Free Dark Tunnel by Ross MacDonald Page A

believe.”
    “Really? I did some intercollegiate fencing when I went to college, but I’ve never competed with the sabre. We used foils and epee, with masks, of course. I’ve got no scars to show for it.”
    “Our sabre-fencing at Heidelberg was a crude and bloody business,” Dr. Schneider said with an emotion that surprised me. We moved out of the utility room under the staircase into the central hall, and I noticed Peter coming down the stairs. “Since my Heidelberg experiences I must confess I have detested fencing, and especially the sabre. It is a butcher’s implement.”
    Peter was at the foot of the stairs now, and he stood there listening.
    “If that’s the way you feel,” I said, “it’s surprising that you have a fencing salle in your house.”
    “It was part of the house when I bought it, and I left it as it was. Peter sometimes uses it when he is here, and, of course, it lends a certain touch to the house.”
    “The manorial touch,” I said. “Your establishment is on a feudal scale, Dr. Schneider. I’d like to see your fencing room.”
    As we went down the hall, Peter joined us and said, “My father has been maligning the sabre, Dr. Branch. It is the most beautiful of weapons, and the most difficult.”
    “The Italian sabre has its points, certainly. I’ve played around with it but I never really learned it.”
    We went on discussing the sabre as we entered the salle d’armes, but after Dr. Schneider switched on the light my mind wasn’t on what I was saying. It was wondering where Peter Schneider had picked up the smudge of lipstick on his cheek. I hadn’t seen it there before he went upstairs, and Frau Shantz, the middle-aged housekeeper, didn’t look as if she used lipstick or as if Peter Schneider could conceivably kiss her.
    Dr. Schneider pointed at a row of long, narrow cases on a table at the end of the room and said, “There are the foils, Dr. Branch, if you are interested.”
    When I went to look at them, Dr. Schneider spoke in an angry whisper which I couldn’t catch. When I turned around, the lipstick had disappeared from Peter’s cheek and he was casually tucking a handkerchief into his breast pocket.
    “I’m afraid it’s the least interesting room in the house,” Dr. Schneider said.
    “On the contrary. It brings back very pleasant memories, probably because I won a round-robin once and this recalls the scene of my former triumph. It was the only thing I ever got a letter for in school.”
    To anyone but a fencer the room would have been less interesting than an average hotel room with nobody living in it. It was a large, square, empty room on a rear corner of the house, with tall windows on two sides. There were crossed sabres over the door, and a few wire masks and pads hung on the white plaster walls. A corrugated rubber mat ran across the exact center of the room.
    But the black rubber mat and the faint memory of old sweat along the walls excited me for a minute. I took a foil out of its case and moved it in the air.
    Peter stood beside his father watching me. I looked at him and his mouth moved into a smile like soft rubber, but under the rosy flesh the strong and passionate bones of his skull were fixed in a durable, clenched grin. His blonde hair looked senescent in the white light.
    “Would you care to play with the foils a little, Dr. Branch, since you do not affect the sabre?”
    “I’d like to,” I said, “if you’ll be forebearing. I’m years out of practice.”
    Peter clicked his heels and bowed and started to take off his coat. I started to take off mine.
    “I’m sorry to interfere with your sport,” Dr. Schneider said, “but there’s hardly time, I’m afraid.”
    I looked at my watch. “It’s not eight-thirty,” I said.
    Peter spoke to his father in low, intense German. He must have thought that I didn’t know enough colloquial German to understand him, because what he said was, “Hold thy noise, thou doddering fool.”
    Dr. Schneider