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The safest thing was to keep on being the harmless photographer, who certainly wouldn’t refuse a hot breakfast at the Gasthof Waldesruh.
    “Only what?” asked Grell.
    “I’m late as it is. My wife will start worrying.”
    “You can telephone her from the inn.” There was no arguing allowed by that tone of voice.
    The three of them passed quite close to the spot where Bryant had hidden the chest. Whatever happens, he thought, it has been a good morning’s work. “You know,” he told them as they reached the trail that ran downhill to Unterwald, “I shouldn’t be surprised if this mist has cleared in a couple of hours. I might get my photographs yet. It would save me coming back tomorrow or the next day.”
    “What’s so urgent about the photographs?” Anton asked.
    And that gave him a chance to talk about the book he was planning on the lakes in this part of Austria. He had photographed sixteen of them so far, at various times of year, at various times of day, to show—as he could explain at length and with real enthusiasm—their various characters, their amazing changes of mood. August Grell was interested; Anton seemed impressed. Bryant, in spite of his exhaustion, felt his spirits pick up. Yes, a good morning’s work, he thought, as Grell and he drove the short distance to the inn. (Anton had decided there was too little room for his long legs and had taken a short cut down through the wood.) Bryant wondered a little when Grell told him to park the car at the back of Waldesruh, but otherwise there seemed no attempt at secrecy. Grell hadn’t blinked an eye when a couple of villagers walked past, but gave them “Grüss Gott” and a wave of his hand.
    Anton was already there. He had added wood to the big earth-coloured stove and set a pot of coffee on one of the openings of its black iron top. Now, he was whistling as he moved cheerfully around the large kitchen. It seemed as if the two men used only one corner of it when they were by themselves. It was a practical place. Cooking utensils crowding the niches above the stove, pots and pans hanging from a beam, a smell of cheese and apples and freshly ground coffee, scrubbed-wood floor and tables, blue-patterned tiles around the oven and sink. And the remains of one man’s breakfast. Bryant’s glance flicked quickly away from the single cup and saucer and plate. One man. Where had the other been? “I think I’ll call my wife,” he said easily, and waited for an abrupt refusal, a reversal in manner.
    “This way,” Grell said with a polite gesture towards the dining-room. He led Bryant through the ice-cold room with its chairs upended on bare wooden tables and its rows of mounted heads, antlered and glassy-eyed, staring down from the walls. “We have only one telephone, but this is a very simple inn. And we do not charge much, no more than fifty schillings a day for everything.”
    “Very reasonable.” Fifty schillings meant about fourteen in English currency, two dollars flat in American. “I must remember that.”
    “Over there,” Grell said, pointing proudly at the desk in the entrance hall. Tactfully, he headed for his bedroom and left Bryant alone.
    Bryant looked at the telephone and then at the front door just a few paces away. It was barred. Probably locked, too. Even so, if his car had been out there, he would have been temptedto try that door. He fought down the impulse to try it anyway. Once he was outside, someone in the village would see him. The Grells could hardly stop him leaving then. But it would be a mistake on his part; he would only confirm any suspicions they had, and he would be watched and followed and menaced for the remaining days he was given to live. If they were Nazi agents, that was. He wasn’t sure about them any more than they were sure of him. He picked up the receiver, knowing that if August Grell was an agent he must have devised a way to monitor any conversation on this telephone.
    At last he heard Anna’s low