Street of the Five Moons Read Free

sapphire. Fake? It looked awfully real to me. There was something hypnotic about that stone, and about the appeal Schmidt had made. My work was pleasant but rather dull; even my pornographic novel had bogged down. And it was May, that month of all months when emotion overcomes good sense.
    “Well,” I said. I leaned back in my chair and put my fingertips together. (What fictional detective was it who did that? Sherlock Holmes? Schmidt made a wonderful Watson.) “Well, Wat — -I mean, Schmidt, I just might be willing to take this case.”

II

    The police official reminded me of Erich von Stroheim, whom I had seen on the Late, Late Show back in Cleveland, except that he didn’t have a monocle. I guess they’ve gone out of style. He kissed my hand, however. I enjoy having my hand kissed. I can’t imagine why American men haven’t taken it up, it gets even us feminists.
    I hadn’t expected to have my hand kissed, but I had expected some interest. Bavarians like blondes. Bavaria, in case you didn’t know, is one of the southern provinces of Germany; its people are members of the Alpine subrace, short and stocky and brunette, so they appreciate the Valkyrie type. I was wearing a tight sweater and skirt, and I let my hair hang down over my shoulders. I didn’t care what Herr Feder thought of my brains, I just wanted to get all the information I could out of him.
    After all, there wasn’t much he could tell me. All the normal sources of inquiry had drawn a blank. The dead man simply wasn’t known to the police.
    “This does not mean he is not a criminal,” Feder explained, rubbing his thick gray eyebrows. “It only means that he is not known to us or to Interpol. He may have been arrested in some other country.”
    “Have you checked in the States?” I asked, leaning back in my chair and taking a deep breath.
    “What?” Feder’s eyes moved reluctantly back to my face. “Ah — verzeihen Sie, Fräulein Doktor …. No, we have not. After all, the man committed no crime — except to die.”
    “The museum authorities are rather concerned.”
    “Yes, so I understand. And yet, Fräulein Doktor, is there really any cause for suspicion? Like all police departments these days, we are badly overworked. We have too much to do investigating crimes that have occurred; how are we to spend time and money inquiring into a vague theory? If the museum wishes to investigate on its own, we will extend the fullest cooperation, but I fail to see…. That is, I have no doubt of your intelligence, Fräulein Doktor, but—”
    “Oh, I don’t intend to pursue criminals into dark alleys, or anything like that,” I said. We both laughed gaily at the very idea. Herr Feder had big, white, square teeth. “But,” I continued, “I am curious about the case; I was about to take leave anyway, and Herr Professor Schmidt suggested I might pursue certain leads of our own, just to see what I could find out. I wonder… I guess I had better see the corpse.”
    I don’t know why I made that suggestion. I’m not squeamish, but I’m not ghoulish, either. It was just that I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I had no other lead.
    I regretted my impulse when I stood in the neat, white antiseptic room that houses the morgue of Munich. It was the smell that got me: the stench of carbolic, which doesn’t quite conceal another, more suggestive, odor. When they turned the sheet back and I saw the still, dead face, I didn’t feel too good. Suggestion — the reminder of my own mortality. There was nothing particularly gruesome about the face itself.
    It was that of a man in middle life, though the lines were smoothed out and negated by death. He had heavy black brows and thick, graying black hair; his complexion was tanned or naturally swarthy. The lips were unusually wide and full. The eyes were closed.
    “Thank you,” I muttered, turning away.
    When we got back to his office, Feder offered me a little sip of brandy. I hadn’t been that