“No.”

“You should. Without German, very poor music. The tom-cat says: ‘Is there a cosier condition than being thoroughly satisfied with oneself?’ That is the philosophy of the Philistine.”

“A cosy condition; like having a good job as a typist.”

“If that is all you want, and you cannot see beyond it. Of course not all typists are like that, or there would be no audiences at concerts.”

“I want more than a cosy condition.”

“And you shall have it. But you will find cosy places, too. This is one of them.”

Kisses. Caresses of such skill and variety as Schnak would never have thought possible. Ninety seconds of ecstasy, and then deep peace, in which Schnak fell asleep.

The Doctor did not sleep for several hours. She was thinking of Johannes Kreisler, and herself.

The wine was very good. Beyond that, Simon Darcourt would not have dared to speak, for he did not consider himself knowledgeable about wines. But he knew a good wine when he drank it, and this was undoubtedly very good. The bottles, as Prince Max had called to his attention, bore conservative, rather spidery engraving that declared them to be reserved for the owners of the vineyard. Nothing there of the flamboyant labels, with carousing peasants or Old Master pictures of fruit, cheese, and dead animals that marked commonplace wines. But at the top of these otherwise reticent labels was an elaborate achievement of arms and underneath it a motto: Du sollst sterben ehe ich sterbe.

Thou shalt perish ere I perish, thought Darcourt. Did it refer to the owners of the display of arms, or to the wine in the bottles? Must be the aristocrats; nobody would claim that a wine would outlive anyone who might be drinking it. Suppose a very young person—sixteen, let us say—were given a glass at the family table; suppose some child of a wine-drinking home were given a little, mixed with water, so that it would not feel left out at a family feast. Was it asserted that sixty years later the wine would still be in first-rate condition? Not likely. Wines like that were sold by the greatest auctioneers, not by popular wine merchants. So the boast, or assertion, or threat—it could be all or any of those—must apply to the people whose blazon of nobility this was.

There those people were, sitting at the table with him. Prince Max, who must be well into his seventies, was as straight, as slim, and as elegant as when he had been a dashing young German officer. Only his spectacles, which he somehow managed to make distinguished, and the thinness of his yellowish-white hair, so carefully brilliantined and brushed straight back from his knobby brow, gave any sign of how old he might be. His gaiety, his exuberance, and his unquenchable flow of anecdote and chatter could have belonged to a man

half his age.

As for the Princess Amalie, she was as beautiful, as well-preserved, and as becomingly dressed as when Darcourt had first seen her when, during the past summer, she had made it so tactfully clear that if he wanted to know certain facts about the late Francis Cornish he must somehow provide her with the preliminary studies, from the hand of that same Francis Cornish, that had resulted in the Old Master drawing she used so lavishly, yet with such splendid understatement, in her advertisements. And that was what he had done.

The Clerical Cracksman, as he now thought of himself, had been just as adroit and just as lucky at the National Gallery as he had been at the University Library. The same approach to the curator of drawings, who was a friend and would not think of doubting Simon; the same casual, but swift, examination of the drawings in a special portfolio; a quick substitution of the drawings he had pinched from the Library, and which he carried tucked under the back strap of his M.B. waistcoat, for those that were the price of the Princess’s confidence; the same cheerful greeting to his friend as he left the archives of the Gallery. The Gallery had not yet got around to putting those beastly little marks on the drawings that set off alarms when one passed certain snoopy ray machines; indeed, it looked as if nobody had looked into the portfolio since first it had come to the Gallery over a year before. It was a very neat job, thought Simon, if he said so himself, and he had been lucky in the day he chose for his robbery, because it was a day when the Pope was visiting Ottawa, and everybody who might have been snooping about was in a distant field, watching the charismatic Pontiff celebrate an outdoor mass, and utter instructions and adjurations for their future conduct to the people of Canada.

Was he dead to shame, Simon had asked himself? Was he now a contented, successful criminal, unhampered by his clerical vows? He did not attempt a philosophical answer; he was wholly in the grip of the biographer’s covetous, unappeasable spirit. He was on to a good thing, and nothing should stand in his way. He would chance losing his soul, if only he could write a really good book. A deathbed repentance would probably square things with God. Meanwhile, this was Life.

“My wife is quite delighted with what you have brought,” said Prince Max. “You are sure it is complete—every preliminary study?”

“To the best of my knowledge,” said Simon. “I went through all Francis Cornish’s drawings, his own and all the Old Masters he had copied, and I saw nothing related to the portrait of the Princess except the studies I have put in your keeping.”

“Admirable,” said the Prince. “I shall not say we do not know how to thank you, because we do. Amalie shall tell you all she knows about le beau ténébreux. And so shall I, though I did not know him so well as she. I only met him once, at Düsterstein. He made an immediate favourable impression. Handsome; modest, even witty, when wine had overcome his reticence. But you must continue, my dear. Meanwhile, another glass of wine?”

“Francis Cornish was everything Max says, and a great deal more,” said the Princess. She drank little; a great professional beauty and a razor-sharp woman of business cannot afford to be a soaker. “He came into my life just as I was emerging from girlhood, and was beginning to be seriously interested in men. Seriously, I say; every girl notices men and dreams about them from the time she begins to walk. But he came to my family home just when I was beginning to think about lovers.”

“It is strange to think of the Francis I knew as greatly attractive,” said Simon. “He became rather an oddity as time went on.”

“But I am sure it must have been a ruined beauty you saw as oddity,” said the Princess. “Men do not notice such things, unless their romantic interest is in other men. Surely you have photographs?”

“He hated being photographed,” said Simon.

“Then I can surprise you. I have many photographs, that I took myself. A girl’s snapshots, of course, but revealing. I have one that I used to keep under my pillow until my governess discovered it and forbade it. I told her she was jealous and she laughed, but it was a laugh that told me I had hit the mark. Very handsome, and he had a nice deep voice. Not quite American; there was a Scottish burr in it that melted my soul.”

“I am already jealous,” said the Prince.

“Oh Max, don’t be silly. You know what girls are.”

“I knew what you were, my darling. But I knew what I was, too. So at the time I was not jealous.”

“Odious vanity!” said the Princess. “Anyhow, we all have our early loves whom we keep in the back of our minds all our lives. I am sure you know what I mean, Professor.”

“There was a girl with ringlets, when I was nine,” said Darcourt, taking a sip of his wine. “I know what you mean. But please go on about Francis.”

“He had everything a very young girl could love. He even had a rather untrustworthy heart. He had to keep watch on it, and report to his doctor in London.”