“As if he didn’t know!” Arthur’s lips tightened. “All right. Someone left a trail of these things from the culvert up here. One every fifty metres or so for someone else to follow. One of the lads coming up with a light spotted them.”
The Sergeant said something in German.
Arthur nodded. “I put the rest out collecting them all before I came to report.” He looked at George. “Any idea who might have dropped them, Mr. Carey? I found one of these two wedged between the canvas and the body of the truck, so don’t start trying to play dumb.”
“Dumb or not,” George said steadily, “I don’t know anything about them. What are they?”
The Sergeant got slowly to his feet. George could see a pulse going in his throat as he drew George’s open briefcase towards him and looked inside. Then he shut it.
“Perhaps one should ask the lady,” he said.
Miss Kolin sat absolutely rigid, looking straight in front of her.
Suddenly, he reached down and picked up her satchel from the floor by her chair.
“You permit?” he said, and, thrusting his hand into it, drew out a tangle of thin cord.
He pulled on the cord slowly. A yellow tube came into view and then another, then a handful of the things, red and blue as well as yellow. They were strings of wooden beads of the kind used for making bead curtains. George knew now that it was not a bottle of brandy that had made the satchel so bulky. He began to feel sick.