'Yes, I heard about the statement,' Keramikos said. 'One of my people had seen it. Did the Gestapo arrest him?'
'No. Things were a bit chaotic at the time and he was urgently required in Italy to deal with the threatened Communist risings in the big towns. I interrogated him, you know, when he was first arrested. I could never shake him from that statement. Its weakness was, of course, that they would never have troubled to take him up to the top of the slittovia.' Engles looked at Keramikos with a puzzled frown. 'Just why did you show me Holtz's statement?' he asked.
'Ah — you are thinking that it tells you where the gold is hidden, eh?'
'By the time he had killed those men up here and taken the bodies down to the bottom and then climbed all the way back, it could not have been earlier than, say, four o'clock. He reported to the Commandant at the Tre Croci Hotel at seven-thirty. That gives him barely three hours in which to bury the five remaining bodies and twenty-one cases of gold. He wouldn't have had time to move those boxes to another hiding place.'
Keramikos shrugged his shoulders. 'Perhaps you are right,' he said.
'Then why did you show me the statement?'
'Because, my friend, it only tells you where the gold was. It does not tell you where it is now. Don't forget that Stelben owned this place for a short time. And he had two Germans working for him up here. They were here for over two weeks before they were arrested.'
'Were they alone here?'
'Yes. Aldo and his wife and Anna were given a month's holiday.'
'Strange that the two Germans should have been killed in that riot at the Regina Coeli.'