“Did she keep the letter?”
“No.”
Frau Gresser spoke again. George watched her plump face quivering and her small, resentful eyes flickering between her two visitors. He was getting used now to interpretation and had learned not to try to anticipate the conversation while he waited. He was thinking at the moment that it would be unpleasant to be under any sort of obligation to Frau Gresser. The rate of emotional interest she would charge would be exhorbitantly high.
“She says,” said Miss Kolin, “that she did not like Franz and had never liked him even as a child. He was a sullen, sulky boy and always ungrateful for kindness. She wrote to him only as a duty to his dead mother.”
“How did he feel about foreigners? Had he any particular girl-friends? What I’m getting at is this-does she think he’d be the kind of man to marry a Greek girl, say, or an Italian, if he had the chance?”
Frau Gresser’s reply was prompt and sour.
“She says that, where women were concerned, he was the sort of man who would do anything that his selfish nature suggested. He would do anything if he had the chance-except marry.”
“I see. All right, I think that’s about the lot. Would you ask her if we can borrow these papers for twenty-four hours to have photostats made?”
Frau Gresser considered the request carefully. Her small eyes became opaque. George could feel the documents suddenly becoming precious to her.
“I’ll give her a receipt for them, of course, and they’ll be returned tomorrow,” he said. “Tell her the American Consul will have to notarize the copies or she could have them back today.”