Not for export, p.18
Not For Export, page 18
"Not me," said Tommy Hambledon. "Frett. The boy Frett. You'll do something for him, won't you?"
"I want your advice about that, yes. He should be trained first and then have a business bought for him later on. I understand he wants to be an hotelier in Switzerland."
"Help, no," said Tommy. "Let him train in Switzerland and then take an hotel somewhere else. It's no good roaring in a lion's cage, there's no future in that."
"But tell me, gnadiges Fraulein," Spelmann was saying to Anna Knipe, "young Karas, why did he——"
"Oh, the poor boy," she said. "My father found him in a concentration camp dying by inches, he got him out and sent him here. He was dreadfully ill and we nursed him here, not to health, he was too far gone for that, but he did get better. He had a sort of romantic attachment to us; he was always saying he would die to do us a service and so, in the end, he did. Poor Karas, such a nice gentle young man. I remember him perfectly well as a footman at my grandmother's home, years ago, before the war."
Tommy Hambledon's eyebrows shot up before he could stop them, but Anna Knipe noticed nothing. He avoided Spelmann's eyes, but the same picture was in both their minds, of the thing that had been Edberg tied to a chair in a cellar in Berlin. The gentle Karas was probably better dead; he was a little too much like a faithful man-eating tiger.
"Just one more question," said Hambledon, "before we go and let you rest, Herr Renzow. Fraulein Knipe, when you found the jewels were gone, why did you not complain to the police?"
"I was afraid, mein Herr. First, we said nothing about them for fear they should be taken from us and sent back to Poland where the Russians would get them; and then I was afraid to admit they were gone for fear we should be held responsible for their loss."
"But they are yours," argued Spelmann. "There are now, alas, no Pastolskys left and your father was their nearest relative."
"We think so," she said simply, "but will the West German Government think so? And the occupying powers?"
"Certainly," said Spelmann stoutly. "The West German Government is reasonably moral and the occupying powers quite incredibly so."
Everyone laughed except Renzow, who said: "Yes, I know. That is why we were afraid they would send the jewels back to Poland."
"Let me reassure you," said Hambledon drily. "To be incredibly moral it is not really necessary to be incredibly silly also."
Manning Coles, Not For Export
