Free Epitaph for a Spy by Eric Ambler Page B

successful. Should I make it now? My heart beating a little faster than usual, I looked at my watch. Nearly three o’clock. I would have to find out first exactly where Schimler was at the moment. I must be cool and careful about it. The phrase comforted me. Cool and careful. I must keep my head. Soft shoes? Most necessary. A revolver? Absurd! I didn’t have one, and even if I had … A torch? Idiot! it wasn’t dark. And then I remembered that I didn’t even know the number of his room.
    A wave of relief swept over me, and immediately I despised myself for it. It was no good telling myself that, whatever I felt, annoyance or relief, the fact remained that I did not know Schimler’s room number. The point was that an efficient person would have already found out what it was. If this was the way I was protecting my own interests—feeling relieved when difficulties arose—then heaven help me.
    It was in this frame of mind that I went down to the terrace. I had hoped to find it empty. But it was not. Sitting in a deck-chair at one end, smoking a pipe and reading a book, was Herr Schimler.
    Now, if I had but known the number of it, was the time to search his room. I almost turned on my heel to go back. But I stood where I was. I would have to let the opportunity go. Still, there was no harm in engaging the man in conversation, in finding out what sort of a person I had to deal with. After all, one of the fundamentals of good strategy was the study of your opponent’s mind.
    But it was easier to think about studying Herr Schimler’s mind than actually to do so. I moved a wicker armchair into the shade near him, sat down, and cleared my throat.
    He shifted the pipe between his teeth and turned over a page of the book. He did not so much as glance in my direction.
    I had heard that if one stares intently at the back of a person’s head and wills that person to turn round, he will very soon do so. I stared and willed at Herr Schimler for a good ten minutes. I could still now make an anthropometric drawing of the back of his head. But I made no impression at all on him. I managed to see the title of the book. It was Nietzsche’s
Birth of Tragedy
, in German, and one of several German books I had seen on the shelves in the writing-room. I abandoned the attempt to compete with Nietzsche and gazed out to sea.
    The sun was incredibly hot. A smoky haze lay on the horizon. The air above the stone balustrade quivered in the heat. In the garden the cicadas were in full chorus.
    I watched a huge dragonfly circle once round a piece of flowering creeper and soar off over the fir trees. It was not an afternoon for thinking of spies. I ought, I knew, to telephone to Beghin and give him the list of cameras. But he could wait. Perhaps later, when the day had grown cooler, I would walk down to the post office. The detective in his heavy black suit would be sweating in the shadow of the dusty palm trees outside the gate and longing for a
limonade gazeuse
. I envied him. In exchange for peace of mind, I would gladly wear black on hot summer afternoons and sweat and wait and watch and long for
limonades gazeuses
. A fine life that! Whereas mine was furtive like that of a criminal. I was the watched.
    I wondered what Mary Skelton thought of me. Nothing,probably. Or if she did think anything it was, no doubt, that I was a polite, reasonably personable young man with a gift for languages that was useful. I remembered the phrase she had used when she had thought that I was out of earshot. “The nice gentleman.” The intention had been facetious in a kindly way. Quite appropriate to a hotel acquaintance. It would be exceedingly pleasant to have Mary Skelton interested in you. She understood her brother perfectly. That was obvious. No less obvious was the fact that he thought he understood her. You could tell that by his manner towards her. But she …
    Herr Schimler shut his book with a snap and tapped his pipe on the wood of the deck-chair.
    I