“Ask her if her friend knows what the Sergeant’s injuries were.”
“She cannot say exactly. The Sergeant was lying in a pool of blood.”
“Is she absolutely sure in her own mind-?” Then he broke off. “No, wait a minute. Put it another way. If the Sergeant were her own son, would she be satisfied in her own mind that he was dead from what her friend has told her?”
A smile appeared on the delicately curved lips and a chuckle shook the massive body as their owner understood his question. Then, with a grunting effort, she heaved herself up from the divan and waddled to a drawer in the table. From it she took a slip of paper, which she handed to Miss Kolin with an explanation.
“Madame anticipated your doubts and asked for proof that her friend saw the body. He told her that they stripped the dead Germans of their equipment and that he got the Sergeant’s water bottle. He still has it. It has the Sergeant’s number and name burned into the strap. They are written on this paper.”
Madame Vassiotis sat down again and sipped her wine as George looked at the paper.
The army number he knew well; he had seen it before on several documents. Beneath it in block letters had been written: “SCHIRMER F.”
George considered it carefully for a moment or two, then nodded. He had not mentioned the name Schirmer to the Captain. Trickery was quite out of the question. The evidence was conclusive. What had happened afterwards to the body of Sergeant Schirmer might never be known, but there was no shadow of doubt that Madame Vassiotis and her mysterious acquaintance were telling what they knew of the truth.
He nodded and, picking up his glass of wine, raised it politely to the woman before he drank.
“Thank her for me, please, Miss Kolin,” he said as he put the glass down, “and tell her that I am well satisfied.”