The cop smiled and then continued. “Spats, nothing in his lapel-I mean no Party badge or anything. And it was a Bruno Kuczorski suit he was wearing.”

“Now he’s just showing off,” said Otto.

“I saw the label on the inside of his coat when he took out his handkerchief to mop his brow. An anxious sort of fellow. But you would have gathered that from the handkerchief.”

“On the level?”

“Like he swallowed a geometry set.”

“What’s your name, son?” Otto asked him.

“Heinz Seldte.”

“Well, Heinz Seldte, it’s my opinion that you should leave this fat man’s desk job you’ve got here and become a cop.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“So what’s the deal, Gunther?” said Otto. “You trying to make a monkey out of me?”

“I’m the one who feels like a monkey.” I tugged the sheet and the carbons off Seldte’s typewriter and crushed them up. “I think maybe I should go and yodel in a few ears, like Johnny Weissmuller, and see what comes running out of the jungle.” I took Dr. Stock’s crime sheet from the police file. “Mind if I borrow this, Otto?”

Otto glanced at Seldte, who shrugged back at him. “It’s okay with us, I guess,” said Otto. “But you will let us know what you find out, Bernie. Ming Mong dynasty theft is a special investigative priority for KRIPO right now. We have our reputation to think of.”

“I’ll get right on it, I promise.”

I meant it, too. It was going to be a pleasure to feel like a real detective again instead of a hotel carpet creeper. But, as Immanuel Kant once said, it’s funny how categorically wrong you can be about a lot of stuff you think just has to be true.

MOST OF BERLIN’S MUSEUMS stood on a little island in the center of the city, surrounded by the dark waters of the River Spree, as if the people who built them had decided that Berlin needed to keep its culture separate from the state. As I was about to discover, there should have been a lot more importance attached to this idea than anyone might have thought.

The Ethnographical Museum, however, formerly in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, was now located in Dahlem, in the far west of Berlin. I traveled there on the underground railway-on the Wilmersdorf line as far as Dahlem-Dorf-and then walked southeast to the new Asiatic Museum. It was a comparatively modern three-story redbrick building surrounded by expensive villas and manor houses with large gates and even larger dogs. Laws were made for the protection of suburbs such as Dahlem, and it was hard to see why there should have been two Gestapo men parked in a black W out front of the nearby confessing church until I remembered there was a priest in Dahlem called Martin Niemöller who was well known for his opposition to the so-called Aryan paragraph. Either that or the two men just had something to confess.

I went into the museum, opened the first door marked PRIVATE, and found myself looking down at a rather fetching stenographer sitting behind a three-bank Carmen, with Maybelline eyes and a mouth that was painted better than Holbein’s favorite portrait. She wore a checked shirt; a whole souk’s supply of brass bangles, which tinkled on her wrist like tiny telephones; and a rather severe expression that almost had me checking the knot on my tie.

“Can I help you?”

I felt sure she could, but I hardly liked to mention exactly how. Instead, I sat on the corner of her desk and folded my arms, just to keep my hands off her breasts. She didn’t like that. Her desk looked as neat as a display in a department-store window.

“Herr Stock about?”

“I guess if you had an appointment you’d know it was Dr. Stock.”

“I don’t. Have an appointment.”

“So he’s busy.” She glanced involuntarily at a door on the other side of the room, as if hoping I would be gone before it opened again.

“I bet he does that a lot. Is busy. Men like him always are. Now, if it was me, I’d be giving you a little dictation or maybe signing a few letters you’d just typed with those lovely hands of yours.”

“You can write, then?”

“Sure. I can even type. Not as well as you, I’ll bet. But you can be judge of that.” I reached into my jacket and took out the crime sheet I’d borrowed from the Alex. “Here,” I said, handing it over. “Take a look and tell me what you think.”

She glanced at it and her eyes widened a few f-stops.

“You’re from the Police Praesidium, on Alexanderplatz?”

“Didn’t I say? I just came from there on the underground.” This was true, but only as far as it went. If she or Stock asked to see a warrant disc, I wasn’t going to get anywhere, which was the main reason I was behaving the way a lot of real cops from the Alex behave. A Berliner is someone who believes it’s best to be just a little less polite than other people might think is necessary. And most Berlin cops fall a long way short of that high standard. I lit a cigarette, blew the smoke her way, and then nodded at a chunk of rock on a shelf behind her well-coiffed head.

“Is that a swastika on that bit of stone?”

“It’s a seal,” she said. “From the Indus Valley civilization. From around 1500 B.C. The swastika used to be a significant religious symbol of our own remote ancestors.”

I grinned at her. “Either that or they were trying to warn us about something.”

She stood up from behind the typewriter and quickly walked across the office to fetch Dr. Stock. It gave me enough time to study her curves and the seams in her stockings, so perfect they looked as if they’d been done in a technical drawing class. I always disliked technical drawing, but I might have been a lot better at it had I been asked to sit behind a nice girl’s legs and try to make a couple of straight lines on her calves.

Stock was less easy on the eye than his secretary but exactly as Heinz Seldte had described him back at the Alex. A Berlin waxwork.

“This is most embarrassing,” he wailed. “There has been an awful mistake for which I’m most dreadfully sorry.” He came close enough for me to smell the peppermint lozenges on his breath, which was a nice change from most of the people who spoke to me, and then bowed an abject apology. “Dreadfully sorry, sir. It would seem that the box I reported stolen was not stolen at all. Merely mislaid.”

“Mislaid? How’s that possible?”

“We’ve been moving the Fischer collections from the old Ethnographical Museum, in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, to our new home, here in Dahlem, and everything is in disarray. The official guide to our collections is out of print. Many objects were misplaced or wrongly attributed. I’m afraid you’ve had a wasted journey. On the underground, you said? Perhaps the museum could pay for a taxicab to take you back to the Police Praesidium. It’s the least we can do to make up for the inconvenience.”

“So you have the box back in your possession?” I said, ignoring his bleatings.

Stock looked awkward again.

“Perhaps I might see it for myself,” I said.

“Why?”

“Why?” I shrugged. “Because you reported it stolen, that’s why. And now you’re reporting that it has been found. The thing is, sir, I have to fill out a report, in triplicate. Proper procedures have to be followed. And if this Ming dynasty box can’t be produced, I don’t see how I can very well close the file on its disappearance. You see, sir, in a sense, the moment I type that it’s been found, I make myself responsible for it. I mean, that’s logical, isn’t it?”

“Well, the fact is-” He looked at his stenographer and twitched a couple of times, as if someone had a fishing line in him somewhere.

She stared at me with hat pins in her eyes.

“Perhaps you’d better come into my office, Herr-”

“Trettin. Criminal Commissar Trettin.”

I followed him into his office, and he closed the door behind me straightaway. But for the size and opulence of the room, I might have felt sorry for him. Everywhere there were Chinese artifacts and Japanese paintings, although it could just as easily have been Chinese paintings and Japanese artifacts. That year I was a little weak on my knowledge of Asiatic antiquities.