Free Above Suspicion by Helen MacInnes Page B

silently with a twist of a smile to Richard.
    “Thank you,” said Richard, and he meant it.
    “You’re welcome.” He raised his hat again and walked quickly away, as if afraid of what Frances would do next. Richard looked down at her and shook his head.
    “You surpassed yourself there, my sweet Dora. Now if you would really like to go some place, we can start on the old town. This way.” He caught her arm as she moved off in the wrong direction.
    “He was rather nice-looking. American, wasn’t he? I liked his voice.”
    “Yes; yes; and rich baritone,” Richard answered absent-mindedly. He was looking for a place to cross the street.
    The exploration of the old town filled in the time till lunch. Two o’clock found them exhausted in a beer restaurant, Richard having decided that the heat of the day called for a liquid lunch. Frances atoning for the slow progress caused by her shoes—she had managed, but at a price—sat in sweet martyrdom as she talked and laughed. It was strange how the smell of beer clung to the room. The coffee did not taste very much like coffee, but she sipped it and kept her eyes off the beer mugs. She had never liked the stuff; from now on she would hate it. Even the table smelled of beer. Richard was asking her a question. How would she like a tram ride? Heavens, there was nothing she wanted less.
    “Must we?” she asked as pathetically as possible.
    Richard nodded. “I’m afraid so.”
    She lowered her voice. “Telephone book?”
    “No good. I had a look at it when you were powdering your nose.”
    “Nothing there at all?”
    “Nothing.”
    Frances resigned herself to the inevitable. “Well, let’s go now, and get it over.”
    Richard finished his beer slowly. It was a good thing that one of them was having fun, thought Frances. Then she began to wonder. She had been in such a constant depression ever since they had arrived in Nümberg. It was as if Gibbon’s idea of the Middle Ages had interpreted itself here in the tortuous streets, the thick walls, the narrow crowding houses. A triumph of religion and barbarism.
    “Well?” said Richard.
    “I thought I liked Gothic.”
    “You like it spiritual and aspiring, my sweet.”
    “Perhaps it is that. Tell me, Richard, was Gibbon ever in Nümberg?”
    Richard laughed suddenly. Curious faces turned to look at them. They waited until the interest had subsided, and then they left.
    “We must take a No. 2 tram, but God knows in which direction,” said Richard.
    “Going east or west? “
    “Roughly east.”
    “Then it’s this side.”
    A tramcar was approaching; there was no time for any argument. He followed Frances aboard with some misgivings, and then watched her trying to appear oblivious as the conductor agreed that they would be driven along the Marienstrasse.
    “On a moor, or a hill or some place like that,” said Richard, “but in a strange muddled-up town… It’s quite beyond me how you know these things.”
    Frances relented. “I cannot tell a lie, darling. You saw the Lorenz Church?”
    “Well, yes. We were just beside it.”
    “Well, what way does a church point?”
    “East, of course… Upon my Sam!” He grinned. “You know, Frances, just at the stage when a man thinks women have no brains they confound him by some low cunning like that. Go on, have your laugh. You deserve it.”
    As they approached the Marientor, he pressed her hand.
    “Keep your eyes open,” was all he said. Frances remembered the name he had told her last night. They sat in silence, watching the shops and business houses, as the lumbering tramcar clanked its slow way along the Marienstrasse. They were now in the newer part of the town: the street was broader and the names on the shops were less easy to see. Frances guessed that Richard had the idea that Fugger might be the name of some business; it was the one chance. For if there had been no Fugger of Marienstrasse in the telephone directory then the only other way to find Mr. Fugger