‘I’ll go as soon as you tell me what’s happened to Tucek,’ I said. ‘I’ve just been down to his office. There are two men there, searching it. There were files and books all over the floor.’
He sat down then and for a moment he said nothing. His body, hunched in the big armchair, seemed suddenly shrivelled and old. ‘Jan Tucek has been arrested,’ he said slowly.
‘Arrested?’ I think I’d known it ever since I’d walked into his office. But to hear it put bluntly into words shook me.
‘Why?’ I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Why is any one arrested in Czechoslovakia to-day? He fought in England during the war. That alone is sufficient to make him suspect. Also he is an industrialist.’ His voice was low and somehow fatalistic. It was as though he saw in this the beginning of the end for himself.
‘Is he in prison?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘They do not go so far yet. That is why they search his office. They look for evidence. For the moment he is confined to his house. Perhaps he will be released tomorrow. And then — perhaps not.’ He gave a slight shrug of his shoulders. ‘This sort of thing hangs over all of us of the old Czechoslovakia. So many have disappeared already.’
‘But what has he done?’ I asked.
‘I do not know.’ He took off his glasses and began to polish them as though afraid of showing some emotion. There was a heavy, audible silence between us. At length he picked up a newspaper from under a pile of papers, peered at it and then held it out to me. ‘Column two,’ he said, ‘The Rinkstein story.’
It was down-page quite a small story headed: DIAMOND DEALER ARRESTED — RINKSTEIN ACCUSED OF ILLEGAL CURRENCY DEALS. ‘Who is Rinkstein?’ I asked him.