his eye. He looked smug. I wondered what he knew that I didn’t.

“Greetings,” I said. “I hope you have been saving a seat at your table.”

“Grüss Gott,” said Tony. “Let us use the local greeting, please, in order to show our cosmopolitan characters. Sure, I saved you a place. I knew you’d be along. What kept you?”

With a wave of his hand he indicated the chair next to his. I took it, without comment; if he wanted to continue the childish pattern of noncourtesy he had established back home, that was fine with me. I put my elbows on the table and studied him. No doubt about it: jaunty was the word for Tony.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

“Couple of days.”

“You must have made good use of your time. What have you—”

“Quiet,” said Tony, scowling. “Not now.”

He was trying to look like James Bond again. It’s that loose lock of hair on his brow. I didn’t laugh out loud because it was expedient to keep on good terms with him, for a time. I turned my head away and glanced around the room.

If the tables in the dining room were any guide, the hotel part of the Schloss wasn’t large, but it was doing a good business. There were a couple of dozen places laid, four to a table. Most of them were occupied.

“Fill me in on our fellow guests,” I said.

“Two American high school teachers,” Tony began, indicating a couple at the next table. “A German family from Hamburg—two kids. The honeymoon couple are French; the old miserable married couple are Italian. There are some U.S. Army types from Munich, and a miscellaneous bevy of Danes.”

“You’ve been busy,” I said, smiling at him. He looked pleased, the naïve thing.

“The little fat guy who looks like Santa Claus without the beard is a professor,” he went on complacently. “What he professes I don’t know; he keeps trying to corner me, but I’ve avoided him so far. The middle-aged female with the face like a horse is English. She’s a crony of the old countess’s.”

“Old countess? Is there a younger one?”

“You must have met her. If she wasn’t carrying your suitcases, she was scrubbing your floor. She does all the work around here.”

“Her?” I gasped ungrammatically.

“Sure. Irma. The last frail twig on the Drachenstein family tree.”

“Irma!” It was some name for a girl who looked like a Persian houri. I was about to express this sentiment—and get some additional insight into Tony’s attitude toward her—when a man walked up to the table. He was a stocky young man with brown hair and blue eyes, a deeply tanned face, and an expression as animated as a block of wood. He distributed two brusque nods and a curt “Abend” around the table, and sat down.

Now as I have indicated, I find the usual leering male look quite repulsive. I am accustomed, however, to having my presence noted. Tony, who knows me only too well, glanced from me to the newcomer and said, with a nasty grin.

“This is Herr Doktor Blankenhagen, from Frankfurt. Doc, meet Fräulein Doktor Bliss.”

The young man half rose, clutching his napkin, and made a stiff bow.

“Doctor of medicine,” he said, in heavily accented English.

“Doctor of philosophy,” I said, before I could stop myself. “How do you do?”

“Very pleased,” said Herr Doktor Blankenhagen, without conviction. He opened a newspaper and retreated behind it.

“Hmmph,” I said; and then, before Tony’s grin could get any more obnoxious, I went on,

“One more place at the table. Who’s that for?”

Tony’s grin faded into the limbo of lost smiles. I knew then. I had been half expecting it, but I still didn’t like it.

“Hi, there,” said George Nolan, making his appearance with theatrical skill, at just the right moment. “Glad you got here, Vicky.”

“Hi yourself,” I said. “Congratulations on your detective skill. Or did you just follow Tony?”

George laughed, and leaned over to give Tony a friendly smack on the shoulder. Tony swayed.

“Right the second time.”

“No problem following him?” I asked sweetly. “Not for a man who has tracked the deadly tiger to its lair, and hunted the Abominable Snowman in his mysterious haunts.”

“He went to the Jones Travel Agency,” said George, still grinning. “As soon as my gratuity to one of the help produced the name of Rothenburg, I put two and two together.”

We both burst out laughing. Tony glowered. Blankenhagen lowered his newspaper, gave us a contemptuous stare in common, and hid behind it again.

The waitress, a stolid blond damsel, came with our soup, and the meal proceeded. Tony sulked in silence, Blankenhagen read his newspaper, and George and I kept up the social amenities. He was a master of the double entendre, and I don’t mean just the sexual entendre. He kept dropping hints about sculpture and secret passages in ancient castles. Tony writhed, but I was pleased to see he was learning to control his tongue. Part of George’s technique was to probe until he got an angry, unthinking response.

With the dessert came Irma, hot and harassed, but still disgustingly beautiful, to inquire how we had liked the meal. She didn’t give a damn, really. It was just part of the job. Tony bounded to his feet the moment she appeared, and even Blankenhagen registered a touch of emotion. I began to wonder about Tony’s joie de vivre. Maybe it had another cause than the one I had suspected.

When the meal was over, Tony got to his feet and reached for my hand.

“Excuse us,” he said firmly. “I want to talk to Vicky alone.”

George was amused.

“Help yourself,” he said.

We proceeded, in pregnant silence, to the courtyard. Behind the sheltering hedge lay a diminutive garden, its flowers pale pastel in the twilight. Tony sat me down on a bench and stood over me.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

Tony sat down beside me and reached out.

“Oh, come off it,” he mumbled. “Don’t be that way. No reason why we can’t be civil, is there?”

“Civil, is it?” I said, into the hollow between his neck and his right shoulder. “Hmmm…I wasn’t the one who started this stand-off business, you know.”

The succeeding interval lasted a shorter time than one might have expected. All at once Tony took me by the shoulders and pushed me away.

“I can’t concentrate,” he said in an aggrieved tone. “Why did we start this silly fight in the first place? I haven’t been able to think of anything else for months. It’s interfering with my social life and my normal emotional development.”

“You challenged me,” I reminded him. “Want to take back what you said?”

“No!”

“Then we’d better kiss and part. I can’t concentrate on any other subject either; and we aren’t collaborating, are we?”

“No…”

“Only?”

“Only—well, we could compare background notes, couldn’t we? Nothing significant, just research. So we can start out even.”

“Hmmm,” I said. “Why the change of heart?”

“It isn’t a change of heart. I’m not asking you to give anything away, and I’m not going to tell you anything important. Only—well, Nolan bugs me. I didn’t realize he was so hot on the trail. And if I can’t find the thing myself, I’d rather have you get it than Nolan.”

I didn’t return the compliment. If I couldn’t find the shrine, I hoped nobody would. But his suggestion made sense. I didn’t have anything that could be called a clue; maybe he did. I had nothing to lose by collaborating.

As it turned out, I didn’t gain much. For the most part, Tony’s research duplicated mine.

We had both gone back to the old chronicle, which contributed very little except a description of the shrine. If my appetite had needed whetting, that description would have done the trick.

According to the chronicler, the reliquary depicted the Three Kings kneeling before the Child—the “Anbetung der Könige,” as the Germans put it. The subject was popular with European artists in earlier, more devout, eras, so it is not surprising that another version of the Anbetung, by Riemenschneider, should exist. This one is a bas-relief, on the side panel of the Altar of the Virgin, which he did for the church at Creglingen, not far from Rothenburg. So when I pictured our shrine I pictured it as he had done it at Creglingen, only in the round instead of in relief. The design was simple and forceful—the Virgin, seated, with two of the kings kneeling before her and the third standing at her right. Of course I knew the Drachenstein shrine wouldn’t be quite the same, but the subject was only open to a few variations. Since the old chronicle mentioned angels, I gave my visionary shrine a few of Riemenschneider’s typical winged beauties—not chubby dimpled babies, but grave ageless creatures with flowing hair and robes fluttering in the splendor of flight.

The three jewels were a ruby, an emerald, and an enormous baroque pearl.

Tony had looked this up too, but he professed to be more intrigued by the people who had been involved with the shrine back in 1525. (Women are always moved by crass materialistic things such as jewels; men concern themselves with the higher things of life.)

“You had better get the characters straight in your mind,” Tony said smugly. “There were three of them. The count, Burckhardt, was a typical knight—and I’m not thinking, like, Sir Galahad. I assume you had the simple wit to write the author of The Peasants’ Revolt, and ask if there were any other letters from Burckhardt? Oh. You did.

“Burckhardt was a rat. A bloodthirsty, illiterate lout. His repulsive personality is even more apparent in the unpublished letters. I guess that’s why they weren’t published; they tell more about Burckhardt than about the war. He was obstinate, unimaginative, arrogant—”

“My goodness,” I said mildly. “You really are down on the lad.”

“Lad, my eye.”

“He couldn’t have been very old. What was the average life span—about forty? As you say, he was fairly typical. Why the prejudice?”

“Not all of them were hairy Neanderthals. Take Götz von Berlichingen; he supported the peasants.”

“Under protest, according to Götz. I don’t think he’s a good example of a parfit gentle knight. He was a menace on the highways, a robber, looter—”

“At least he had courage. After his hand was shot off, he acquired an iron prosthesis and went on robbing.”

“I stayed at his place once.”

“Whose place?”

“Götz’s,” I said, spitting a little on the sibilants. “Schloss Hornburg, on the Neckar. It’s a hotel now. They have his iron hand.”

“I wish you would stop changing the subject,” Tony said unfairly.

“You were the one who brought up Götz.”

“And stop calling him Götz, as if he were the boy next door…. To return to Burckhardt—he was only heroic when he was up against a bunch of serfs armed with sticks. And did you notice the hypochondria? All those complaints about his bowels!”

“Maybe he had a nervous stomach.”

I could have said something really cutting. Tony’s prejudice against the valiant knight suggested a transferal of resentment against men of action in general—not mentioning any names. But I didn’t even hint at such a possibility. I didn’t like Burckhardt either.

“He had one good point,” Tony said grudgingly. “He loved his wife. That comes out, even through the stiff formal phrasing. I couldn’t find much information on her. All I know is that her name was Konstanze and she was beautiful.”

I started. I shouldn’t have been surprised. The dates on the portrait in my room would have told me that the woman portrayed had been the lady of our count. But it was—uncomfortable, somehow.

Tony gave me a curious look, but asked no questions. He went on,

“The third character was named Nicolas Duvenvoorde. He was the count’s steward, majordomo, or whatever you want to call it. He was Flemish, by his name, and a trusted, efficient servant, to judge by the references to him. Now one of the unpublished letters, if you remember, says the count has sent ‘it’ to Rothenburg in the care of this steward and an armed escort of five men. The countryside was in disorder; bands of marauding peasants and men at arms marauding after the marauding peasants—”

“Don’t be cute,” I said. “I’m not one of your giggly girl students.”

“Then you tell me what happened next.”

“I take it you found no further references to the shrine? Neither did I. But, assuming the caravan started on schedule, there are only two possibilities.”

Tony nodded. “Either the shrine arrived in Rothenburg as planned—no reason why not; a group of armed men, on their guard, with their precious burden a secret, had a good chance of getting through—or else they were attacked along the way and the shrine was stolen.”

“No reason why not?” I echoed. “But is there any reason to suppose the reverse? If the shrine was stolen, that would explain why it hasn’t been heard of since.”

“Obviously. But if thieves seized and burned the shrine, what happened to the jewels? Such stones are virtually indestructible, and they have a habit of reappearing. Look at the great historic gems; you can trace them through the centuries, usually by the trail of blood they leave behind them. The fact that the jewels, as well as the shrine, have not been heard of since fifteen hundred twenty-five is suggestive. They must have been hidden—hidden so well that all memory of the hiding place was lost.”

“Suppose your hypothetical peasants did the hiding, after they robbed the caravan. The cache could be anywhere in West Germany.”

“Or farther. But that isn’t likely. A single thief couldn’t overpower six armed men. And if there were several thieves, the chance of all of them being killed before they could pass on the secret of the hiding place is remote. Besides, where could they hide it, a group of homeless peasants, so that the hiding place remained undisturbed for four hundred and fifty years? Now this castle…”

The massive walls seemed to close in around us. Tony’s reasoning wasn’t new to me; I had reached the same conclusions, not because we were en rapport, but because they were logical conclusions. There were plenty of holes, and weak links, in the chain of reasoning, but at the end of it lay a solid fact: even on the evidence we had, Schloss Drachenstein was worth searching.

I said as much. Tony snorted vulgarly. Like all men, he likes to have his lectures received with little feminine squeals of admiration. So I added tactfully,

“But that’s as far as logic took me, Tony. Suppose the shrine is here. Where do we look? The castle is enormous. You’re so clever at this sort of thing; can’t you narrow it down?”

Tony is very susceptible to the grosser forms of flattery. He beamed.

“Obviously the shrine wasn’t left out on a shelf, in plain sight. Rothenburg was a real hotbed of radicalism, and although the revolt was officially suppressed before Burckhardt got home, I would think he’d prefer to tuck his valuables away till things were back to normal. Now here’s an interesting point that maybe you didn’t know. The count and his wife both died that same year, leaving an infant daughter. I don’t know how Burckhardt and Konstanze died, but it must have been suddenly. They had no opportunity to pass on the secret. The child was too young to know anything.”

“It’s plausible. If the shrine exists, it is hidden somewhere in the older section of the Schloss.

“I wish I knew the layout of the place a little better. Where do Irma and the old Gräfin live? It would be mildly embarrassing to meet one of them while we were ripping up the floor.”

“The dowager’s rooms are in the tower at the end of our wing.” Tony gestured. “I think Irma’s room is under the old lady’s.”

“Nuts. I hoped I was alone in the old wing.”

“You’re surrounded,” Tony said, with mean satisfaction. “Nolan’s room is down the hall. I’m next to you, and on your other side is Dr. Blankenhagen, our conversational tablemate. The little fat guy is next to me. That’s about all…. Oh, yeah, the English female is in the tower too. I told you she was a crony of the Gräfin.”

“Good God. How can we do any searching? It’s like Main Street on Saturday night.”

“If you’re planning to start ripping up floor boards in the guest rooms, you aren’t as logical as you think you are.”

I sighed ostentatiously.

“Must I explain my reasoning? I thought it was obvious.”

“I’ve been sharing my humble thinking with you. Go ahead, be obvious.”

“Well, isn’t the master bedchamber—Burckhardt’s own room—the logical place in which to start searching?”

“It might be, if we knew which room was Burckhardt’s.”

At that moment the moon rose above the wall and turned the little garden into something out of Rostand. I glanced at Tony. He put his arm around me and I leaned back against it.

“I can’t fight with you,” Tony said.

“You can’t fight with anybody. You’re too nice a guy. No, none of that. We were reasoning, remember. What we need is a plan of the Schloss as it was in the good old days. Or we could ask the Gräfin which room was the master bedchamber.”

“I’m against that.”

“So am I,” I agreed amiably. “We don’t want to rouse any suspicions. Anyhow, she may not know.”

“And until we know, I don’t see any point in searching the bedrooms. The hiding place won’t be obvious; you really would have to rip up floors and tear down the walls.”

“Anyhow,” I said thoughtfully, “the count’s room might not have been the best place to hide something. Didn’t they have servants and attendants hanging around all the time?”

“I wouldn’t say that. But there are any number of equally likely places: Such as—”

“Don’t,” I said suddenly. The garden was a magical place, but it was a little uncanny, with the rustling shrubbery and a breeze moving the branches of the trees. “Let’s go in. I’ve had enough atmosphere for tonight. I could stand a glass of plain prosaic beer.”

We had our beer, served by Irma, in the room of the château that served as a lounge. The family from Hamburg were playing Skat and the honeymoon couple, in a shadowy corner, were fully occupied with each other. The only person in the room who wasn’t distracted by the squeaks and giggles coming from that corner was the English lady, who sat knitting like a robot, without removing her eyes from her needles. George was nowhere to be seen, and I wondered uneasily about the rustling I had heard in the garden.

When the clock struck ten, there was a general exodus. Apparently Rothenburg, like my home town, rolled up the streets at an early hour. That was fine with me. I had other plans for the middle hours of the night.

At the door I was intercepted by the little man whom Tony had identified, somewhat vaguely, as a professor. He introduced himself with a big broad smile.

“Ich heisse Schmidt. And you are the American Professorin, nicht? What is it that you teach?”

I admitted to being a historian. I was caught off guard by his blunt approach, but it was impossible to resent the little guy. He did look like Santa Claus. Besides, he only came up to my chin. As I have said, I can’t be cruel to little people.

“And you, Herr Schmidt?” I asked. “Are you perhaps also a historian”

Herr Schmidt’s eyes shifted. All at once he looked like a very sneaky Santa Claus.

“Alas, I am no longer anything. I am, as you say, retired. I enjoy a long vacation. And you, I hope you find Rothenburg pleasant? You are, like me, in the older wing of the Schloss? It is charming! Full with atmosphere of the past, very appealing to Americans. But inconvenient, this charm. For example, we must light ourselves to bed. There is no electricity in the old wing.”

He picked up a candle, one of a row which stood atop a chest.

“So I noticed,” I said drily.

In a mellow moment Tony lit a candle for me and we found ourselves part of a small procession which wound its medieval way across the court. The candle flame flickered in the wind; I had to shield it with my hand. When we entered the Great Hall, the illusion of antiquity was complete. The feeble flames were overpowered by the vast darkness of the room. They woke a dim reflection in the polished surfaces of helmet and breastplate, giving the armored shapes an illusion of life and surreptitious movement.

“I am glad to have company when I cross this room,” said Schmidt, scampering for the stairs. “Brrrr! In candlelight it is too full with atmosphere. I expect to see the countess herself.”

“The countess?”

“But yes, have you not heard the legend? The countess walks here, on moonlit nights. Which countess I know not, but she is one of those who has no right to be walking.”

He chuckled. I wasn’t amused. I had a feeling I knew which countess he meant. Nor was I precisely easy in my mind about Herr Schmidt. If ever a name sounded like an alias… And he had been decidedly elusive about his occupation.

In the dim light of the candle, my room looked like an apartment in Castle Dracula. I lit the oil lamp beside the bed, lay down, and tried to read. The smoky light made my eyes ache.

It was a warm night, but the room had a clammy chill which the air from the open window didn’t alleviate. I went to the window and looked down into the tangled underbrush beneath. There were no screens in the window; the drop was sheer. To the left was another window—that of Tony’s room, I assumed. It was dark, as were all the other windows I could see.

I looked across the grounds at the bulk of the old keep. The jagged walls made a picturesque outline against the moonlit sky. As I stared, something peculiar happened. For a moment a square of wavering yellow light interrupted the blackness of the tower’s silhouette. Just for a moment; then it was gone.

I gulped, and told myself to be rational. What I had seen was not a ghost light, but a candle, behind one of the windows of the keep. But why would anyone be in the crumbling ruin at this time of night?

A possible answer wasn’t hard to find.

Frowning, I turned from the window and met the enigmatic eyes of the Countess Konstanze.

I lifted the lamp from the table and held it up so that its light fell full on the painted face. It was not one of the world’s great portraits. Though the physical features seemed to be accurately represented, the painter had failed to capture a personality. He had been more successful with the pose—the shape of the head and shoulders, the arrogant tilt of the chin suggested a strength of character not implicit in the expressionless face. The resemblance of the sixteenth-century countess to her downtrodden descendant was probably not one of character; but feature by feature the resemblance was uncannily exact.

“If you could only talk,” I muttered — and then made a quick, instinctive gesture of denial. The Gothic atmosphere was thick enough already. A talking portrait would send me screaming out into the night.

I looked at my watch. It was after midnight. The old Schloss and its inhabitants should be sleeping soundly by now. I put on a dark sweater, which I had brought for the purpose of nocturnal prowling, and tied a scarf over my light hair. I found my flashlight, and blew out the lamp.

Talk about dark. I hadn’t seen anything like it since the old days on the farm. The faint moonlight from the window didn’t help much, and when I closed the door of my room behind me the corridor was pitch-black. I didn’t want to use the flashlight until it was necessary, so I stood waiting for my eyes to adjust.

A hand touched my shoulder.

I thought of screaming, but my vocal cords didn’t cooperate. Before I could get them into operation I heard a voice.

“Hi,” it whispered.

“Tony,” I whispered back. “You rat.”

“Scare you?”

“Scared? Me?”

“I figured you’d be prowling tonight. Couldn’t let you go alone. Who knows, you might be nervous.”

“Sssh!”

“Come on, let’s get away from all these doors.”

He found my hand, and I let him lead me until a turn in the corridor brought light—the sickly sheen of the moon filtering through the leaded panes of a window set high above an ascending stair. Tony stopped.

“Those are the tower stairs.”

“I was heading for the Great Hall.”

“Down this way.”

As we shuffled along the dark passageways, my pulse was uncomfortably quick. The castle was too quiet. There weren’t even the creaks and squeaks of settling timber. This place had settled centuries ago.

Finally we stepped onto the balcony over the Great Hall. I put one hand on the balustrade and moved back in alarm as it gave slightly. The Schloss needed repairs. No doubt there wasn’t enough money. The proud old family of the Drachensteins wouldn’t have gone into the innkeeping business unless they needed cash. I reminded myself not to lean heavily against that balustrade.

Below, in the Hall, the armored shapes were dim in the gray moonlight. The shadows of tree branches swaying in the night wind slid back and forth across the polished floor….

My scalp prickled. That motion was no swaying shadow. There was something moving at the far end of the Hall — something pale and slim, like a column of foggy light.

The thing came out into the moonlight. I forgot my qualms about the shaky banister, and clutched it with straining fingers.

The figure below had the face of the woman in the portrait. I could see it distinctly in the light from the windows, even to its expression. The eyes were set and staring; the face was as blank as the face on the painted canvas.

The apparition wore a long, light robe, with flowing sleeves. The feet—if it had feet—were hidden by the folds of the garment, so that it seemed to float instead of walk. Slowly it glided across the floor, the staring eyes raised, the lips slightly parted.

There was a sound behind us. Tony, who had been equally dumbfounded by the apparition, swore out loud when he recognized the man who had joined us on the gallery. Personally, I was glad to see George. The bigger the crowd, the better, so far as I was concerned.

“Did you see it?” Tony demanded. “Or am I crazy?”

“I did see her,” George said coolly. “She’s gone now.”

I turned. The Hall was empty.

Tony ran toward the stairs.

“Go slow,” George said, catching his arm. “If you wake people like that too suddenly, it can be dangerous.”

“She — she’s — sleepwalking, isn’t she?” Tony asked.

“What else?”

I didn’t say anything. George was right, of course. But I sympathized with Tony. George hadn’t seen that infernal portrait.

Then it hit me, and it was my turn to swear. Maybe George hadn’t seen the portrait, but Tony had; unless he knew of the uncanny resemblance between the two women, one living and one long dead, he wouldn’t have reacted so neurotically to what was — obviously! — a simple case of somnambulism. Tony hadn’t told me about all his research, then. I wondered how many other potentially useful facts he was hoarding.

I followed my two heroes down into the Hall.

“I think she went this way,” George said, starting toward the east end of the Hall. “You don’t happen to have a flashlight, do you, Lawrence?”

Tony did. The light moved around the room, spotlighting the suits of armor and the black mouth of the fireplace.

“Wait a minute,” George said. “She couldn’t get out this way. The door is locked.” He demonstrated, rattling the knob.

“You said she came this way.”

“She must have doubled back under the stairs while we were talking. From the gallery that end of the room is not visible. Her room is in the tower, isn’t it?”

He led the way without waiting for an answer. At the opposite end of the Hall an open arch disclosed the first steps of a narrow stair.

“We’d better check,” Tony muttered. “Make sure the girl doesn’t hurt herself, wandering around…. Follow me.”

The upper floor was a maze of corridors, but Tony threaded a path through them without hesitating once — another proof, if I needed any, that Tony had already explored the Schloss thoroughly. So, I reminded myself, we were not collaborating. He didn’t have to tell me anything…. I wished I knew what George had been doing. I could feel his presence close behind me. For a big man he was very light on his feet.

On the first floor of the tower Tony tried a door. It creaked open. The flashlight showed an unfurnished circular chamber with rags of moldering tapestry on the walls.

“Nobody lives here,” said George, peering over my shoulder. “Irma must be on the next floor.”

The stairs led up to a narrow landing with a faded strip of carpet across the floor. There was a single door. Tony hesitated, but George marched up to the door and turned the knob. His face changed.

“Lawrence. Look at this.”

“What’s the matter?”

George grabbed his hand and directed the flashlight beam onto the doorknob. Below it was a large keyhole, with the shaft of an iron key projecting from it. Tony gaped; but I didn’t need George’s comment to get the point.

“Door’s locked. From the outside. Either this is not Irma’s room—or that wasn’t Irma we saw walking tonight.”

 

Four

 

“MAY I ASK WHAT YOU ARE DOING AT MY niece’s door at one o’clock in the morning?”

The cold, incisive voice came from the darkness of the stairs above us. Tony jumped. The flashlight beam splashed and scattered against the stone arch and then steadied, showing the form of a woman.

She was rather tall, though nowhere near my height. Her hair was snowy white—a beautiful shade that owed its tint to art rather than nature. Her figure was still slender, and her face retained the traces of considerable beauty. Her makeup and her handsome silk dressing gown were immaculate. She had fought time with some success, but the signs of battle were visible; the keen blue eyes were set in folds of waxy, crumpled flesh, and her neck had the petrified scrawniness older women get when they diet too strenuously. I would have known who she was even without the reference to her niece. She looked the way a dowager countess ought to look.

“Good evening, Gräfin,” George said calmly. “So this is your niece’s room. Did you lock her in? And, if so, when?”

He had gall. I have a considerable amount myself, but I wouldn’t have dared to ask that question. To my amazement, the old lady answered it.

“I locked her in at eleven o’clock, as I do every night. What has happened?”

“We saw someone in the Great Hall just now,” George said. “It looked like your niece.”

“I see.” The light was bad, so I wasn’t sure; but I rather thought she was smiling. “Let me show you that it cannot have been Irma whom you saw.”

She unlocked the door and flung it open. When modest Tony hesitated, she took the flashlight from him and turned it on the bed.

Irma lay curled up under a thin sheet, her cheek pillowed on her hand. She stirred and muttered as the light reached her eyes. Then she sat bolt upright.

“Wake up, Irma,” said the Gräfin. “It is I.”

“Aunt Elfrida?” The girl brushed a lock of curling dark hair from her eyes. Then, seeing other forms in the doorway, she snatched at the sheet and drew it up over her breast. The extra covering wasn’t necessary; her nightgown was a hideous, heavy dark cotton that covered her from the base of her neck down as far as I could see.

The countess moved to the bed.

“You have been asleep? You have heard nothing? Seen nothing?”

The seemingly innocuous question had a frightful effect on the girl. Her chin quivered, her mouth lost its shape, and her eyes dilated into staring black circles.

“Ach, Gott — what has happened? Is it — has she—”

“No questions,” the older woman interrupted. “Sleep again. Sleep.”

“Stay with me!”

“There is no need. Sleep, I say.”

She moved back, pushing us with her, and closed the door. I had a last glimpse of Irma’s face, rigid with terror, and it made me forget what few manners I possess.

“I’ll sit with the girl, if you won’t,” I said. “She needs reassurance, not mysterious silence.”

The Gräfin locked the door.

“I have not had the pleasure of meeting you, young woman, but I assume you are our newest guest, Dr. Bliss. Is your degree in the field of psychiatry?”

“I don’t have to be a psychiatrist to realize—”

Tony stepped heavily on my slippered foot, and the old woman went on.

“My niece’s welfare is my business, I believe. As for your search tonight—I have proved to you that it was not Irma you saw. If you are still curious, gentlemen, I suggest you visit Miss Bliss’s room — if you have not already made yourselves at home there. At the foot of the bed — conveniently placed for visitors — there hangs a certain portrait. And now, if you will excuse me, I need my rest. Good night.”

“Why, that old—” I began.

This time it was George who stepped on my foot. He was shorter than Tony, but he weighed more. I yelled.

“What’s all this about a portrait?” George inquired loudly. The Gräfin’s footsteps were still audible above. I didn’t care whether she heard me or not.

“Oh, hell,” I said. “Double hell. Come on, you guys. I’ve got a bottle of Scotch in my suitcase, and I think this is the time to break it out.”

Shortly thereafter George put down an empty glass and stared owlishly at me and Tony.

“All right, Doctors. Let’s hear some high-class intellectual rationalizing. What was it we saw tonight?”

Tony had recovered his cool. There was only one funny thing. He couldn’t look at the portrait. He just couldn’t stand looking at it. Staring firmly at his glass, he said.

“Either it was the girl, or it was a ghost. If you believe in ghosts — that’s what it was. If you don’t — someone is putting us on.”

George snorted and poured himself another drink, without waiting to be asked.

“Is that the academic brain at work? Your alternatives don’t impress me. You think the Gräfin lied about locking that door?”

“That doesn’t follow. There are any number of possibilities. Maybe she thought she locked it, and didn’t. Maybe someone else unlocked it, and locked it again later. Maybe there’s another door out of the room.”

“Yeah.” George looked more cheerful. “That’s so. But do you remember what our apparition was wearing?”

“A light robe,” I said. “White or pale gray, with full sleeves and a gathered yoke.”

“Well, you saw the girl’s nightgown—God save us. I also saw her dressing gown, or housecoat, or whatever you call it. It was lying across the foot of her bed.”

“And it, I suppose, was black,” said Tony.

“Navy blue,” I said. “With small light-colored flowers. Very unflattering, with her coloring…. That doesn’t prove anything. She could have a closetful of long white robes, and she had plenty of time to change.”

Tony stood up.

“This is a waste of time. You think that girl was faking. Well, I don’t. Come on, Nolan, let’s be off.”

George sipped his drink.

“You two kill me,” he said conversationally. “Why don’t we put our cards on the table?”

“What cards?” I asked. “You know why we are here and vice versa. If I judge your sneaky character accurately, you probably know by now as much as Tony does. But you don’t know any more than that; and if you did, you wouldn’t tell us. You must be crazy if you think I’m going to give you any information.”

George reached for the bottle. I moved it away from his hand. Good Scotch is expensive. Unperturbed, he grinned at me.

“You’re quite a girl. If you find the shrine, I might revise my long-seated hostility toward marriage.”

“That’s big of you. But my hostility is just as deep-seated, if not as long established.”

George stood up. Still smiling, he stretched lazily. Muscles rippled all over him.

“I’m noted for getting what I want,” he murmured.

Tony, who had been swelling like a turkey, couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Play your hot love scenes in private, why don’t you?”

“If you’d take the hint and leave, we would,” said George.

“Oh, no, we wouldn’t,” I said. “Out, both of you. I need my beauty sleep. Who knows, I may not find the shrine. Then I would have to rely on sheer sex appeal to catch myself a husband.”

“I’m betting on you,” said George. He glanced at Tony, who said shortly,

“It’s all for none and one for each in this game. We’ll see. Come on, Nolan. Good night, Vicky.”

 

 

The undercurrents in that conversation set my teeth on edge, and I was still thinking about them the next morning. When I reached the dining room, Tony was the only one at our table. He grunted at me, but didn’t look up.

“Where’s George?” I asked.

“Been and gone.”

“Did you two exchange any meaningful remarks after you left me?”

“Define ‘meaningful.’” Tony looked at me. “You know what that crook is planning, don’t you? He’ll follow us until we find — uh — something, then jump in and grab it.”

“Time to worry about that if and when we find it. At the moment we aren’t even warm.”

“Wrong. The time to worry is now, before Nolan pops out of a dark corner and hits somebody over the head.”

“He won’t hit me over the head,” I said smugly.

“Are you sure?”

Come to think of it, I wasn’t at all sure. I wouldn’t give Tony the satisfaction of agreeing with him in his assessment of George’s scruples, or lack thereof; but I didn’t object when Tony proposed that we make a joint expedition out to the old Wachtturm. As he said, it wasn’t a good place for solitary exploring. A lot of nasty accidents could occur in a crumbling, deserted place like that.

Before we had finished breakfast, Irma came to the table. She was wan and pale, with dark circles under her eyes. On her, even baggy eyes looked good. Tony got to his feet so fast he almost turned his chair over.

“My aunt wishes you — both of you — to have tea with her this afternoon,” she said.

“How nice,” I said, since Tony was too preoccupied with his tottering chair to be coherent. “What time?”

“Four o’clock.” She didn’t look at me; she was watching Tony from under those long lashes. His confusion seemed to amuse her; she gave him a small but effective smile before she turned away.

“I suppose,” Tony said, capturing the chair and sitting on it, “she’s going to bawl us out.”

“Who, the Gräfin?” There was only one Gräfin in that house; it was impossible to think of Irma by her title. The word, with its guttural r and flat, hard vowel, suited the old lady.

“Let her complain,” I went on. “If she gives me a hard time, I’ll report her to the SPCC, or whatever the German equivalent may be.”

“Irma’s no child,” Tony murmured.

“If you want to explore ruins, let’s go,” I said, rising.

The going was rough. The undergrowth between the castle and the keep was ninety percent brambles. They had the longest thorns I’ve ever seen on any plant. Tony kept falling into them; I gathered he was still preoccupied with Irma, because after a while he said,

“What makes you think the old lady is hassling Irma? We haven’t seen her do anything particularly vicious.”

“You don’t call that performance last night vicious? The girl is scared to death about something. She works like a drudge, of course, while the old bat sits in her tower drinking tea; but it’s more than that.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s hard to put into words, but there is something between the two of them…. I hate to think of handing the shrine over to an old witch like that.”

An unwary step took me off the path, such as it was. I stopped, and unwound barbed-wire brambles from my ankle.

“So you’re going to hand the shrine over, are you?” I said. “Aside from comments on overconfidence, which I have already made, may I compliment you on your ethics? I assumed you were going to tuck the treasure under your arm and steal away.”

“You’re getting me confused with Nolan. I think he plans just that. I admit, when I started on this deal I hadn’t thought the problem through. I was excited about the hunt itself. Back in Ohio the whole thing was sort of unreal, you know what I mean? I never really thought we’d succeed. It’s different now…. But I’m sure of one thing. The shrine doesn’t belong to us. All we can do is turn it over to the rightful owner. I never had any intention of doing anything else. And don’t try to kid me; you never did, either.”

“No, but I’ve been thinking.” I unwound the last bramble and stepped back onto the path. “The shrine wouldn’t be considered treasure trove, would it? That is strictly defined legally; depending on local laws, it belongs either to the state or to the state and the finder, half and half. But the shrine belongs to the Drachensteins; that can be proved by means of the documents we’ve been using. And—listen. The old lady is only a Drachenstein by marriage. If Irma is the count’s brother’s child, wouldn’t she be the heiress?”

“Good point,” said Tony, brightening visibly. “We might try to find out about the late count’s will. Not that it has any bearing on our search….”

“But it would add to your zeal to think that Irma would enjoy the fruits of your brilliance?”

We had reached the keep and stood beside the high walls. Tony ignored my last remark and its tone of heavy sarcasm.

“Behold the Wachtturm,” he said, gesturing. “It was built in A.D. eight hundred seven by Count Meninguad von und zu Drachenstein, fondly known to his contemporaries as the Black Devil of the Tauber Valley. The keep was abandoned in thirteen hundred eighty-three when the present castle was built. In fifteen hundred five—”

“All right, all right. I’ve read the guidebook too. Let’s go in.”

There was no door. Rusted iron hinges, each a couple of feet long, hung futilely from the doorframe. The interior of the first floor was a single circular room, dimly lit by the four narrow slits that pierced the walls. Since said walls were over eight feet thick, the sunlight didn’t have much of a chance. The floor was of stone, but so overlaid with dirt that the original surface was virtually invisible.

Tony made a circuit of the walls, peering at the huge stones.

“When they built in those days, they built to last.” He spoke in hushed tones, as if something might be listening. “I can’t see anything unusual here. Let’s go up.”

Narrow stairs were cut into the stones of the wall. They were treacherous to climb; each step had a deep trench in the center, worn by generations of feet.

The second floor had been the hall. The windows were a little wider than those below. Across one quadrant of the room lay the remains of a half-wall, or screen, of stone, behind a low dais. The big stone fireplace, with the family arms on its hood, was the only feature in the room, which was littered with chips of fallen stone.

“The count and his lady dined there,” Tony muttered, looking at the dais. “Their sleeping quarters were behind the screen. Rushes underfoot, and the dogs fighting over table scraps….”

“Gracious living,” I agreed. “According to the guidebook, this place was abandoned long before fifteen hundred twenty-five. It wouldn’t be a bad spot to hide something.”

Tony shook his head.

“It may have been abandoned as living quarters, but I’ll bet it was still in use as a guard tower. Anyhow, if I were the count, I’d prefer to have my valuables closer at hand, so I could keep an eye on them. Way out here—”

He stopped speaking. He was opposite one of the window slits, and a narrow shaft of sunlight lay across the section of the floor at which he was staring.

“What—” But I didn’t have to finish the question. I saw them too—footprints, clearly marked in the thick dust. The footprints of a man—a big man.

Tony knelt down. He thumped the floor with his fist, and sneezed as a cloud of dust enveloped his head.

“If anything has been hidden under these boards, I’ll eat it,” he announced, between sneezes. “Feel them. You’d expect wood so old to be rotten and crumbling, but these boards are practically petrified.”

I joined him on the floor. As my fingers touched the rock-hard surface of the wood, I felt weighted down by the sheer over-whelming age of the place.

“They wouldn’t have been this hard four hundred years ago,” I said.

“That’s not what I meant. Look at the construction of the floor. There’s only one thickness of wood—each plank is a foot thick, sure, but there’s no space for a hiding place in between them. The beams in the ceiling below support these planks.”

“How big is the shrine, anyhow?”

“No dimensions were given.” Tony went to the wall and thumped ineffectually at the stones. “But I should think it would have to be a meter or so high. Maybe bigger.”

Okay, I thought to myself; if you don’t want to talk about those footprints, we won’t talk about them. And I won’t mention the light I saw here last night. For all I knew, it might have been Tony who had carried that light, and this expedition might be a blind, to convince me of the futility of the Wachtturm as a hiding place. I watched Tony idiotically bruising his hands on impenetrable stone, and winced. If he had come here alone in the small hours of the night, I had to admire his nerve. The place was sinister enough in broad daylight. I tried to remember how much time had elapsed between my seeing the light, and leaving my room. I couldn’t estimate accurately. Tony might have had time to get back from the keep and accost me in the corridor.

Tony turned from the wall.

“These stones look solid to me. We’d have to demolish the place to make sure nothing was hidden here.”

“So why are we wasting our time?”

“Let’s have a look at the top floor, just in case.”

I got to the stairs ahead of him. When I came out onto the next floor, I stopped short, swaying with a sudden attack of vertigo. There was no top floor. The roofless walls were waist high at some points; mostly there was no wall at all, only a sudden drop into the thorny brambles far below. The view across the green valley was sensational, but I didn’t linger to look at it. I backed cautiously toward the stairs, and Tony went with me. It was unnecessary to speak; there was no hiding place up there.

When we were out in the sunlight again, Tony drew a deep breath.

“That takes care of that. The Schloss is the place for us.”

“It’s so damned big. Where do we start looking?”

“I think more research is indicated.”

“You just want to sit around and read books,” I said unreasonably. “I want to do something. Even if we don’t know where Burckhardt’s room was, there are other possibilities. The crypt, for instance—”

“How do you know there is a crypt?”

“There’s a chapel.”

“Okay, I’ll give you the crypt. I still want a detailed plan of the Schloss.”

“And where do you expect to find it?”

“Two possibilities. The town archives, for one. Also the library, or muniment room of the Schloss. There may be other letters or useful documents there too.”

“Okay,” I said grumpily. “If you’re going to be the honest, candid little fellow, I can do no less. You take the archives, I’ll take the library. We share any information we find.”

“Agreed.”

When we reached the courtyard, we found an unexpected duo sitting at one of the tables in the garden. George Nolan and Professor Schmidt were deep in conversation — or rather, Schmidt was talking and George was listening. I thought he looked bored. He brightened when he saw us.

“Exploring, on a hot day like this?” he inquired.

“You know us.” I dropped into a chair and smiled affably at him. “Nothing in the Wachtturm but dust and decay.”

“But I thought Americans admired the old and decayed,” said Schmidt.

I was getting a little tired of hearing that sentiment expressed, but I said only, “That place is too old.”

“You should see the town. It is not too old. It is very nice.”

“I’ve been here before,” I said.

“But not with me,” George said. “Let’s go sightseeing. Harmless occupation,” he added.

“Gut, gut,” said Schmidt eagerly. “I know Rothenburg well. There is a Gasthaus where we will lunch.”

“We have to be back here by four,” Tony said, regarding Schmidt unfavorably. “The countess has invited us—”

“But I also! I also have tea with the Gräfin. We can easily return by four.”

There was no way of ditching him, short of deliberate rudeness. He turned out to be a rather pleasant companion, and an absolute mine of useless information. My half-formed doubts about him faded as the morning passed; he seemed harmless and rather endearing.

Looking like innocent tourists—which three of us certainly were not—we wandered clear across town to the old hospital area, while Schmidt spouted statistics about every building we passed. There are some lovely old buildings in the big hospital court; some of them are now used as a youth hostel. After the rather oppressive antiquity of the Schloss and its somber inhabitants, I enjoyed seeing the kids swarming around, weighted down by their backpacks but having a marvelous time anyhow. Sure, most of them were pretty dirty by the time they got halfway across Europe; cleanliness is a luxury when you are short on money and even shorter on time. Like any other mixed group, they had their share of no-goods, but most of them were nice kids seeing the world—pilgrims, of a kind. As we stood there, a pair of them emerged from the unadorned facade of the early Gothic church. I admit it was hard to determine their sex; but with their long locks and faded clothes they didn’t look as incongruous as one might have expected.

Outside the hospital stands one of the more formidable of the city gates. George, who was visiting Rothenburg for the first time, seemed fascinated by the fortifications. He nodded approvingly at the sections of wall that stretched out from both sides of the gate.

“They wouldn’t stand up against artillery, but I’d hate to attack the place with anything less. A roofed walkway all around for the defenders—arrow slits, I suppose, on the outer wall…?”

“That is correct,” Schmidt said. “They are proud of their wall, it is one of the best preserved in Europe.”

“Can you walk along it?”

It was a stupid question; we could see at least a dozen people up above, walking or leaning over the wooden rail that fenced the walkway on the town side. But Schmidt answered seriously, “To be sure you can. The walk is kept in repair.”

“But not now,” Tony said. “Where’s this restaurant? I’m starved.”

We had an excellent lunch, which included one glass of beer too many for me. Schmidt was glassy-eyed; he had eaten everything he could get his hands on, including a couple of extra platters of heavy dark bread. He announced his intention of taking a nap, and I had to admit it sounded like a good idea.

“I’m going to walk some more,” said Tony, with a meaningful glance at me. “See you later.”

He intended, of course, to search out the town archives. I really meant to look for the library, to keep my part of our bargain. But it was a hot day, and my stone-walled room was nice and cool, and the bed was soft. I didn’t wake up till Tony banged on the door, and I discovered I had just time enough to assume my best bib and tucker for the tea party.

My first sight of the Gräfin’s room at the top of the tower took my breath away. It was full of treasures; there was no sign here of the genteel shabbiness that marked the rest of the Schloss. An eighteenth-century Kabinett, with panels of painted silk, might have been designed by Cuvilliés. Next to it was a writing desk, French by the look of it, that had beautiful brass inlays over its leather surface. The sofa and chairs dated from Ludwig I; crimson brocade seats bore the Drachenstein arms in gold, and the wood was gilded. The Gräfin had a weakness for gilt, but she tolerated crasser metals; the massive silver tea service on the table looked like Huguenot craftsmanship. I have seen poorer work behind glass in several museums. The place was rather like a museum, a selection of the best of Schloss Drachenstein. Only the hangings at the window were new. They were expensive looking, made of crimson fabric as heavy as felt, embroidered with — you guessed it — gold threads.

I have been told, by critics, that I have a nasty suspicious mind. The sight of that collection brought out my worst suspicions. If these pieces were representative of the original furnishings of the Schloss, then what had happened to the rest of the furniture and ornaments? And why were the surviving goodies all gathered here in the Gräfin’s lair? She might at least share them with her neice, to whom they probably belonged legally. I have seen maids’ rooms better furnished than Irma’s shabby quarters.

I turned from my appraisal to meet the Gräfin’s ironical eye. If she knew what I was thinking — and I wouldn’t have been surprised to discover that she could read minds — she made no comment. She indicated the tall Englishwoman, who was perched on the sofa beside the tea service.

“My dear friend, Miss Burton.”

Miss Burton shook hands with us. Tony’s eyes widened when her bony fist clamped over his. Thus warned, and uninhibited by his archaic notions of courtesy, I was able to give Miss Burton a worthy grip when she tried to squash my fingers. She gasped. When she sat down again, her cheekbones were an ugly rust color, and Tony shook his head at me. He was right; we should keep on amicable terms with the Gräfin as long as possible, and antagonizing her dear friend wouldn’t help. But the two women, who were unappealing separately, gave me the creeps when I saw them together. They only needed a third to qualify for the blasted heath bit in Macbeth. Somebody had to keep them in line, and that somebody wouldn’t be Tony. He’s incapable of talking back to any female over forty. They hypnotize him.

As I expected, Tony was a ready victim for the Gräfin. He stammered like a schoolboy when she spoke to him. Irma fluttered around, speechless and servile, offering plates of cookies. George sat and smiled. Schmidt’s small dark eyes darted from one face to the next in open curiosity. I was waiting for a chance to ask the Gräfin about the Schloss library. I had a valid excuse for being interested in historical records, and the less sneaking I had to do, the less chance there was of being caught in a place I had no business being in. But before I found my opening, Miss Burton, who had been eyeing Tony like a hungry tiger, interrupted her friend in the middle of a long speech about the antiquity, nobility, and all-around virtue of the House of Drachenstein.

“Elfrida, I believe this young man is a sensitive. Perhaps we should make use of him to-night.”

Tony, who didn’t know what the woman meant, and who thought the worst, looked horrified. The Gräfin smiled.

“Miss Burton is a student of the occult,” she explained.

“Oh. Oh, God,” said Tony, looking, if possible, even more aghast. “Look here — I mean, I’m no sensitive, if that’s what you call it. In fact — in fact—”

He looked hopefully at me.

I contemplated the ceiling. I knew his views on spiritualism and the occult; they are profane. He has a morbid passion for ghost stories of all kinds, but only because he can suspend his disbelief for the purpose of entertainment. Torn between the requirements of courtesy and a thorough distaste, Tony looked in vain for rescue. He wasn’t going to get any help from me. It was high time he learned to stand up for himself.

“In fact,” Tony mumbled servilely, “I’m pretty ignorant about the whole subject.”

“Ignorance is not uncommon,” said Miss Burton, with a sigh. “Dreadful, when one considers the urgency…. But I feel sure, Professor, that you are mediumistic. Look, Elfrida, at his hands… his eyes… There is a certain delicacy….”

Tony was beet-red.

“But,” he croaked.

“Many mediums are unaware of their gift until they try,” said Miss Burton, giving him a severe look.

There was a hideous pause. George, shaking with suppressed laughter, gave me a look that invited me to share his amusement. Schmidt was sitting bolt upright, his teacup in one hand, a half-eaten cookie in the other. He caught my eye; and to my surprise, he said seriously, “The Schloss is an admirable place for such research, Fräulein Doktor. There is a strong residue of psychic matter in a spot where so many have lived and died, loved and hated.”

“You are a psychic researcher?” I asked.

“Only as an amateur.”

Miss Burton broke in.

“If we can obtain only a moderate degree of cooperation from Professor Lawrence, the least one might expect from a gentleman and a—”

I knew she was going to say it, and I knew I would laugh out loud if she did. It was time for me to be ingratiating; all this was leading up to something, and Schmidt’s attitude made me very curious indeed.

“I’m sure Tony will be glad to help,” I said, before Miss Burton could say “scholar.” “We all will. Don’t you need a certain number of people to make up a circle?”

The countess turned to look at me.

“How kind,” she murmured.

“Not at all,” I murmured back. “I’ve always been fascinated by the occult.”

Tony made an uncouth noise which I ignored. I swept on, “One seldom finds an opportunity to hold a séance in such ideal surroundings. An old castle…a very old family…”

“The Drachensteins trace their lineage unbroken to the ninth century,” said the countess. “In 1525 the original line died out, but the title was assumed by a cousin.”

“Died out? What happened to Count Burckhardt’s daughter?”

Tony’s question was followed by a silence which gave me time to think of all the things I was going to do to him for letting his big mouth loose again. In my opinion it was too early in the game to let the Gräfin know the full extent of our knowledge of, and interest in, the family of Graf Burckhardt. But since the damage was done, I decided to make the most of it.

“As a prominent American historian of the Reformation,” I said pompously, “Professor Lawrence is particularly interested in the sixteenth century.”

“Ah, of course.” You couldn’t call the gleam in the Gräfin’s eye a twinkle, but she was definitely amused. I found that expression even less attractive than her normal look. “No doubt you, too, are a prominent historian of the Reformation, Miss Bliss? It is a pleasure to find foreign scholars so well informed about our local history.

“As for Graf Burckhardt, he did indeed leave an infant daughter. She was taken into the family of her second cousin, who became Graf Georg. She later married his eldest son.”

So that, I thought, was the physical link between Konstanze and Irma, who was the direct descendant of Graf George and his wife. Funny thing, genetics….

“You said fifteen hundred twenty-five?” Tony tried to look casual. “That was the time of the Peasants’ Revolt. Was Graf Burckhardt killed in the fighting?”

“How strange that you should not know that, with your interest in the family,” the Gräfin said. “No, he was not, although he fought valiantly in Würzburg for his liege, the bishop. He died of a virulent fever, it is said, soon after his return home.”

George leaned forward in his chair.

“What happened to Burckhardt’s wife?”

The Gräfin grinned at him. It was a full-fledged grin, not a smile, and it was a singularly ugly expression.

“Of course you would be interested in her—after last night.”

Miss Burton gasped.

“Elfrida! Why didn’t you tell me? Has the countess returned again?”