“He must have been!.. I mean, he seemed to remember the same things that I did. And people here knew him by that name, didn’t they? And there’s quite a resemblance — look!”
She took out her wallet and extracted a photograph which she passed to him. It showed a dark, rather delicate-featured young man with an engaging smile. Simon dispassionately compared it, detail by detail, with the face of the girl opposite him.
“There’s a great likeness,” he conceded finally. “It’s probably true. I was only groping in the dark.”
“Here’s another thing.” She was fumbling in her purse again, and she came out with a small round piece of silver like a coin. “My father gave it to me just before he sent us away. It’s one of those things that stand out in this disjointed kind of childhood memory. He gave both Charles and me one. And Charles mentioned it in his first letter answering my advertisement. He said he still had his, and he wondered if I still had mine.”
“That’s pretty convincing.”
Simon took the piece of silver and looked at it, and a slight frown of puzzlement began to wrinkle his forehead.
“But if he was Jewish,” he said, “why a Saint Christopher medal?”
She shrugged.
“Maybe he’d been converted. Or maybe he hoped it would bluff the Gestapo, if they caught us.”
“Or maybe,” said the Saint, in a faraway voice, “it was just the handiest thing he had in the shop.”