The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fic

Dead of Winter



Richard A. Lupoff





From the aftermath of the First World War to events leading up to the Second World War. As with the previous story, the following is based on certain characters and events that really happened. It concerns Nazi activities in the United States in preparation for the war effort in Europe.

Richard A. Lupoff is as well known for his science fiction as for his crime and mystery novels. His first book was a study of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Master of Adventure (1965), and Lupoff became something of a master of adventure himself, but never with anything formulaic. Such books as One Million Centuries (1967) and Sacred Locomotive Flies (1971) rang the changes within science fiction, whilst Into the Aether (1974) was one of the early works of steampunk. A number of his books have been pastiches or tributes to some of Lupoff’s favourite authors, such as Lovecraft’s Book (1985), and readers will, of course, recognize the origins of his detective, Caligula Foxx, in the following story. Another Foxx story, “Cinquefoil” will be found in Lupoff’s collection Killer’s Dozen (2010).





Almost anyone would have been embarrassed to answer the doorbell wearing Buck Rogers pyjamas. Andy Winslow, however, felt no shame. His attitude was that anybody who sounded the brass gryphon knocker on the front door of Caligula Foxx’s house on West Adams Place had better be prepared for whatever sight he encountered. Especially if said caller arrived on a Sunday morning and sounded the knocker at the ungodly hour of – Winslow checked his Longines wristwatch and decided – well, it might not be such an ungodly hour at that, but it was Sunday morning.

Foxx was upstairs in his Colonial-era four-poster. The entire house was furnished with antiques, none of them dating from later than 1789 – when James Madison was said to have written the Bill of Rights on the polished maple desk that now served as Foxx’s daily working surface.

Reuter had prepared Foxx’s daily ration of steel-cut Irish oatmeal, moistened with a dab of freshly churned butter and a dash of heavy cream, and sweetened with a touch of maple sugar and cinnamon. A huge mug of Jamaican blue mountain coffee, seasoned with ground chicory root, Louisiana style, rested steaming on the tray beside the bowl of cereal. An array of Sunday newspapers covered the goose-down quilt on Foxx’s bed, the colourful comic pages set neatly in one pile, the rotogravure magazines in another, and so on through the various news sections of the papers.

No one interrupted the great detective while he was at breakfast, nor while he was reading his newspapers.

Hence, Andy Winslow to the front door.

He peered through the small fan-shaped window in the door but the caller, whoever that was, was nowhere to be seen. A light, early-winter snow had dusted West Adams Place during the night, painting the street itself a sparkling white, turning the graceful elm trees that lined the street into illustrations from a Currier and Ives print.

An automobile sped away, headed west, its exhaust rising in the crystal-like air. Winslow caught only a glimpse of it. He was pretty sure it was a LaSalle coupé and that it had a sticker of some sort, possibly an American eagle, in the back window. But it was gone before he could make a definite identification. Its licence plate, in any case, was obscured by snow.

Winslow opened the door.

A uniformed figure slid into the foyer. It was that of a youngster, garbed in military cap, tunic, and boots. As the newcomer collapsed on to the broad-plank floor of the foyer, a narrow streak of blood was drawn the length of the door. Winslow noticed a neat hole in the wood, then turned his attention to the uniformed figure.

He turned the newcomer over, face up. The military cap, knocked askew by the fall, still clung to dark, wavy hair, held there by rubber-tipped bobby pins. Winslow carefully removed the bobby pins and the cap. The hair fell free. The corpse – for there was no doubt in Andy Winslow’s mind that the newcomer was deceased – was that of a young woman, hardly more than a schoolgirl, garbed as a messenger for the Postal Telegraph Company.

A tiny hole, apparently the exit wound of a small-calibre bullet, formed a black circle just above the bridge of her nose. Winslow lifted her head, found a small section of her dark hair stained even darker with blood. Winslow had found the entry wound of the bullet.

A chilly gust swept a sprinkling of snow into the foyer. Winslow set the catch on the front door so he would not be locked out, then stepped on to the rounded brick porch. A bicycle stood leaning against the handrail. A few snowflakes had accumulated on it and more were continuing to do so.

Winslow touched the hole in the door, put his eye to it, and discerned a bullet therein. Apparently the messenger had been shot from behind just as she sounded the knocker. The bullet had penetrated the back of her skull, travelled through her brain, exited via her forehead, and come to rest a half inch deep in the antique polished oak.

A trail of fresh footprints in the new-fallen snow led from the opposite side of the street to the house, and back to the empty space at the curb where the LaSalle had stood. There was also a narrow furrow in the snow, obviously laid down by the bicycle that now leaned against the railing.

It appeared that the shooter had fired from the LaSalle and then walked – or, more likely, run – from the car to the brick porch. Then he had returned to the car and driven away.

Winslow stepped back into the house and closed the door. He could hear the voice of his employer bellowing out a demand. “Come up here, confound you, and tell me what all the abominable racket is about down there!”

Eschewing the small elevator that Foxx had ordered installed for his use, but concealed behind a faux bookcase of Colonial vintage, Winslow sprinted up the broad staircase. He gave Foxx a quick, breathless summary of the occurrence.

Foxx narrowed his eyes, fixing Winslow with a sharp stare. “You have a talent, my boy, for drawing trouble as a bar magnet draws iron filings. All right, phone Dr McClintock. I suppose we’ll have to bring the police into this as well, but let’s get Fergus on the case before those busybodies come snooping around.”

Winslow phoned the doctor and sketched out the situation for him. Fergus McClintock, MD, said that he’d be right over. Andy said, “You’d better drag your carcass out of that bed, Caligula, and put on some clothes before the doc gets here.”

Foxx took a large swallow of coffee, gave out a sound that was a cross between a sigh of pleasure and a grunt of resignation, and began the process of climbing from his four-poster. “You’d better get out of that funny page-outfit yourself,” he growled at Andy Winslow.

Winslow was out of his pyjamas, into street clothes, and back downstairs before Foxx was fully out of his bed. The casualty lay unmoving where she had fallen just inside the front door. Musing that it never hurt to be certain, Winslow laid his fingers on the messenger’s neck, expecting no pulse and cooling, clammy corpse-flesh. Instead, he felt warmth and detected a faint pulse.

He ran to fetch a blanket and laid it over the messenger, leaving only her face uncovered. He lowered his cheek to a point a fraction of an inch from her face and detected a faint susurrus of breath from her nostrils. He ran to the bathroom and brought a damp cloth to lay across her forehead, covering the ugly black circle where the bullet had emerged.

By the time Dr McClintock arrived, Caligula Foxx had completed dressing and arrived on the ground floor via his personal elevator. He strode to the motionless form on the polished wooden floor.

The door knocker sounded. Andy Winslow, who had been kneeling beside the wounded messenger, sprang upright and admitted the iron-haired, red-cheeked doctor. Andy took Dr McClintock’s homburg and winter coat. Reuter had also arrived, emerging from the kitchen. He accepted the doctor’s accoutrements from Winslow and disappeared.

Dr McClintock made a cursory examination of the supine messenger, then rose to his feet. “This is truly amazing. Not unprecedented, but still most unusual.”

Foxx sputtered. “Never mind the commentary, Fergus. What have you found? Is she alive? Dead? Speak up.”

Dr McClintock shook his head in disbelief. “This woman has been shot. Not from very close range – there are no powder burns around the entry wound. I would say that the bullet was a .22 calibre. So small a round punched a hole in her skull. A larger bullet, a .38 or .44, would have smashed the skull at point of entry, but this .22 or whatever it was punched cleanly in.”

Andy Winslow interrupted the doctor’s monologue. “Is she alive, though?”

Dr McClintock nodded emphatically, his steel-wool eyebrows working up and down. “Absolutely. Mr Winslow, summon an ambulance at once.”

The call was made quickly.

While they awaited the arrival of the ambulance, Dr McClintock asked Andy Winslow what had happened and Winslow repeated his story. “I think the driver of that LaSalle automobile shot the messenger. The double set of footprints that you mention would fit with that, Mr Winslow.”

Andy Winslow rubbed his chin, his eyes still fixed on the softly breathing woman. “But you said that the shot was not fired from very close to the victim.”

“I did indeed.” Dr McClintock pursed his lips. “Most likely the miscreant fired from across the street, then ran to the house, performed some brief task, ran back and drove away. Would there have been time for that, do you think? Did you hear the shot fired?”

Andy Winslow said, “No, I was in the lavatory brushing my teeth. I only came to the door when I heard the knocker sound. A .22 fired from across the street might not have been audible even though the door knocker was.”

Caligula Foxx had found a seat in an antique ladder-backed chair, from which he observed the proceedings. Now he gestured Andy Winslow to him, murmured a rapid series of instructions in his ear, and sent him on his way.

Winslow left the house. In moments, the doors of the two-car garage behind the residence – once a Colonial-era carriage house – were opened and a yellow Auburn roadster, its folding top and canvas side-windows in place against the cold, rolled forth. The roadster disappeared up West Adams Place, Andy Winslow at the wheel.

Back in the house Dr McClintock tilted his head questioningly at Caligula Foxx. “Is that correct procedure, Caligula? I imagine Lieutenant Burke will be arriving shortly, along with the ambulance. Shouldn’t Mr Winslow have stayed here?”

But by now Andy Winslow had reached the office of the Postal Telegraph Company not far from Caligula Foxx’s house. He drew his roadster to the curb, leaped from the car, ran up a short flight of terrazzo steps and burst through the door. He demanded to see the manager and was introduced to one Oswald Hicks, a Cuban-looking individual wearing a business suit, a Clark Gable moustache, and wavy black hair.

Andy Winslow identified himself and described the incident at West Adams Place.

Hicks’s eyes widened. He raised a carefully manicured, mahogany-coloured hand to his face. “Come with me!”

He led Andy Winslow back to the public office, asked the clerk on duty to tell him who had carried messages in the past hour and had not returned. The clerk didn’t have to look it up. “Not much business this morning, Mr Hicks. Martha’s the only messenger on duty. Martha Mayhew. She went out” – he checked his log book – “forty minutes ago. Night letter going to a Mr Foxx on West Adams.”

Hicks turned to Andy Winslow. “You’re sure she’s alive?”

Andy grunted an affirmative.

“And you summoned an ambulance?”

Andy repeated the sound.

“They would probably take her to St Ambrose’s. Let’s go there, sir.” He left the clerk in charge of the office and they headed for the street. Andy Winslow led the way to his roadster and piloted the Auburn through quiet, Sunday-morning streets, to pull in at the hospital. Martha Mayhew had been admitted and taken on a rolling gurney to the newly established radiology laboratory, pride of St Ambrose’s medical staff.

There was little for either of them to do at St Ambrose’s.

While Dr McClintock stood by, a young intern explained, they had taken X-rays of the patient’s head. The foreign object – the intern did not refer to it as a bullet – had entered at the rear of the patient’s skull, had passed through the channel between the two lobes of her brain, and had exited through her forehead.

It was a thousand to one chance, the intern said, then corrected himself, a million to one chance. A fraction to the left or right and severe, possibly fatal, brain damage would have resulted. But, as it was, the only concern was possible infection. The patient would be monitored, the entry and exit wounds kept clean, sulpha drugs applied if necessary. The entry and exit wounds were small enough to heal without further surgery. Barring the unexpected, she should be released in a few days, with only a small round scar on her forehead to show for her near encounter with the grim reaper.

Hicks asked, “How can that be? Thank heaven Miss Mayhew is alive, but as you describe the wound, Doctor – this is incredible.”

The intern, looking almost like a child costumed to play doctors, looked from Hicks to Winslow and back. “You know the brain is composed of two hemispheres. They’re quite separate from each other, connected only by a sort of bridge or highway, the corpus calossum. It seems that the object passed between the hemispheres and above the, ah, bridge. It’s not unprecedented, sir. We studied a far worse case in med school. Back in 1848 a poor fellow named Phineas Gage was tamping down an explosive for a construction project. The dynamite went off and drove the tamping rod through his cheek, up through one eye, through his brain, and out the top of his skull. You’d think he was a goner for sure but he recovered and lived a normal life.”

*

Shortly, the patient was in a private room. She had regained consciousness but had no recollection of being shot. “I parked my bike and climbed the steps. I remember I had the knocker in one hand and Mr Foxx’s night letter in the other. Then I – I don’t remember anything until I woke up in this bed.”

“You had the night letter in your hand?” Andy Winslow asked.

“Yes, I remember distinctly. I had it in my hand and—”

At this point the door of the hospital room swung open and Lieutenant Adam Burke strode into the room, followed by a couple of uniformed officers. He glared at Andy Winslow. “You left the scene of a crime, Winslow.”

Andy looked innocently at the cop. “I did?”

“You know damned well you did. Who the hell do you think you are, letting a corpse into the house and then leaving her there on the floor to die.”

Andy grinned. “What corpse would that be, Lieutenant?”

“This one!” Burke jabbed a thumb at the slight figure on the bed.

“You mean Miss Mayhew, Lieutenant? I don’t think Miss Mayhew is dead. Are you dead, Miss Mayhew?”

The slim woman managed a wan, tiny smile. “I don’t think I’m dead. I don’t even feel sick. I do have a dreadful headache, though.”

Andy Winslow grinned, “You’re entitled to that.” Then, to the cop, “It’s true that Miss Mayhew was shot at Caligula Foxx’s house. I thought it was more important to make sure that she was all right, than to wait around for New York’s Slowest— er, pardon me, I mean New York’s Finest – to arrive.”

Burke frowned. “You rode in the ambulance with her?”

“No, I took my car.” He didn’t mention his detour via the Postal Telegraph office, but then he hadn’t exactly lied, either.

“And you, sir?” Burke whirled towards Oswald Hicks.

Hicks identified himself.

“The victim worked for you?” Burke asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“What was she doing at Mr Foxx’s house on a Sunday morning?”

“Postal Telegraph prides itself on its service, Lieutenant, seven days a week. A night letter came in from London, England, and Miss Mayhew was despatched to deliver it to the addressee.”

Burke stared at the slim figure beneath the bedclothes, then turned back to Hicks. “You always use girls for this kind of work? Isn’t it dangerous?”

Hicks said, “Would that bullet have bounced off the messenger’s skull if he’d been a boy instead of a girl?”

Burke growled. “All right, never mind. We’ll need statements from all concerned. That’s all for now.”

He strode from the hospital room, followed by his retinue. As soon as the police detachment was out of earshot, Andy Winslow asked Martha Mayhew if she’d mind his looking through her Postal Telegraph uniform, hanging now in the closet. Martha Mayhew managed a barely audible assent.

Winslow checked out the clothing, then turned back to her and to Oswald Hicks. “It isn’t there.”

“What isn’t there?” Hicks asked.

“The night letter. The message that Miss Mayhew was attempting to deliver to Caligula Foxx.”

“Could she have dropped it at the house?”

“I would have found it when I answered the door.”

Hicks rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I don’t suppose she would have left it in the basket of her bicycle.”

Winslow said, “I’ll check on that when I get back to the house but I doubt it.” He hadn’t told Hicks specifically about the LaSalle coupé that had pulled away from the house just as he answered Martha Mayhew’s knock, but that had been part of his narrative to Lieutenant Burke. “I have a feeling that whoever shot Miss Mayhew escaped in that LaSalle car. And I have a feeling that he committed the crime in order to prevent her from delivering it to Foxx. Most likely, he has the night letter now.”

Oswald Hicks said, “In any case, I think I’d best get back to my office. There will be paperwork to do, both for the company and for the police.”

Andy Winslow offered him a ride back to his office. As they made their way through the quiet streets, Hicks volunteered, “We’ll still deliver the night letter, you know. Postal Telegraph takes pride in its reliable performance.”

Winslow was startled. “How can you do that?”

“Oh, we have a copy of the message on file at the office. Two, in fact. It’s standard practice. And if we didn’t have it, there would be the original in London. They’d have to retransmit it to us, but that wouldn’t take very long.”

At the Postal Telegraph office Hicks located the night letter. It had been typed out and a flimsy sheet remained in the overnight file folder.

Winslow stared at it. The message was a lengthy one. “I’ll need to take this with me.”

Oswald Hicks assented.

By the time Winslow pulled his yellow Auburn into the garage at West Adams Place and entered the house, a police evidence team had removed the .22 calibre bullet from the front door. The ever-competent Reuter had filled the hole with quick-hardening putty. He was already at work staining the putty to match the surrounding wood.

Caligula Foxx, resplendent in his usual glaring aquamarine silk shirt, flannel trousers and foulard-pattern dressing gown, was seated behind his gigantic glass-covered desk, reading the Sunday funny pages. A bottle of Teplitz-Schonau ale stood at his elbow.

He lowered the colourful newsprint, tipped the bottle of ale into a tall glass and sipped judiciously. He wiped his lips with a bandanna and looked at Winslow.

“Tell me everything.”

Winslow repeated his story, reporting on the condition of Miss Mayhew.

Foxx nodded approvingly. “She is an innocent child, Andy. Whatever deviltry is afoot, she did not deserve to be attacked in this manner. It almost gives one to believe in divine intervention to learn that she could take a bullet through the skull and suffer nothing worse than a headache.”

“Almost,” Winslow said. “But, if God got into the act, he could have made the gun misfire and blow off the shooter’s hand, couldn’t he?”

Foxx grinned sardonically. “I should know better than to engage in theological speculation with you, my boy. And Lieutenant Burke’s man said that it was a steel-jacketed bullet, so it didn’t break apart in the victim’s brain. And it must have had an extra load of propellant to make it punch its way out and penetrate into our door.”

He leaned back in his oversized chair and drew a breath. “All right then; I detect from your manner that you are holding something back. Spill it, Andy, spill it.”

Winslow reached into his pocket and withdrew a large envelope. It bore the Postal Telegraph logotype – the company’s name set in large, jagged letters that suggested bolts of electricity – in the corner. “This is the message that Miss Mayhew was attempting to deliver when she was shot. I couldn’t find the original in her clothing. I even searched her messenger’s bicycle. I’ve asked Reuter to put it in the garage. They’ll have to come for it themselves if Lieutenant Burke doesn’t want it.”

Foxx nodded and made a humming sound.

Winslow said, “Oswald Hicks, the manager at Postal Telegraph, gave me this copy. I guess the shooter didn’t realize that Postal Telegraph keeps copies.”

Foxx nodded impatiently. “All right, Andy, all right. Read it to me.”

He took a sip of ale, lowered the glass to his desktop, leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and laced his fingers behind his neck, his elbows extending like the antennae of a giant butterfly. To any casual observer, it would appear that Caligula Foxx was treating himself to a nap, but Andy Winslow knew that the rotund detective’s incisive brain was fully on the alert.

“‘Dear Cousin,’” Winslow read, starting on the night letter. “‘I apologize for my dilatory response to your previous communication, but I have been deeply immersed in sensitive work for the crown and for the government of this nation. A personage has asked me to convey his gratitude for the assistance you so brilliantly provided, even from the distance of three thousand miles. The crown and sceptre have been recovered and restored to their proper resting place, and the scoundrels involved in their temporary abduction are in custody.’”

A smile played around the lips of the detective.

Andy Winslow continued to read. “‘You are surely aware that the situation on the Continent continues to deteriorate, as madmen and villains vie for the title of Most Evil Man in Europe. You own country has, to date, escaped involvement but I assure you, cousin, that this will not be the case for very much longer.’”

Winslow paused for breath. Foxx unlaced his fingers and without opening his eyes gestured for Winslow to read further.

“‘You may not have heard of Heinrich Konrad, cousin. Or, come to think of it, I am certain that you do know of him, as he is a native of Maffersdorf bei Reichenberg in Bohemia. Not far, as I recall, from the seat of your own branch of our family, and the place of your birth. Konrad was the leader of the Sudetendeutsch Partei and a campaigner for the recent, vile treaty that led to the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia and the annexation of the Sudetenland by Germany. The Sudetendeutsch Partei no longer exists as a separate entity, and Konrad is now a fully fledged Nazi.

“‘His Majesty’s government, as reported to me by our mutual relative in the Diogenes Club, believes that Konrad was involved in the planning of the recent misfortune at the Tower. He had been in England as a minor functionary of the German embassy. He is no longer in this country. It is my belief that he has entered the United States of America in the guise of a businessman. He travelled as a first class passenger aboard the North German Lloyd liner Leipzig. The name under which he travelled is Bedrich Smetana.

“‘I do not know his mission in the United States, but I would suggest that you contact the American authorities and set them on the qui vivre for this man. In fact, I am of the distinct impression that you are already acquainted with him, so I will not attempt a physical description. It is not entirely impossible that he will be in contact with his nation’s embassy in Washington or its consulates in other cities. Our mutual cousin has also suggested that Konrad is involved in Germany’s war preparations, and her relationship with her Asiatic ally. It is thus possible that Konrad will proceed from New York to the American State of California. He may also have contacts with such groups as Herr Fritz Kuhn’s German–American Bund or the Ku Klux Klan. You are doubtless aware that there are also a number of supposed German–American Friendship Societies or social clubs that are actually dens of fifth columnists.

“‘Be careful, dear cousin. This scoundrel is totally ruthless. Feel free to call upon me at any time if you feel that I can be of assistance.’”

Andy Winslow folded the document and laid it on his employer’s desk. “That’s it,” he announced. “Oh, and the signature—”

Caligula Foxx grumbled. “I wondered if you would bother with that bit of information. Shall we play a guessing game, or would you be so kind as to tell me.”

“Sorry, Mr Foxx. It was signed, Sexton Blake.”

Andy Winslow ran his finger down the sheet of paper. “That’s a lot of words, Caligula. Must have cost Blake a bundle to send it over the cable.”

Foxx pursed his lips, then sipped at his ale. “I wouldn’t worry about Cousin Sexton’s financial status. He drives that wondrous bullet-proof Silver Ghost, keeps his man Tinker on call, and feeds his bloodhound ground porterhouse. He can afford a few extra pounds sterling.” Foxx studied the golden beverage remaining in his glass. “Very well, Andy, here are your instructions. No, you will not need your pad and pencil. Just pay close attention to what I tell you, and then we shall take a break from our labours and sample Reuter’s no doubt excellent Sunday luncheon.”

*

Following a light meal of lobster bisque, spinach salad, and steak tartare garnished with tiny cherry tomatoes and topped off with espresso and biscotti, Winslow set to work. He telephoned Jacob Maccabee, whom both he and Foxx regarded as the premier legman in the City of New York, as well as the best-connected with the shadier elements of that metropolis’s demi-monde. They agreed to meet on a bench beneath the statue of one-time Senator Roscoe Conkling in Madison Square Park.

Despite the distance involved, Andy Winslow chose to walk from West Adams Place to Twenty-third Street. The light snowfall had ceased and a bright December sun shone in a sparkling blue sky. When Andy reached the appointed spot, Maccabee had already arrived and brushed the accumulated snow from the bench’s green-painted wooden slats.

Maccabee was a man of less than average height, dark complexion, heavy eyebrows, huge dark eyes, and a distinctly Semitic nose. He wore a nondescript overcoat, slightly scuffed shoes, and a grey fedora that was starting to show its age. He was perusing a black-covered copy of Mein Kampf, in the original German. He looked up at Andy Winslow. “You seem intrigued by my reading-matter, Andy.”

“Was I so obvious?”

“Know thine enemy, Andy.”

Winslow sat down beside Maccabee.

Maccabee slipped a bookmark into Mein Kampf and turned his full attention to Winslow.

“We had an attempted murder on our doorstep this morning, Jacob.”

“So I heard.”

“Really? So quickly?”

“Word spreads fast around here. You know that New York is just a small town. Maybe the biggest one in this hemisphere, but it’s still a small town at heart. Western Union messenger, wasn’t he?”

“Postal Telegraph, and he was a she.”

Maccabee said, “Oh.” He drew it out into two long syllables.

“And the victim survived?”

Winslow nodded.

“That’s nice. Always happy to hear of a victim coming through alive. He – I mean she – going to be all right?”

“I think so.”

There was a momentary silence as a young couple, out to enjoy the sunny afternoon despite its cold, paused to look up at Roscoe Conkling.

Once they walked on, Maccabee said, “Still, I imagine this would be police business. Does Lieutenant Burke know about it?”

Winslow said, “He does. I’m sure his excellent men will pursue the matter appropriately. It’s the message that the girl was trying to deliver to Foxx that matters to us.”

“Don’t tell me. The message mysteriously disappeared and the sweet girl messenger has no idea who took it or where it went.”

“Exactly.”

“And you want me to find it.”

“No. We have the message. Postal Telegraph had a copy in their files. Foxx has it now.” From memory he summarized the Sexton Blake “Dear Cousin” night letter.

“And so …?”

“I want you to find Heinrich Konrad, aka Bedrich Smetana. Do you think you can do that?”

“What, find one bad Czech in the City of New York? How long do I have to locate this character? And how much is your ever-generous employer willing to pay for my services?”

“Oh, Jake. Wait a minute.” A teenaged girl riding a bright red Schwinn and holding the leash of a black Labrador retriever pedalled past.

“Okay. We need Konrad as fast as we can get him. And you know that Foxx has never quarrelled with you over a bill.”

Jacob Maccabee stood up, slipped the fat copy of Mein Kampf into a copious overcoat pocket, and folded his hands behind his back. “Andy, let’s walk.”

They started along the tarmac path. The early snow had melted off the macadam but it remained on the grassy areas and the trees that surrounded the pathways. The effect was a chiaroscuro landscape punctuated by marble plinths bearing statues of half-forgotten statesmen.

“This Konrad fellow is an unpleasant individual, Andy. You know, some of us have more reason to follow events in Europe than others. I’ve seen pictures of Konrad in his Gauleiter’s uniform. I’ve seen the look in his eye.”

He paused, looking up at a statue of Chester Alan Arthur, a rotund former President. “But why is Foxx after this guy? Isn’t that the feds’ business? I imagine J. Edgar Hoover would be interested, to put it mildly.”

Winslow nodded. They started walking again. “I’m not sure what kind of passport Konrad is using now, since the powers sliced up Czechoslovakia and started giving away the pieces. Foxx was born there, you know – in what would become Czechoslovakia, while that country existed. He’s pretty cagey about the details, although there has to be an English branch of the family. Foxx says that Sexton Blake is his cousin, and another famous English sleuth is in his family tree. But he does admit that he was born in Bohemia and could even claim that citizenship if he ever wanted to.”

A breeze came sweeping through the park and a shower of snowflakes dropped from an elm tree on to Winslow and Maccabee.

“Konrad could be a citizen of – what do they call it since the treaty? – the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Or he could just have decided to call himself a German. It hardly matters now, Jake, does it?”

Their conversation was interrupted by a thump. A squirrel, losing its grip on a wind-swept tree limb, had fallen on to the footpath not ten yards from Winslow and Maccabee. The squirrel shook its head in comical imitation of a stunned man, looked around – could a squirrel be embarrassed? – and scampered up a nearby oak.

“Poor creature,” Maccabee grinned. “Doesn’t he know he’s supposed to be happily curled up inside a hollow tree by now?” Then to Winslow, “You mean this is personal?”

Winslow nodded. “I know Caligula Foxx about as well as any living person, I think. After all, I work for him, I live in his house, we dine together. On those rare occasions that he’s willing to leave West Adams, he likes me to drive the Packard. I’ve offered to take him in my Auburn but that’s beneath him, ‘don’t you know’.”

He paused, then added, “Anyway, he still has feelings for the land of his birth. I’m certain of that. He feels that Konrad has sold out their mutual homeland to the Nazis and he’s determined to find out what Konrad is doing in the US. And to stop him!”

Jacob Maccabee exhaled, his warm breath turning white in the frosty air. “I’ll get on to it, Andy. I’ll get some men working on it today. I’ll call a couple of pals on the daily rags and get photos of Konrad. You know, my pal Barney Hopkins got hired away from the Brooklyn Eagle; he’s working for the Herald-Trib now. Or maybe Del Marston at the World-Telly. Well, don’t you worry about that. I’ll get photos made and send some over to you at West Adams.”

The men shook hands. As they parted, Winslow said, “Remember, he entered the US under a false name. I don’t think he’d be calling himself Konrad.”

Maccabee said, “Got it. Relax, pal. Bedrich Smetana. Good Czech name.”

Maccabee headed east from the park; Winslow, west.

Back at West Adams Place Andy Winslow peered into the garage and noted that the Postal Telegraph messenger’s bicycle had been removed. Apparently Lieutenant Burke’s men could do something useful. Andy let himself in, wiped the snow from his shoes, and found Caligula Foxx in the parlour seated before a roaring fire. A Steinway grand piano, its size proportionate to Caligula Foxx’s great bulk, was situated well away from the fireplace. A snifter of cognac stood at Foxx’s elbow. The stack of Sunday papers had migrated from his down-filled comforter to his more than ample lap.

Winslow never ceased to be amazed at Foxx’s ability to absorb the content of every paper from the staid Times and Post, to the wild tabloids – one of which was uppermost on Foxx’s lap. It was the Sunday Mirror. A huge photo of a burning building filled most of the front page, a headline announcing an explosion and fire at a synagogue on Essex Street.

Foxx turned his massive head to greet his assistant. “Ah, Andy. How went it with Mr Maccabee?”

Winslow gave him a report on his meeting with the investigator. “I’ll look forward to seeing the photos of this bozo,” he concluded.

“A nasty piece of work. I have not previously mentioned that I crossed paths with Pan Konrad – I suppose he would prefer Herr Konrad now – towards the end of the Great War. He was serving in Emperor Franz Josef’s army at the time. It was then that I got to know him quite well. One’s loyalties are often strained by the exigencies of war.” Fox rubbed his massive forehead contemplatively. “And of politics,” he added.

Uninvited, Andy sank into a chair facing Foxx. “I didn’t know you’d served in the war.”

Foxx removed the papers from his lap and set them aside. He took a sip of brandy. “Would you like some, Andy? No? Well, not to bore you with excessive detail, but I will say that I did not serve in the war in an official capacity. Or, well, perhaps not exactly in the capacity in which I seemed to serve.” He grinned. “I hope that is not too convoluted an explanation for you.”

Winslow ignored the dig. “But unofficially?”

Foxx smiled. “Yes. I like to think that my modest talents were not entirely wasted. I was a mere lad, you understand. And Pan Konrad was another. We are of an age, you know. In fact, I believe that at one time we competed against each other in schoolboy athletic contests. I disliked Konrad even then. When the war broke out – that was the summer of ’14, of course – I was ready to enlist and offer my services to Franz Josef, he of such tragic memory. But, instead, a court official – I imagine at the instigation of our village priest, but one can never be certain of these things – gave me a ticket to Prague. A ticket to Prague, that lovely city, and an address at which to report.”

Foxx had a faraway look in his eyes.

“Imagine, Andy, a mere stripling lad, a vysokó škola u enic – nowadays we would say, a high-school scholar – entrusted with missions that would have resulted in my immediate execution, had I been captured by the Tsar’s men.”

“And you met Konrad then?”

“Andy, I thought that Pan Konrad was a loyal subject of the Emperor – as I was. Little did I know, my boy. I carry a scar to this day – you have never seen it, nor will you, I trust – but I bear that scar to this day, and I will carry it with me even when I go to meet my maker. A scar, courtesy of Heinrich Konrad.”

“And now he’s calling himself Bedrich Smetana,” Winslow supplied.

Foxx held his brandy snifter and gazed through it at the dancing flames. He was in the habit, Andy Winslow knew, of changing the subject at any time, with little or no notice. And yet, when one reviewed the conversation afterwards, a relevance in Foxx’s words was always apparent. Now he asked, quite suddenly, “Did you happen to pass by Wanamaker’s on your way home from your meeting with Maccabee?”

“I did, Caligula.”

“Have they put up their light display? Surely they would have done so by now. I had not yet got to the customary photographs of it in the rotogravure sections when I was so rudely interrupted this morning.”

“Yes, it’s up. It’s truly magnificent, Caligula. I would have been home sooner but I stopped to admire the lights. And the children, of course. Swarms of them, with beaming parents, come to look at the colourful lights, and wreaths, and trees. And of course, the presents.”

“Well, Andy, I’m glad that it snowed today. That would add to the children’s pleasure. But now,” – he lifted an inch-thick sheaf of papers off the larger stack – “to return to the unpleasantness of Heinrich Konrad. I have here a list of events in the city, planned by Herr Kuhn’s German–American Bund, and other organizations of its ilk. I want you to study these and coordinate your efforts with those of Jacob Maccabee. Surely Pan Konrad will be at some of them. You will need to be there as well.”

“Then we’re not giving this to Jacob Maccabee?”

“Andy, Andy.” Foxx heaved a great sigh. Considering his bulk, it would have done justice to a rugby squad. “I have the greatest admiration for Jacob and his little band of merry men. And women.”

He paused to lace his fingers, this time across his bulbous abdomen.

“But I believe in casting more than one line into the stream when I set out to catch a fish. Yes. Heinrich Konrad is a very slippery and elusive fish, but I mean to catch him if I can. Jacob will do his work. You will do yours.”

He shuffled the papers in his lap. You’d have thought there was no order to them, and perhaps there was not; but, shortly, Foxx’s surprisingly sensitive fingers emerged with a slickly printed section of a Sunday publication.

“Here is a list of events over the next few days, Andy. Most of them are society dances, weddings and birth announcements. But there are also cultural gatherings. Buried among the concerts and art exhibitions are events scheduled by groups with which Pan Konrad would surely be in sympathy, and to which I would be astonished if he were not invited.”

He fixed his assistant with a sharp look.

“Do you think you could pass for a Nazi sympathizer, Herr Winslow?”

Andy Winslow leaped to his feet. He clicked his heels, gave a mock stiff-armed salute, and barked, “Sieg heil!”

Fox said, “Pretty good, Andy. You might want to practice a bit more. But that wasn’t bad.” Then Foxx made one of his lightning-like transitions. “Have you seen the lovely Miss Rose Palmer lately, my boy?”

“Of course.” Winslow paused. “Of course,” he repeated. “We see each other from time to time.”

“A most competent and talented young lady,” Foxx said. “And quite attractive, I should say.”

“I wouldn’t quarrel with that.”

“Very well, then. Here’s what you are to do. I am planning a little holiday supper for tomorrow evening. While you were conversing with Jacob Maccabee this afternoon, I met with Reuter and planned the menu du soir. A very small gathering, you understand. Strictly informal, no need to dress. You will invite Jacob and an associate of his choice. I trust you to communicate with Jacob. And of course Miss Palmer and yourself will be present. Eight o’clock promptly, cocktails and supper.”

Andy Winslow said, “Okay. I’ll take care of that. What else?”

Foxx rattled the slick section of the newspaper. It was part of The New York Journal-American. He poked a carefully manicured finger at a column of event notices. “‘The Beethoven–Wagner Cultural Institute is holding a luncheon meeting at the Blaue Gans Restaurant on Duane Street this Wednesday: reading of the minutes, a heimatlich meal, good Cherman bier, and the introduction of a special guest-speaker from the Heimat.’ I have a feeling that the special guest-speaker will be Herr Konrad. The meeting is open to all like-minded patriots.”

“Sounds pretty dull to me. You know Count Basie and Billie Holiday are more my speed. I just don’t understand that longhair opera stuff, Caligula.”

Foxx lowered the newspaper and lifted his brandy. He took a sip of the beverage, then returned the snifter to its place. “Andrew, your musical taste, execrable though it may be, is your own concern. I will not engage in debate over the matter. But the Beethoven–Wagner Cultural Institute is not a music appreciation society. I assure you of that. When you get there you will find out what I mean. You still carry that little popgun that I gave you, do you not?”

Winslow tapped his chest. “Sweet little Beretta 1934. Not that I’ve had to use it very often.”

“Nor would I wish you to. But when the time comes, do not hesitate. And now,” Foxx stacked the Sunday newspapers carefully beside his chair, drew a golden turnip from a pocket and examined it, then repeated, “and now, I shall retire to my greenhouse and assure myself that the dear roses are safely enjoying their winter hibernation.”

*

Martha Mayhew was sitting up in bed when Andy Winslow entered her hospital room. She looked about a thousand per cent better than she had the day before. Which is to say, she looked like a young woman with a bandaged forehead rather than a wax dummy or a corpse waiting to be transported to the morgue. She was holding a movie fan magazine, slowly turning the pages of photos of Greta Garbo and Myrna Loy, Gary Cooper and Robert Montgomery, stopping in between to study ads for cosmetics and shampoos.

Winslow reminded her of who he was and she managed a smile of acknowledgement. She said that she was feeling better today. She also told him that she was starting to remember the previous day’s events. “I was trying to deliver a night letter to your house.”

“Yes. To my boss.”

“I’d come from the Postal Telegraph office on my bicycle. I’m trying to save enough money for college.”

“You were shot on our doorstep.”

“Next thing I knew, I was here.” She laid her hand on the bed-sheet when she said here. “But I can remember what happened before I was shot.”

Winslow nodded encouragement.

“I was pedalling carefully because the new snow was slippery and I didn’t want to skid. There was hardly any traffic, so I steered over near the curb. I noticed a car parked across the street with somebody sitting in it, and the motor running – I could see the exhaust.”

“Did you notice what kind of car?”

She started to shake her head but stopped and raised a hand to her temple. “Wow, that hurts!” She drew a couple of breaths, then went on. “It was a closed car, I think a coupé. A dark colour. I didn’t notice the brand.”

“A LaSalle?”

“I’m sorry. I really didn’t notice. But I saw inside a little bit. There were two men. They were talking to each other, but when I pedalled up they stopped, and one of them rolled down his window and talked to me.”

Winslow waited.

“He asked if it was cold enough for me. You know the old joke. ‘Cold enough for you?’ ‘Hot enough for you?’ ‘Wet enough for you?’ I’m from Indiana, Mr Winslow. I know all about cold and hot and wet. I said it was just fine, I love winter and snow. The man said, ‘How about a ride, we can put your bicycle in the trunk, you’ll be warm.’ I said I was nearly there, but thank you anyway. And I was nearly there. I was looking at the house numbers on West Adams and I turned up the footpath and leaned my bike against the railing and reached for the door knocker; that was the last I remember until I woke up in here.”

Andy Winslow started to ask another question but Martha Mayhew dropped the movie magazine and lay back in her bed. “I’m very tired.”

Winslow said, “That’s all right. You’re doing very well.” He started for the door, then turned back. “One more question, Miss Mayhew, and I’ll leave you. Could you identify either man? By his appearance or anything else?”

She closed her eyes and he thought she was going to sleep, but she opened her eyes again and said, “He was wearing glasses. Round glasses with metal rims – the one who talked to me. And his hair; his hair came down to a point, a … a … what they call a widow’s peak, you know? And he spoke with an accent. Some kind of European accent.”

*

Andy Winslow had picked up Rose Palmer early at her Sutton Place apartment. She wore a pale green chiffon dress that set off her white shoulders and flaming hair; darker green, elbow-length gloves, a silver fox jacket, and high-heel pumps completed her ensemble. They stopped at the Carlyle for cocktails and a medley of Cole Porter melodies, then proceeded to West Adams Place.

By the time they arrived there, a full moon shed ice-cold light on the frigid scene. They hurried up the steps to the front door. Earlier in the day Reuter had laid a fire. Jacob Maccabee and his companion were already present. The fire was crackling. Longhair music – the kind Winslow disliked – oozed from concealed loudspeakers in the corners of the room.

Jacob Maccabee and his companion were seated on the brocade sofa near the fire. Jacob wore a pinstripe suit, white-on-white shirt, maroon diamond-patterned tie. His dark complexion and saturnine features looked positively satanic in the light of dancing flames.

Foxx made introductions.

Maccabee’s companion was a broad-shouldered woman of middle years. She wore her blonde hair in long braids, wound around her head, and had on a brown dress that did little to hide her full figure. Rubies, or at least red, gem-cut stones, sparkled at her ears and throat and wrists. Her name was Lisalotte Schmidt.

Reuter’s wife, Helga, served hors d’oeuvres. Foxx himself rose from his favourite chair to offer beverages – a rare event, Winslow noted.

After a time Helga Reuter returned to announce the meal, and the party moved from the parlour to the dining salon.

The meal consisted of alternating hot and cold courses: a red-pepper soup of Reuter’s own devising, a cold asparagus salad, small portions of fillet of sole in lemon sauce, tiny portions of sherbet to clear the pallet, noisettes d’agneau with small roasted potatoes and legumes, and for dessert Reuter’s own apple pie served hot with home-churned vanilla-bean ice cream.

During the meal it had become obvious to Andy Winslow that Lisalotte’s English, while fluent, was not that of a native speaker. Her accent bore a distinct North German harshness.

When the meal had ended, Caligula Foxx offered a humidor stocked with dark red Cameroon Diademas. Jacob Maccabee accepted one – as did Lisalotte Schmidt, to Andy Winslow’s surprise. Rose Palmer declined the smoke, as did Andy. An ancient Bodegas Gutierrez Oloroso sherry was also served.

Foxx blew a stream of blue-grey smoke towards the room’s high ceiling. He turned to the investigator. “Jacob, you have prints of the photographs provided by our friend Barney Hopkins. Would you be so kind as to pass them around.”

The photographs were crisp and glossy. One was apparently a studio portrait. It showed a man apparently of Foxx’s age. He wore a dark suit, white shirt, dark tie. A small swastika pin was visible on his lapel. The face was long and not altogether unhandsome. The most notable feature was his jet black hair, which he wore cut short. The hair had receded from his brow above the eyes but protruded forward in an extreme widow’s peak. He wore round, steel-rimmed spectacles. A point of light was reflected sharply in each lens.

The second photo was neither as formally posed nor as sharply focused as the first; in it, the man in the first photo could be seen standing in a small group. All were similarly garbed in grey military uniforms with peaked caps. All of them were smiling as if they had just accomplished an important and rewarding task. All of them wore swastika armbands on their uniforms.

“This is a news photo,” Maccabee explained. “Came from Barney Hopkins’s paper’s photo library. It’s our boy and some comrades celebrating the reunion of Sudetenland with the Fatherland just a few weeks ago. Aren’t they all a happy little crew?”

“The fellow with the devilish hair is one Heinrich Konrad,” Foxx stated. “He and I were comrades – after a fashion – in the Great War. He is now my mortal enemy. He arrived in the United States using the nom de guerre of Bedrich Smetana.”

“Dopey name,” Andy Winslow commented.

“Not really,” Foxx corrected him. “I would say, rather, that Pan Konrad is thumbing his nose at me. He must have known that I would find out he was in New York, and he has chosen a name that only a fellow Bohemian would recognize. Or a lover of fine music. Being neither, Andy, you could hardly be expected to get the joke.”

“Okay, Caligula, so I don’t know this Bedford Stuyvesant guy or whoever he is, but I do recognize the gink in the photos.”

That created a sensation.

“Blast you, Andrew, why didn’t you say so?”

“Caligula, I just did.”

“Double blast you! Out with it! You recognize Heinrich Konrad? Had you seen his photo in the newspapers?”

Andy Winslow shook his head. “I was up at the hospital earlier today visiting Miss Mayhew. She’s getting her memory back. She described two men in a car who offered her a lift on her way here from Postal Telegraph. One of them was this bozo.”

He picked up the portrait photograph and snapped Heinrich Konrad on the nose with his fingernail.

Jacob Maccabee made a humming noise. “Mr Foxx, this is all very interesting, but you haven’t given me my assignment.”

Foxx repeated the information he’d given Andy Winslow about the planned luncheon at the Blaue Gans. “I want Heinrich Konrad in this house. I want to confront that man. I want to find out his mission in this country and I do not want him to be able to accomplish it. Do you understand me?”

Andy Winslow asked, “Why don’t you go to the meeting yourself, Caligula? I’ll warm up the Packard and—”

Foxx’s frown and his angry growl were all the answer Winslow needed. He already knew how much Foxx hated to leave his home. “All right, Caligula. Then why not just invite him over?”

“He would ignore my invitation. No, Andy, we must lure the rat from his hole and into our trap. That will be Miss Schmidt’s job. I have known Konrad for a quarter of a century. I know his taste in many things, including women. He is drawn to women of – pardon me, Miss Schmidt – a certain size and appearance. Large women with long blonde hair worn in braids.”

He turned to the woman in the brown dress. “Did Jacob Maccabee explain your assignment to you? Is this agreeable to you, my dear?”

Lisalotte Schmidt laid a large fist heavily on the table. “He is one of Hitler’s men, this I know. You know they kill people. Mostly Jews they kill, but also others – anyone they choose. My brother Heinz, he was – how do you say it – slow. He was like a child. He did not understand everything but he was a sweet man. He harmed no one. He wanted only to please.”

She shook her head. “They came for him, the Nazis; they said they were taking him to a hospital to make him better, to make him like everyone else. He trusted them, my Heinzie; he went with them, smiling back at me and merrily waving, but it was not to a hospital they took him. It was a camp. They killed him there. Hitler’s men. Men like this Konrad. Yes, I will lure him here, Herr Foxx, Pan Foxx; I will bring to you this foul Nazi rat.”

*

It might have drawn too much attention had they arrived together, so Andy Winslow and Rose Palmer, Jacob Maccabee and Lisalotte Schmidt walked into the Blaue Gans a few minutes apart. December night falls early in Manhattan. Duane Street was a small thoroughfare, running from West Broadway to Church Street. The lighting was poor.

A cold wind carried a hint of sleet. Andy Winslow and Rose Palmer scurried through the cut-glass doors of the Blaue Gans into a merry world that could have come from Mad King Ludwig’s Bavaria. The restaurant was decorated with stuffed hunting trophies. Bartenders seemed to compete for the title of Largest Belly and Biggest Moustache. Serving-girls carried foaming steins of beer.

Winslow asked a waiter where the Beethoven–Wagner Institute was holding its meeting, and he and Rose Palmer were directed up a flight of stairs to a meeting-hall filled with oversized tables set with white linen and shining china. There must have been a couple of hundred members of the Institute at least – the majority of them males – gathered in groups, exchanging conversation in a mixture of German and English.

Half a dozen oversized portraits decorated the walls. Winslow assumed that the fierce-looking individual with the shock of dark hair was Beethoven – at least, he thought he’d seen that image on the cover of a record album in Foxx’s collection. Then the other old-timer in the fey-looking outfit must be Wagner. Winslow nudged Rose Palmer. “Who’s that gink next to Wagner?”

“Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,” she whispered back. “Don’t you know anything?”

He recognized Otto von Bismarck from a herring-can in Reuter’s kitchen. The guy in the fancy uniform and trademark moustache was the old Kaiser, no question about that. And then there was the biggest portrait of them all. Der Führer.

Andy Winslow and Rose Palmer drifted from group to group. Rose drew more than her share of male attention and not a few suspicious glances from females. They kept well away from Jacob Maccabee and Lisalotte Schmidt. Jacob’s features might be a little too obvious in this crowd, Winslow mused, but he could handle himself.

Most of the men in the crowd – in fact, Winslow realized with a start, every one of them – wore unobtrusive pins on their lapels. They depicted an angry raptor not unlike the old NRA blue eagle. But, when Winslow got a closer look at one, he realized that instead of holding lightning bolts in one claw and a cogwheel in the other, the pins substituted a swastika for the cogwheel.

The symbol was everywhere. There was even a table near the door where a couple of functionaries proffered sign-up sheets to new arrivals, and sold eagle-and-swastika pins and lavallières. Andy bought a pin for himself and a lavallière for Rose. The insignia stood out against the tasteful lavender of her silk-covered torso. She leaned against Winslow and whispered in his ear as she lovingly attached the pin to his lapel. “If we ever get out of here alive I’m going to have to take twenty showers before I feel clean again.”

The chairman, a thin-faced, thin-haired individual, whose personality matched his slightly shabby grey suit, rapped for attention and asked everyone to take their places. He stood at a speaker’s lectern decorated with the eagle-and-swastika symbol. Andy and Rose found seats at a table far from the centre of action. Jacob Maccabee and Lisalotte Schmidt placed themselves near the head table.

They sang The Star-Spangled Banner and then Deutschland Über Alles. The chairman gave a half-embarrassed-looking Nazi salute and everyone sat down. A beefy individual at their table seemed determined to dominate the conversation. That was fine with Winslow. The beefy guy was an importer. All he could talk about was how great the newest Telefunken and Blaupunkt radios and phonographs were. He could get you a deal, he could get you a great deal on either brand. You’ve never heard anything like it. The music made you believe you were in the Berlin Opernhaus. Ach, Schumann, Von Suppe, Abel, Johann Sebastian Bach and all his sons, Praetorius, Gluck. And opera – why, you would think you were at Bayreuth in person! And did you know what was coming soon? Yes – he wasn’t supposed to tell you about this yet, it was very hush-hush, but … the German engineers under the inspired leadership of the Führer were developing television; yes, television, and soon you would be able to see great drama and important political rallies in your own home. Yes! It was true!

Winslow ate Kavalierspitz mit Sauerkraut und rote Kartoffel and drank a couple of glasses of zweigelt umathum. Rose Palmer nibbled at a frisée salad with a poached egg. The importer kept talking and Andy hung on every word, relieved not to have to say anything except for an occasional Ach, ja? or Nicht wahr, or Wunderschön!

They’d just started on coffee and Schnapps when someone stood up and started singing. Andy Winslow blinked in astonishment. It was Jacob Maccabee. He was swaying drunkenly, leaning on Lisalotte Schmidt’s shoulder, singing “Es zittern die morschen Knocken”.

Lisalotte joined in, then a couple of people at Maccabee’s table. The grey-suited chairman stood up and rapped his gavel a couple of times, then realized it wasn’t going to work and started waving the gavel like a conductor’s baton. Now the whole room was singing. When the song ended, Jacob swung into “Kampflied der Nationalsozialisten”. The songs came to a roaring conclusion, followed by men jumping up at one table after another giving the stiff-armed salute and Sieg heil-ing.

Jacob sat down to a round of applause.

Rose Palmer leaned over and whispered in Winslow’s ear, “I thought he would try to make himself inconspicuous in the middle of all these Aryans.”

“Leave it to Jacob,” Winslow whispered back. “Right into the lion’s den, and challenge anybody to call him out on it!” He couldn’t help grinning.

Once the singing had died down, the diminutive, grey-suited chairman rapped his gavel again. “Ladies and Gentleman, Damen und Herren, Kameraden—” a round of applause at the last word. He went on like that, mixing English and German, and all the while it was obvious that he was leading up to the boffo introduction of the special guest of the evening.

“But, first, a special treat!”

He reached under the speaker’s lectern and came up with something the size of a movie poster. He studied it himself. The side turned towards the audience was blank.

“In case any of you missed this recent newspaper, I want you all to see it.”

With a grin, he turned the poster towards the audience. It was a huge enlargement of the Mirror front page with the photo of the Essex Street synagogue, blown up and burning. He made a clucking sound with his tongue, the kind your mother does when you’re just mildly naughty. “Isn’t that a pity.”

The audience howled with laughter and applause.

“And now, Damen und Herren, the noble leader of our movement in Sudetenland, a comrade-in-arms in the great National Socialist revolutionary movement, the man who led our separated brethren from the false and artificial state of Czechoslovakia back into the welcoming embrace of the Fatherland. May I introduce to you – Herr Heinrich Konrad.” He hadn’t bothered to use Konrad’s nom de guerre.

Andy Winslow felt Rose Palmer grab his hand under the table. Her nails were sharp and her fingers were like ice. He returned the squeeze, heard her exhale a held-in breath.

No question, these guys went for drama; and give ’em credit, they did it well. Up to now the room had been filled with so much Gemutlichkeit you could choke on it. Now the atmosphere was completely changed. You’d think that Joe DiMaggio had just been introduced to a room full of rabid Yankee fans.

Where the heck had Konrad been? Maybe in a back-stage room, Winslow decided. Certainly not in the dining room. Now, as the chairman finished his introduction, the houselights snapped off and a spotlight blazed on. Striding from the rear of the room came Heinrich Konrad decked out in full Nazi regalia: swastika armband, jackboots and all. The spotlight followed him to the microphone, then dimmed a little as a second spot hit the oversized portrait of the Führer behind the podium.

Oh, he was good. The flashy uniform, the black hair in its widow’s peak, even the silver-rimmed specs to add just a touch of the intellectual, took away just a bit from the brute in the fancy get-up. The speech was the usual palaver that these gangsters had been peddling. Stuff about the master-race, the New World Order, the brilliance of the Führer, the greatness of the world’s most advanced civilization, the pinnacle of humankind in painting, music, poetry, industry, literature, blah-blah.

And then he got into the really nasty part. The part about the subhuman vermin who needed to be exterminated. Oh, the Jews. Of course he had it in for the Jews. But the Slavs were not far behind. Caligula Foxx would get a kick out of that. Surely he fell into that category.

Come to think of it, didn’t Konrad, too? Wasn’t he some kind of Czech by birth, same as Caligula Foxx? But, no, he was a German, a true Aryan. Too bad he wasn’t a blue-eyed blond, but then neither was the Führer, nicht wahr?

For a few minutes Andy Winslow felt himself caught up in the flow of Konrad’s words. The man’s English was fluent if lightly accented, and he painted pictures of a bright future of towering cities and glittering machines – and then he would leap back to his theme of racial purity, and armies marching like robots across a landscape.

They loved it. Oh, they loved it. Konrad could have been elected Mayor if he’d wanted. As soon as he finished, the boobs in the audience went nuts.

*

When it was all over, Andy Winslow and Rose Palmer made their way out of the meeting-room. The main restaurant downstairs was filled with diners – happy New Yorkers celebrating the holiday season, and out-of-towners come to see the bright lights and the tall buildings of the big city.

A hand came down on Winslow’s shoulder and another on Rose Palmer’s. They turned to see Jacob Maccabee. His tie was askew, his overcoat was buttoned wrong and his homburg was on the back on his head. Winslow was a tall individual and Rose Palmer was proportionately sized. Maccabee grinned at them. He was shorter than either. Before Maccabee could speak, Winslow said, “That was brilliant, Jacob. Crazy brilliant, but brilliant.”

Rose Palmer asked, “Whatever gave you the idea of singing those disgusting songs?”

They had moved away from the restaurant now. The meeting was breaking up and Winslow recognized some of the people from the upstairs room wandering off to find cars or cabs.

“Come on, I don’t want to see my friend the importer again. If he tries once more to sell me a Blaupunkt radio I think I’m gonna punch him in the shnozzola.”

Rose Palmer said, “Where’s Lisalotte?”

Maccabee said, “Did you watch that thug Konrad? Did you see the way he looked at her? I made it a point to light a cigarette for her while he was making his speech, and he spotted her and his eyes lit up. Man, he looked at her the way my cat looks at a slice of raw liver.”

“But where is she now?”

“They’re together. I don’t know where Herr Konrad is staying while he visits our burg. Maybe uptown at the German consulate. Maybe in a hotel or some safe house they’ve got set up. We’ll find that out.”

Winslow fingered the Beretta inside his jacket, snug in his armpit in its holster. “I was tempted,” he said. “A couple of times.” He pulled the automatic partway out of its resting place, far enough to show it to Maccabee. Rose Palmer already knew where he kept it.

“Bad idea, Andy.”

“But … that man … even if Caligula hadn’t said anything about him, you could tell Konrad’s a disgusting animal. And a dangerous one. And you just left her there to go off with him?”

Maccabee made a growling noise deep in his throat. “Fräulein Schmidt is a tough cookie, Rose. Don’t you worry about her. When Konrad finished his rant, all those Nazis started in on Deutschland Über Alles again and Konrad started working the crowd like Al Smith at the Easter Parade. He cut through that mob like a hot knife through butter. Every thug got a handshake and a Sieg heil, and then the big cheese moved on to the next bunch of suckers. Till he got to Lisalotte. You could tell that was his plan all along, from the first time he laid eyes on her.”

A Checker cab rolled past, throwing up black slush from the gutter. They were nearly at Church Street now.

“Jacob,” Rose persisted, “I still want to know what gave you the idea of singing like that. You weren’t really drunk, were you?”

“Jews don’t get drunk.”

“You don’t know everybody I do.”

“Anyway, it was this.” He laid a finger across the bridge of his nose and swept it down to the tip. “Put me in a lineup with a Chinaman, a Choctaw, and a Hottentot, and ask anybody to pick out the Jew and they’ll get it right on the first try.”

“But—”

“But nothing, Rose. It’s the old Poe gimmick. Hide in plain sight. If a Jew tried to infiltrate that bunch of Nazis, what’s the obvious thing to do? He’d head for the darkest corner he could find, he’d keep his head down and his trap shut and hope that nobody’d notice him. And do you think that would work? In a pig’s ass – pardon my French, Rose – they’d catch him out in a minute. So I stood up and acted drunk and sang Nazi songs. No Jew would do that; so they just figured I was an unlucky Aryan who managed to pick up a bad gene from a wandering ancestor. So maybe this drunk wasn’t quite one hundred per cent pure Aryan, but he was obviously a good Nazi, so let him be. At least for now.”

Rose wasn’t satisfied. “What now? Do you think Lisalotte will actually spend the night with that – that person?”

“Ah, Rose, Rose, don’t be so squeamish. This isn’t a Mary Roberts Rinehart romance. Lisalotte may not enjoy staying over with that thug but, believe me, it isn’t a fate worse than death. It’s bad, but death is worse. And she’ll get more information from him in a few hours than I could get in a month is my bet.”

He took off his homburg, punched out a dent in it and set it back on his head. He straightened his tie and rebuttoned his coat. He said, “I’m headed for the subway, kiddies. My beloved helpmeet and the offspring are calling to me.”

Winslow said, “Wait, I’ve got my car. We’ll give you a lift.”

“Not necessary. Thanks all the same. I’ll see you atWest Adams Place tomorrow. Lunch-time unless you hear different. I’ll lay a double sawbuck that Schmidt will show up and she’ll bring the bacon with her.”

*

Maccabee was right. Andy Winslow and Jacob were completing their reports to Caligula Foxx when the brass knocker sounded. Foxx himself wore his usual aquamarine shirt with hand-painted tie and comfortable grey flannel suit. Winslow knew that Reuter was busy in the pantry preparing the day’s luncheon so he answered the door himself. He had already placed a silver tray with coffee urn and cups and pastries on Foxx’s oversized desk.

Lisalotte had changed her outfit to a stylish toque hat of forest green and a matching winter coat. In the foyer she doffed the coat to reveal a dark grey dress set off with mild yellow trim. To Andy Winslow she looked simultaneously weary and energized, as if she had followed a hard night with a brief rest and a refreshing shower.

Ever courtly, Foxx rose and took Lisalotte’s hand. He escorted her to a seat and poured coffee for her. There was a low table beside her chair and she placed the cup and saucer on it carefully.

“I am no blushing schoolgirl,” Lisalotte announced, “but, in all my life and all the men I have had dealings with, no one comes close to that beast. I just hope the filth and the stink of him is off me.” She held her hands before her and studied them. She exhaled.

“He is staying in a hotel in Yorktown. The Rotfrauhaus on Eighty-Sixth Street. He is registered under the name of Antonin Dvorak.”

Caligula Foxx burst into laughter. His belly shook with merriment. “Oh, that is too good, too good, Lisalotte. That alone makes my day, and it’s hardly mid-morning yet.”

Andy Winslow said, “I don’t get it, Caligula. What’s so special about that name?”

“Why, Herr Konrad entered this country under the name Bedrich Smetana. My cousin Sexton Blake warned me of that. I don’t imagine a person whose musical tastes are as – shall we say, as limited as your own – would get the joke. Nor the punch line of becoming Antonin Dvorak once he’d arrived in New York. Oh no, Herr Konrad is a despicable individual, but he is neither stupid nor ignorant.”

He leaned forward, studying the assortment of pastries Reuter had provided. He selected one and transferred it to a Dalton dish, cream-coloured with maroon-deckled trim, circled in gold. He sliced a wedge-shaped morsel from the pastry and popped it in his mouth, consuming it with obvious pleasure.

He turned to Lisalotte Schmidt. “You have my gratitude, my dear. You have done a greater service, I imagine, than you realize. But now we need to know what information you gathered from Herr Konrad-Smetana-Dvorak. Why is he in this country? Surely not just to address a room full of ne’er-do-wells and malcontented bully-boys.”

“He is going to Long Island, to the village of Carrolton Beach. Do you know that place? I do not, Mr Foxx.”

Foxx nodded. “I know the place. Yes. Go on.”

“There is an aeroplane factory there. They are developing a new kind of aeroplane for the government. I do not know the details, but Konrad says Hitler wants it for his own forces. He says that Hermann Goering is eager to see the plane, to see its plans, and to build a copy of it for the Führer.”

She paused to down a heavy draught of coffee, wiped her lips with a linen napkin, and resumed.

“He has a spy in the aeroplane factory. He is going to see him tomorrow, to get a set of blueprints from him and take them back to Germany.”

Foxx steepled his fingers on his chest. “I don’t suppose you know his spy’s name?”

“He said it was Richard Strauss.” She gave the name its proper pronunciation. Reek-hardt.

Foxx shot a look at Jacob Maccabee. “Well, Jake, what can you add to that?”

“Only aircraft factory any where near Carrolton is Sapphire-MacNeese. Good company.”

“Connections?”

“Mr Foxx – how long have you known me? Of course!”

Foxx sliced another wedge of pastry. For a man of his enormous appetite he was a fastidious eater. He nodded to Maccabee, signalling him to continue.

“Aaron Lieberman. Chief designer there. Reports directly to Carter MacNeese. MacNeese bounces between Long Island and their California plant. Flies his own plane every time he wants to hit the other coast. Seems to me it would be a long commute, but who am I to say?”

Foxx pursed his lips. “Tell me about this Lieberman.”

“We grew up in Brownsville. Went to William Seward High together. Aaron was a brainy kid. We used to build model aeroplanes together. All that Aaron ever cared about was aeroplanes. Aeroplanes and rocket-ships. He used to read the funny papers: Brick Bradford, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon. He couldn’t get enough of that crazy stuff.”

Foxx shook his head. His dark brown hair was overdue for a trim. It whipped back and forth. “Never mind that. Are you still close?”

Maccabee raised his hands, clasped like those of a prize-fighter celebrating a knockout victory. “Like this.”

“When did you last see him?”

Maccabee grinned. “We both got out of Brownsville a long time ago, but we’re still pals. Our wives go shopping, kids all play together. We just had a big Thanksgiving dinner Chez Lieberman. He’s done well. Has a nice house out on the Island, a little goldfish pond in the backyard, shiny new car.”

“All right, Jake. Good. Now, do you have any idea what Lieberman would be working on that Goering and Hitler are so eager to get their hands on? Jack? Lisalotte? Did Konrad say anything last night – think hard, my dear – that might give us a hint?”

Lisalotte Schmidt said, “He had a bottle of Schnapps. He’d had a couple of drinks at the Blaue Gans and he drank a lot more at the Rotfrauhaus. He fell asleep after … after he fell asleep, he woke up half in a stupor. I had to help him to the toilet. A pig he is. He looked into the bowl and he said something very strange, Mr Foxx. He said, I give you his words exactly; he said, ‘Fliegend kommt es aus der Toilette.’ I thought he was just babbling. But something maybe it means, yes?”

“Yes, it does,” Foxx said.

Maccabee said, “Yes.”

Andy Winslow said, “Not to me it doesn’t. I don’t understand kraut.”

Foxx said, “It means, ‘Out from the toilet it comes flying,’ Andy.”

Winslow said, “I get the picture. But do I want to?”

Foxx said, “Jake, what do you think?”

Maccabee said, “I saw something in Lieberman’s house on Thanksgiving, Mr Foxx. It was a model aeroplane, I thought. Only it looked more like a spaceship. I figured Aaron was up to his old tricks again, building toy aeroplanes and spaceships for his kids.

“But he said, ‘Come outside, I’ll show you something.’ The girls were making dinner in the kitchen and the kids were all down in the basement playing hide and seek. He picked up the model aeroplane, rocket-ship – whatever – and we went outside. It was pretty chilly, but the goldfish pond wasn’t frozen or anything. He clicked a couple of switches on the model and set it down in the fishpond. At first it sank but I could still see it – the pond is only a couple of feet deep. Some lights went on in the model, a couple of propellers started to whirl around, and it came right up out of the water and flew around over our heads, and then it circled back and landed in the pond. It started to sink but Aaron got a hold of it and we went back in the house and had our dinner.”

Foxx had dropped his chin – all right, his chins – down on his chest as Maccabee told his little story. You might have thought Foxx had fallen asleep but he hadn’t. He was listening to every word. Now he said, “‘Fliegend kommt es aus der Toilette.’ It came flying out of the toilet. But it didn’t, it came flying out of the fishpond. Jacob, do you see what your friend has invented? Andy, don’t you see it? Miss Schmidt? No one?”

He heaved a great sigh.

“This little toy of his – imagine a dozen of them – a hundred – packed in a submarine. Imagine the submarine approaching the enemy coast. It could send one of these little machines up to circle over an enemy force. It could carry one of those small motion-picture cameras that are all the rage. It could take pictures of the enemy army then fly back and dive into the water. Or …” he turned his massive head to the ceiling as if he could see fleets of tiny aircraft circling there “… or, they could be packed with explosives instead of cameras. They could be used in naval battles to attack enemy ships. Miniature flying torpedoes.”

He shook his head. “No wonder Hermann Goering wants to get his hands on this thing.” To Lisalotte Schmidt he said, “When is Konrad going out to Carrolton? You say he told you he is going tomorrow. What time? Does he have an appointment with Strauss?”

“No, he didn’t say. He was from the Schnapps, too much he drank, drunk and sick. But he said in two days. Zwei Tage. He said that.”

Foxx pointed a carefully manicured finger at Jacob Maccabee. “Tomorrow morning. Crack of dawn. Here, Jake.”

“Okay.”

“And make sure your friend Lieberman knows we’re coming. Andy, make sure the Packard is gassed up and ready to roll. Miss Schmidt, will you join us?”

“Mit Vergnügen, Herr Foxx! Donnerstag hele und früh!”

*

Thursday bright and early. Reuter had prepared a breakfast for Foxx of oatmeal, fried eggs with bacon, Russian-style rye bread, lightly toasted and covered with fresh home-churned butter plus half a grapefruit roasted with honey. A pot of chicory-flavored coffee with heavy cream accompanied the meal.

Andy Winslow had a glass of orange juice and a toasted bagel.

Jacob Maccabee and Lisalotte Schmidt stated that they had breakfasted at their respective homes. More to the point, Maccabee told the others that he had reached Lieberman by telephone on Wednesday night. They’d discussed the miniature fliers.

Lieberman told Maccabee that he’d been suspicious of Strauss for some time. He was a good worker, a talented and intelligent man, but he had a habit of poking through other people’s files. He often carried work home with him. That wasn’t a bad trait in itself. But he tended to overdo it.

Didn’t he have any private life? Maybe he did, but, if so, he didn’t share it with anyone. Everybody else at Sapphire-MacNeese seemed to have family photos on their desks: pictures of themselves on vacation, evidence of hobbies. Not Richard Strauss.

Still, there was nothing there that shouldn’t be. Only it seemed that, beyond his slide-rule and his drawing board, Richard Strauss wasn’t even there.

Jacob Maccabee said that he’d warned Lieberman to keep an eye out for anything that seemed suspicious today, especially unexpected visitors. But, speaking of visitors, would he arrange a set of passes for Caligula Foxx and companions.

*

A uniformed guard checked a sheet of foolscap on a clipboard, asked to see identification, and waved the Packard through the gate. Andy Winslow pulled the big car up to a visitors’ spot and they all climbed out.

“Uh-oh!” Winslow grabbed Caligula Foxx’s elbow. He pointed. “Take a gander at that!”

Foxx followed Winslow’s pointing finger. “Yes, what is it, Andy? Confound you, what am I supposed to be looking at?”

Winslow ran half a dozen steps to a dark-coloured LaSalle coupé. It might or might not have been snowed upon in the past few days, but it was spotlessly clean now, sparkling in the bright sunlight of a December morning.

In the corner of the LaSalle’s rear window was a sticker. It depicted an American eagle, a cluster of lightning bolts in one claw and a swastika in the other.

“Konrad beat us here, Caligula.”

“All right. Let’s get on with this.” Fox turned. “Jacob, are you ready? You and Miss Schmidt? Your friend Lieberman is expecting us? Right, then into the lion’s den we go!”

*

The Sapphire-MacNeese Aircraft Company loomed like a grey rectangle against the bright blue sky. A smartly dressed receptionist asked them to wait while she phoned Dr Lieberman. The reception area was decorated with oversized photographs of past Sapphire-MacNeese aeroplanes. There were single-engined pursuit craft, both open-cockpit biplanes and streamlined closed-cockpit monoplanes. There were also a couple of bombers – huge, lumbering, four-engined aerial behemoths. There was even a modern airliner, silvery and glistening, that looked as if it could give the latest Boeing and Douglas models a run for their money.

Aaron Lieberman arrived and shook hands all around. He was red-haired and freckle-faced. He looked more like a schoolboy than one of the leading aviation designers of the era. He put his arm around Jacob Maccabee’s shoulders. “Mr MacNeese is in town this week, Jake. I’ll introduce you. Mr Foxx, I know he’s heard of you. He’ll be thrilled to meet the famous detective.”

Maccabee said, “I’ve told my friends about your little robot flier, Aaron. I know they’d like to see it.”

Lieberman said, “We need to talk about that. Come on, this will only take a little time.”

He led the way to a conference room. When they entered they were confronted by a pair of uniformed figures, one in the heavy forest-green outfit of an army major, the other in the dark blue of a navy captain. A third man, wearing civilian garb, was also present. The newcomers were ushered to seats at a polished table. The naval officer promptly took charge of the meeting.

“Mr Foxx, Mr Winslow, Mr Maccabee, Miss Schmidt,” the captain nodded to each in turn. “I’m afraid there has been a serious breach of security. I’m not blaming Dr Lieberman or anyone else here at Sapphire-MacNeese. Oh, I don’t suppose you know Mr Carter MacNeese. It’s his company.” He allowed himself a small, rather icy smile.

“Dr Lieberman has confessed that he took home a test model of the OR-X1. That he actually demonstrated it to at least one of you. Ah, Mr Maccabee, I see you’re joining in the confession.”

“I wouldn’t call it a confession,” Maccabee responded. He was angry, that was clear.

Lieberman’s reaction was milder but similar. “I acknowledge that I took it home. I showed it to Mr Maccabee. I wouldn’t use the word confess, though, captain.”

Now Carter MacNeese took a hand. “Captain, I understand that the government wants the OR-X1 kept secret. That is what they want now. And we are implementing every possible precaution to keep this device out of the hands of any potential enemy. But, we started this development on our own; then, there was no government contract. We’ve been offering the OR-X1 to the army and navy for three years. They finally decided they wanted to give us a contract for the device. You can’t hold Dr Lieberman responsible for a breach of security before there was any security to breach!”

They went on that way. By the time the conference broke up there were armed soldiers and sailors patrolling the halls.

Aaron Lieberman spoke to Caligula Foxx and his companions. “I guess there won’t be any demonstration of the model today. We’ve been running tests from a navy submarine in Peconic Bay. I wonder what the local wildlife think of our little flying gadgets. Or the local fishermen! Jake, you won’t talk about this to anyone, I hope.”

“Of course not. I love the way those military stuffed-shirts act as if they were high muck-a-mucks.”

Now Lisalotte Schmidt spoke up. “What about Konrad? He was going to come out here today!”

Lieberman grabbed the nearest telephone. He got an extension. He asked a question, waited for an answer, then exclaimed, “Gone? Both of them gone? Call the gatehouse.” He turned to the others, aghast. “They’ve left. I don’t know if they took anything important with them. A working model or a set of blueprints.”

Andy Winslow sprinted for the door. He raced to the visitors’ parking lot. He turned around and walked back into the building. “Come on, everyone! The Packard is still there. The LaSalle is gone.”

Caligula Foxx sank into a visitor’s chair. He dropped his head into his hands, held the posture briefly, then shook himself like a dog emerging from a duck pond. He pushed himself to his feet and suddenly, for the first time since arriving that morning, he was clearly the man in charge of the situation.

“Mr MacNeese and those uniformed popinjays will have to be informed at once. Someone needs to telephone the FBI right away. Probably the general and the admiral will draw straws to decide who gets to do the job. Konrad and Strauss must have caught on, they know their gaff is blown. I expect that they’re headed back to Manhattan and straight to the German consulate on Park Avenue. Either there or to Bund headquarters in Yorkville, but they’ll have extra-territorial rights at the consulate. That will be up to the FBI.”

To Lieberman he said, “I’m sorry about all of this. My apologies, sir.”

Lieberman shook his head. “Not your fault, Mr Foxx. Not your fault.”

Andy Winslow was practically jumping up and down with impatience. He ran for the door, followed by Jacob Maccabee and Lisalotte Schmidt. Caligula Foxx brought up the rear, puffing like a winded dray-horse. Winslow held the Packard’s passenger door open for him. He had the big sedan in gear even as Foxx pulled his feet from the running board.

They headed out of the parking lot, blew past the little guard-station, and headed for the new roadway that would lead to Manhattan. They caught sight of the LaSalle just as it pulled on to the Grand Central Parkway. It must be a special model, perhaps modified from the modest little car that it appeared, for it accelerated furiously away from the Packard and headed back towards the city.

There was considerable traffic in both directions; commuters headed for their homes and shoppers and celebrants speeding into New York. The sky had turned grey and heavy, wet flakes were falling, threatening to make the roadway dangerously slippery. The Packard’s windshield started to ice up and Andy Winslow turned on both the wipers and the defroster.

He caught sight of the LaSalle forty or fifty yards ahead. He could see the eagle insignia in its rear window. He floored the Packard’s accelerator, and the big car leaped forward. Reaching into his jacket, he pulled the Beretta from beneath his arm.

A convoy of bright yellow school buses loomed ahead of the Packard; the LaSalle blasted past them, the Packard following. Andy Winslow caught a glimpse of children’s faces, peering out the windows of the buses, watching the two speeding cars as if they were piloted by Barney Oldfield and Eddie Rickenbacker.

A figure leaned out the passenger window of the LaSalle and pointed something at the Packard. Andy Winslow saw a yellow-red flash and heard a metallic sound as a small-calibre bullet bounced off the Packard’s fender. The LaSalle swerved in front of the first school bus, the Packard following, drawing alongside the LaSalle, and Winslow caught sight of a hand as the passenger leaned across the driver and fired again at the Packard.

Winslow handed his Beretta to Caligula Foxx. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Foxx roll down his window and get off a shot at the LaSalle. From the back seat of the Packard, Winslow heard a loud report. He inferred that it was a .38 or even a .45, fired by Jacob Maccabee.

A circle appeared in the driver’s-side door on the LaSalle, which swerved, its bumper clipping the corner of the Packard, swerving back again into its own lane. Another shot came from the LaSalle and Winslow felt the Packard lurch to the side. He fought the wheel, struggling to keep the big sedan from going into a 360-degree spin, finally managing to bring it to a halt on the shoulder. The LaSalle swept past, the convoy of school buses close on its tail.

Andy Winslow climbed from the Packard and walked once around the car. He let loose a string of obscenities that would have made a longshoreman’s ears burn. Jacob Maccabee climbed from the car, and the two of them jacked up its front end and replaced the destroyed whitewall tyre with the spare.

When Winslow and Maccabee climbed back into the car, Caligula Foxx said, “A pity, Andy. If only we’d acted a little sooner we’d have caught them before they ever got out of the parking lot.”

Winslow shook his head. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.” He inhaled deeply. “All right, boss. What now?”

Foxx said, “Of course that was Konrad and Strauss. They’re probably headed for the German consulate.”

“Okay. We’ll catch them there.”

Foxx shook his head. “The consulate is technically German territory. We can’t enter without permission, and you can be sure that we’d not get that.” He looked dejected, a rarity for the huge detective. “Back to West Adams, Andy.” He laid a massive arm on the back of his seat and swung around to face Jacob Maccabee and Lisalotte Schmidt. “Reuter will fix us a light supper and we’ll plan our strategy.”

By the time they reached West Adams Place, an early winter dusk had fallen and the heavy, wet snowfall was turning streetlamps into glowing lanterns. They trooped up the steps to the old house, Foxx in the lead, and lifting the brass gryphon’s head to let it fall against the strike plate. He pulled his watch from his vest pocket and studied it.

“Where the devil is that fool Reuter? You’d think he’d know enough to answer the door.”

Andy Winslow said, “He’s probably busy in the kitchen, Caligula. You know when he gets involved in a new recipe, he just goes into a world of his own.”

“All right, all right.” Foxx slipped his watch back into his pocket. “Blast it, I never even carry a key. Why would I need it when I never leave the house? Andy, you must have one, the way you gallivant around all night and wander home at all hours like an alley-cat.”

“Right.” Andy Winslow tugged at his keychain and found a key to the front door. He inserted it in the lock and turned. The door swung open. They all entered.

The foyer was dark. “Reuter!” Foxx shouted again, “Reuter, confound you; what does it take for a man to be admitted to his own home!”

There was no response.

“All right.” Jacob Maccabee hung back, closing the door behind the others. Caligula Foxx advanced, followed by Andy Winslow and Lisalotte Schmidt.

Music was coming from Foxx’s study. The massive detective smiled. He turned to the others, said softly, “Liebestod. The Wagner piano transcription. Of course. One must credit even the monster Konrad with taste.”

He signalled Andy Winslow, pushed open the door to his study and took a cautious step across the threshold. He recognized Heinrich Konrad seated at Caligula Foxx’s grand piano. His touch on the keys was skillful and surprisingly sensitive. A Walther pistol lay on the music stand; clearly, Konrad knew the piece by heart.

Konrad looked up, an icy smile on his lips. He said, “Come in,” addressing Foxx by a name other than Caligula Foxx.

“You remember—” said Foxx. He advanced several more steps. Again, there was a fire on the hearth, although a smaller one than on prior days. A man’s body dressed in a dark suit lay before the fire.

“Your chef is in the wine cellar, Soudruh. Or would you prefer Genosse? Or simply Comrade? We were comrades long ago, were we not, Herr …” Again, he used the name that was not Foxx.

“Call me what you will.” Foxx stood over the prone figure. “We were comrades at one time. I would not call you Comrade now, Pan Konrad. Herr Konrad.”

“No. Nor I you, save, perhaps, for old times’ sake. It is time for revenge, then, Soudruh. What is it that Monsieur Sue said in his novel? ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold.’ It has been twenty years, Soudruh. Twenty years since you betrayed me.”

“Betrayed!” Foxx snorted. “You would have sold us out to the Serbs had I not stopped you.”

“They were advancing. We were outnumbered. To fight on would have made no sense!” Heinrich Konrad rose from the piano bench, reaching for the pistol that lay on the music stand. He lifted the pistol and pointed it briefly at Caligula Foxx but then he lowered his hand and sat once more, holding the pistol in one hand, caressing it with the other. “Too soon, Soudruh, too soon. We must settle our ancient grievance first.”

“There is nothing to settle, Heinrich. You fixed a handkerchief to your bayonet and started from the trench. I merely did my duty.”

“Duty. Pah! What duty? You toadied to the officers so they made you a sergeant and you became a veritable martinet.”

“I did my duty, Heinrich. I was a soldier in the Emperor’s army. As were you. And when I reached for your token of shameful surrender you—”

“I know what I did, Soudruh. Yes, I turned my bayonet on you.”

Foxx made an odd gesture. “I carry the scar to this day.”

“My only regret is that I didn’t kill you on the spot.”

“Ah, but you did not. And we held off the charge.”

“And I was cashiered and imprisoned. For that there is no forgiveness. None.”

Foxx turned away from the other. He knelt beside the body on the floor. Then, to Konrad, “I take it that this is Mr Strauss.”

“He served his purpose. I could not take him back to Europe with me and he would have been dangerous to our cause in America. I knew him. He was weak. He would have revealed too much, too soon, to the wrong persons. Anyway, already he was wounded in the car. I am not a nursemaid. He is a problem no longer.”

“So you shot him. In the back of the head, I see. Clearly your preferred form of murder. Will you do the same to me? Here, I will make it easy for you.” He struggled to his feet, puffing as he lifted his great bulk from the floor. He swayed, then reached for the edge of his desk to steady himself.

He stood with his back to Konrad. Over his shoulder he said, “Well, Heinrich? I see you find it most convenient to shoot when you do not need to look them in the face. You shot that poor child whose only crime was to deliver a telegram.”

For a time there was no sound in the room other than the crackling of the fire and Caligula Foxx’s breathing as he slowly regained his equilibrium.

Then strangely, Foxx heard the music resume. He turned. Heinrich Konrad had placed the Walther pistol back on the music stand and resumed playing the Wagner melody. So softly at first, that his voice could barely be heard, Konrad began to sing.





Mild und leise

wie er lächelt

wie das Auge

hold er öffnet

seht ihr’s, Freunde?

Seht ihr’s nacht?

Immer lichter

wie er leuchtet,

stern-umstrahlt

hoch sich hebt?

Seht ihr’s nicht?





And from the doorway, advancing slowly into the room, a hand extended before her, the other concealed behind her back, came Lisalotte Schmidt. She sang, also, in harmony with Heinrich Konrad, Wagner’s lines rendered into her own accented English.





Softly and gently

how he smiles,

how his eyes

fondly open.

Do you see, friends?

Do you not see?

How he shines

ever brighter.

Star-haloed

rising higher.

Do you not see?





Heinrich Konrad rose to his feet, his hands resting on the piano above the keyboard. The Walther pistol still lay on the music stand.

Lisalotte Schmidt brought her hand from behind her back, pointing Andy Winslow’s Beretta at Heinrich Konrad.

Konrad started for the Walther, but Lisalotte Schmidt fired a single shot. He slumped back on to the piano bench, bleeding from the shoulder. With his other hand he reached for the Walther but was stopped by a single word from the bulky woman.

“Lisalotte,” he murmured. “Lisalotte. After … after our night … after our night of love … Lisalotte. How—?”

“Sie haben meinen Bruder ermordet.” Her voice had become an angry growl.

From the doorway, Jacob Maccabee whispered the translation to Andy Winslow. “You murdered my brother.”

Lisalotte Schmidt carefully aimed the Beretta, pointing it at Konrad’s heart.

Konrad lunged for the Walther but Lisalotte Schmidt’s second shot sent him reeling backward. The piano bench caught him behind the knees and he crashed to the floor. A final syllable hissed from his lips. “Sieg …”

Lisalotte Schmidt hissed, “Mein Bruder ist revenged.”

Andy Winslow said, “There’s no need to translate that, Jacob.”





About the Author

Mike Ashley is a full-time writer, editor and researcher with almost a hundred books to his credit. He has compiled over fifty Mammoth books including The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries, The Mammoth Book of Historical Detectives and The Mammoth Book of Locked Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes. He has also written a biography of Algernon Blackwood, Starlight Man. He lives in Kent with his wife and three cats and when he gets the time he likes to go for long walks.