Heil Harris!

the finest car on the road. They’d have to be pretty small folk to get into this thing.”
    But it was no use reasoning with them, and half an hour later Steed had set off along the Walchensee road in a small black automated bug. Oh well, they couldn’t blame him if he crashed the thing into the river. Damned square-heads, they couldn’t even drive on the correct side of the road.
    He found the mountain air a little intoxicating, and by the end of the ninety-minute journey he was feeling positively inspired. No wonder Hitler went mad, spending so much time in this part of the country. There were only the mountain spirits to talk to, or those stout men in short trousers with feathers in their caps.
    The road dropped suddenly into Einsiedeln, and stretched out in front of him was the massive lake nearly a thousand feet above sea level. Steed stopped the car and got out to admire the place. There was no doubt about it, when they built Dachau concentration camp in Bavaria they were trying to give the prisoners every advantage.
    When he reached the village and tried to book a room at the hotel the fellow asked Steed whether he was an American, and then they had a wrangle about a suitable tea. It was half past four, dammit, and he had been travelling for hours.
    “It’s not as if I’m asking for tea and muffins with raspberry jam. A decent brandy, that’s all, with buttered toast.”
    As the place had a population of 500 this was the only inn so Steed had to settle for the sickly homebrewed brandy and do his toast in the kitchen.
    He had no settled plans until the following morning and Steed spent the evening reading up on the area, finding out who else was staying at the hotel and chatting to the local inhabitants. He had intended to deny all knowledge of the language, an elementary trick, but since no-one else in the village spoke English he had to abandon the idea. Insular people, the Germans.
    “I’m an English journalist,” he told Herr Kurtmann, “and I’m writing a book on your country since the war.” Kurtmann nodded. “I’ve owned this inn for thirty years and I still know nothing about Germany. Why not visit Bonn?”
    “It’s full of politicians. Whereas Bavaria, I gather, is the soul of the German people.”
    “I know nothing about that. Perhaps you should talk to Herr Goldberg. He is also staying at this inn, in the room next to yours. He is a journalist writing a series of articles about this country since the war.”
    Steed went up to his room. It overlooked the lake and as darkness fell he was reminded of all those gothic fairy tales and the Grimm scenery that children are thought to love. The gentle slopes of the Mendip Hills seemed a long way away. A peaceful period cottage is one thing, but in this inn Steed half expected to go downstairs and find that the thirty years war was still raging.
    At half past seven that evening Steed heard Herr Goldberg leave his room and go downstairs. Steed watched him leave the inn and vanish along the cobbled street. He smiled. Journalist writing a series of articles indeed! The fellow was obviously up to something, and in this part of the country that could only mean one thing.
    Steed slipped along the passage to Goldberg’s door. It was locked, but he wasn’t visible from the bar so he took his time in picking the lock. When he got in he locked the door again behind him. The window was open, so if anybody came in he could make a quick exit. He flicked on his pencil torch and began the search.
    The fellow was, as Steed had deduced, an imposter. He had twelve rounds of .38 ammunition in his case. At the bottom of his brief case there was a bottle of genuine Scotch whisky, which under the circumstances....
    An Israeli passport confirmed that Goldberg was a journalist and gave his origin as German. He was 35 and unmarried. He had no particular blemishes. But Steed was still unconvinced. Only a spy carries so little on his travels that you can learn almost nothing about the man from his luggage. He left a spike microphone in the wall behind a notice giving the hotel regulations in four languages, took the bottle of Scotch and climbed out of the window.
    He inched his way slowly along the narrow ledge to his own room and climbed in feeling rather pleased with the success of his mission. He smoked a panatella and drank a large Scotch before going downstairs to meet the locals.
    Conversation became easier as the night wore on and the beer overcame their