“Good night, Mr. Carey,” she said firmly.
“Good night, Miss Kolin.”
She picked up her bag, turned round, and positioned herself facing the door. Then she began to walk straight for it. She missed a table by a hairsbreadth. She did not sway. She did not teeter. It was a miraculous piece of self-control. George saw her go out of the restaurant, change direction towards the concierge’s desk, pick up her room key, and disappear up the stairs. To a casual observer she might have had nothing stronger to drink than a glass of Rhine wine.
The Hospital of the Sacred Heart proved to be a grim brick building some way out of Stuttgart off the road to Heilbronn.
George had taken the precaution of sending a long telegram to Father Weichs. In it he had recalled Mr. Moreton’s visit to Bad Schwennheim in 1939 and expressed his own wish to make the priest’s acquaintance. He and Miss Kolin were kept waiting for only a few minutes before a nun appeared to guide them through a wilderness of stone corridors to the priest’s room.
George remembered that Father Weichs spoke good English, but it seemed more tactful to begin in German. The priest’s sharp blue eyes flickered from one to the other of them as Miss Kolin translated George’s polite explanation of their presence there and his hope that the telegram (which he could plainly see on the priest’s table) had arrived to remind him of an occasion in 1939 when …
The muscles of Father Weichs’s jaws had been twitching impatiently as he listened. Now he broke in, speaking English.
“Yes, Mr. Carey. I remember the gentleman, and, as you see, I have had your telegram. Please sit down.” He waved them to chairs and walked back to his table.
“Yes,” he said, “I remember the gentleman very well. I had reason to.”
A twisted smile creased the lean cheeks. It was a fine, dramatic head, George thought. You were sure at first that he must hold some high office in the church; and then you noticed the cracked, clumsy shoes beneath the table, and the illusion went.