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something about a shooting and then Steiner marched you along the corridor.”
    Chavasse nodded. “I had a cup of coffee just before Osnabruck. Whatever was in it put me out for a good half hour. When I came round, Muller was lying in the corner, shot through the heart.”
    “A neat frame on somebody’s part.”
    “As a matter of fact, I thought it was your handiwork,” Chavasse told him. “What exactly were you looking for in my compartment?”
    “Anything I could find,” Hardt said. “I knew Muller was supposed to meet you at Osnabruck. I didn’t expect him to be carrying the manuscript, but I thought he might take you to it, even to Bormann.”
    “And you intended to follow us?” Chavasse said.
    “Naturally,” Hardt told him.
    Chavasse lit another cigarette. “Just tell me one thing. How the hell do you know so much?”
    Hardt smiled. “We first came across Muller a fortnight ago when he approached a certain German publisher and offered him Bormann’s manuscript.”
    “How did you manage to find out about that?”
    “This particular publisher is a man we’ve been after for three years now. We had a girl planted in his office. She tipped us off about Muller.”
    “Did you actually meet him?”
    Hardt shook his head. “Unfortunately, the publisher got some of his Nazi friends on the job. Muller was living in Bremen at the time. He left one jump ahead of them and us.”
    “And you lost track of him, I presume?”
    Hardt nodded. “Until we heard about you.”
    “I’d like to know how you managed that,” Chavasse said. “It should be most interesting.”
    Hardt grinned. “An organization like ours has friends everywhere. When Muller approached the firm of publishers you’re supposed to be representing, the directors had a word with Sir George Harvey, one of their biggest shareholders. He got in touch with the Foreign Secretary, who put the matter in the hands of the Bureau.”
    Chavasse frowned. “What do you know about the Bureau?”
    “I know it’s a special organization formed to handle the dirtier and more complicated jobs,” Hardt said. “The sort of things MI5 and the Secret Service don’t want to touch.”
    “But how did you know I was traveling on this train to meet Muller?” Chavasse said.
    “Remember that the arrangement with Muller, by which he was supposed to contact you at Osnabruck, was made through the managing director of the publishing firm. He was naturally supposed to keep the details to himself.”
    “Presumably, he didn’t.”
    Hardt nodded. “I suppose it was too good a tale to keep from his fellow directors and he told them everything over dinner that same evening. Luckily, one of them happens to be sympathetic to our work and thought we might be interested. He got in touch with our man in London, who passed the information over to me at once. As I was in Hamburg, it was rather short notice, but I managed to get a mid-morning flight to Rotterdam and joined the train there.”
    “That still doesn’t explain how the people who killed Muller knew we were supposed to meet on this train,” Chavasse said. “I can’t see how there could possibly have been another leak from the London end. I don’t think it’s very probable that there’s also a Nazi sympathizer on the board of directors of the firm I’m supposed to be representing.”
    Hardt shook his head. “As a matter of fact, I’ve got a theory about that. Muller was living in Bremen with a woman called Lilli Pahl. She was pulled out of the Elbe this morning, apparently a suicide case.”
    “And you think she was murdered?”
    Hardt nodded. “She disappeared from Bremen when Muller did, so they’ve probably been living together. My theory is that the other side knew where he was all along, that they were leaving him alone, hoping he’d lead them to Bormann. I think Muller gave them the slip and left Hamburg for Osnabruck last night. That left them with only one person who probably knew where he had gone