The Faberge Egg Read Online Free Page A

holster. McGuffin put himself between the little man and the gun, then raised his foot and brought his leather heel down on the man’s hand as hard as he could. The scream and the feel of cracking bones underfoot cheered him up after the ordeal of the children with the missing fingers.
    “Who is he? Why’d he shoot you?” McGuffin demanded, lunging back across the room to his partner.
    Miles seemed to smile as he shook his head slowly and helplessly. He tried to speak but managed only to summon up a froth of bloody bubbles and a gurgling sound. McGuffin put his ear close to Miles’ mouth and strained to hear.
    “. . . out of his bird,” Miles Dwindling said weakly.
    They were his last words. A second later, his chin dropped to his chest, and he was dead.
    The ambulance attendants had to pull McGuffin off the murderer when they arrived. McGuffin had slapped him around the room for more than fifteen minutes, opening several cuts on the moon face with his new college ring, but the little man said nothing. Nor would he speak to the police or the district attorney, or the psychiatric panel that examined him. There was no evidence that the murderer and his victim had ever met or had dealings with each other through a third party. He was apparently a nut who had wandered into the office, spied the gun in its holster and decided to shoot its owner. He was unemployed at the time and living in the Europa Hotel not far from the office.
    McGuffin picked up the next clipping and began to read, hoping to find some clue as to Otto Kruger’s present whereabouts, but found nothing. Most of what was known about him was supplied by Immigration. He had been an officer in the German army, serving during most of the war with the occupation forces in France. He was neither a Nazi nor a war criminal, according to Immigration.
    Suddenly McGuffin remembered. There had been a friend, a comrade-in-arms who had arrived in the United States several years after Kruger. The two of them had shared a house together somewhere until shortly before the murder. McGuffin had not met the man; he had testified only briefly at the sanity hearing and then disappeared. McGuffin leafed quickly through the newspaper articles until he found the one he was looking for.
    Klaus Vandenhof, a friend who had at one time shared a house in Marin County with the accused, testified that he had not recently been in touch with his old friend and could not comment as to his state of mind.
    “Klaus Vandenhof!” McGuffin repeated, going to his notes. The name was familiar. It was possible that he had investigated the witnesses’ backgrounds more fully at the time than had the district attorney. Leafing quickly through his longhand notes, he found the underlined name, Klaus Vandenhof, at the top of a yellow page halfway through the sheaf of papers. Vandenhof had served as a captain in the quartermaster corps with the German occupation forces in Paris during World War II. Although he was not a member of the party, he was not allowed to immigrate until 1961, when he was sponsored by an American citizen, Otto Kruger, who had served with him in Paris. The D&B in the left margin indicated to the detective that he had ordered a Dun & Bradstreet report on him at the time, but it had apparently availed him little. Vandenhof had taught languages at Marin Junior College for a year before becoming an antiques dealer, with offices in his home.
    His home? McGuffin questioned. He had assumed that the house had belonged to Kruger. But no, he had purchased a house in his own name on Marin Hill Drive near San Rafael in 1961, the year he arrived in the United States. So it was really Otto who got the free room in exchange for sponsoring his old boss’ citizenship application. There was no record of any mortgage on the house according to Dun & Bradstreet, and “the subject lives in a luxurious manner.”
    So what do you make of that? McGuffin asked himself, as he leaned back in his chair and