“Yes. What did you do?” George asked.
“The first thing I did was to take security precautions. We’d already had trouble enough with the newspapers’ finding out stuff about the case and printing it, and before I went to Germany I’d agreed on a policy with my partners. I was to keep what I was doing as secret as possible; and to make sure that I didn’t get an interpreter with German newspaper contacts, I was to engage him in Paris. The other thing we’d agreed on was a cipher for confidential matters. It may sound funny to you, but if you’ve ever had experience of-”
“I know,” George said. “I saw the newspaper clippings.”
“Ah. Well, I’d been sending my partners progress reports in diary form. When I found out about Schirmer, I began to use the cipher. It was a simple key-word affair, but good enough for our purpose. You see, I had visions of the newspapers’ getting hold of the Schirmer name and starting another flood of claims from Schirmers, Shermans, and the rest. The final thing I did was to fire the interpreter. I said I was abandoning the inquiry and paid him off.”
“Why was that?”
“Because I was going on with it and I didn’t want anyone outside the firm to have a complete picture. It was just as well I did fire him, too, because later on, when the Nazis were after the estate and France was occupied, the Gestapo pulled in the second man I used, for questioning. If he’d known what the first one knew, we’d have been in a spot. I got the second one through our Paris Embassy. By the time he arrived, I’d had the war-diary entry photographed-you’ll find it in the file-and was ready to move on.”
“To Ansbach?”
“Yes. There I found the record of Franz Schirmer’s baptism. Back in Mühlhausen again, I found the register entries for the marriage of Franz and Maria Dutka, the births of Karl and Hans, and the death of Maria. But the really important thing I found was when I went back to Münster. The boy Karl was down in the recruits’ muster-roll for 1824 as Karl Schirmer. Franz had changed his own name but not his eldest boy’s.”
George thought quickly. “I suppose Franz changed his name when Mühlhausen was ceded to Prussia.”
“That’s what I thought. As far as the Prussians were concerned, he’d be a deserter. But I guess he just didn’t trouble about Karl.”