Argosy: The Short Story Magazine — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

i2 MICHAEL GILBERT ‘Who are you talking about?” I said, screwing my head round for I had my back to the room. “The blonde, of course. I haven’t been able to take my eyes off her all dinner. I thought you were making eyes at her in the mirror.” “Certainly not!” I said indignantly. “Who?” And then I saw Trude. She’d done something to her face, and in a low-cut evening dress she looked a mile removed from the ingénue I had talked to in the shop that morning. ‘““T thought you were keen on Frau Hodinger,”’ I said. ‘That bag,” said Baker, gracefully. “‘ Where do you think my eyes are? Now, there zs a girl. Looks lonely, too. Little Al must remedy that.” I see from my report that the next seven days were compara- tively peaceful. I had the chance of a word with Trude one morning. Baker had gone into Klagenfurt to do some shopping, and Trude had somehow managed to get out of going with him. It was the first time they had been separated for a week. “ He’s a funny little man,” she said. “ I’m not at all sure that he knows what he does want.” ‘‘ Tll give you three guesses,” I said. ‘“* Oh, he’d like to sleep with me, yes. And no doubt plans to do so. But he is more complex than you think. He tells you so often what a remarkable brain he has that you naturally come to disregard it. But he really has got a brain, you know.”’ ‘““So I’m told. Most of what he says goes over my head. I never got further at school than making smells in test-tubes.” ‘“‘T don’t mean science. One evening, he suddenly pointed to a fat little man—you know, the one with the daughters, who plays patience in the corner—and said, ‘'That man was in a concentration camp during the war.’ I said, ‘ Did he tell you?’ Al said, ‘ No, I’ve never spoken to him.’ He'd got it all worked out from the way the old boy behaved, and what he did and what he didn’t do.” I passed over that one and went back. “ You say he’s planning to sleep with you?” “Of course. That is what he is doing in Klagenfurt. He has extracted from me a promise that I will dine with him at the Haus Lord Byron on Thursday night—that is your last night here. I expect he has booked rooms for us—you know, in case we miss the last bus back. Separate rooms, of course.” “TI see.”’ It seemed to worry me a good deal more than her. “Then he will get me drunk. I expect he is now bribing the comiclooks.comn