'Here,' he said. 'First week of July 1935…. Professor Ott with wife, Colonel Samain….'

'Look here,' I said, 'I'm not interested in July 1935. What I want….' He shut his book and carried it away.

'I only wanted to show you,' he said with his back turned to me – 'to show you [a lock clicked] that I keep my books in good order.'

He came back to his desk and folded a letter that was lying on the blotting-pad.

'Summer 1929,' I pleaded. 'Why don't you want to show me the pages I want?'

'Well,' he said, 'the thing is not done. Firstly, because I don't want a person who is a complete stranger to me to bother people who were and will be my clients. Secondly, because I cannot understand why you should be so eager to find a woman whom you do not want to name. And thirdly – I do not want to get into any kind of trouble. I have enough troubles as it is. In the hotel round the corner a Swiss couple committed suicide in 1929,' he added rather irrelevantly.

'Is that your last word?' I asked.

He nodded and looked at his watch. I turned on my heel and slammed the door after me – at least, I tried to slam it – it was one of those confounded pneumatic doors which resist.

Slowly, I went back to the station. The park. Perhaps Sebastian recalled that particular stone bench under that cedar tree at the time he was dying. The outline of that mountain yonder may have been the paraph of a certain unforgettable evening. The whole place seemed to me a huge refuse heap where I knew a dark jewel had been lost. My failure was absurd, horrible, excruciating. The leaden sluggishness of dream-endeavour. Hopeless gropings among dissolving things. Why was the past so rebellious?

'And what shall I do now?' The stream of the biography on which I longed so to start, was, at one of its last bends, enshrouded in pale mist; like the valley I was contemplating. Could I leave it thus and write the book all the same? A book with a blind spot. An unfinished picture – uncoloured limbs of the martyr with the arrows in his side.

I had the feeling that I was lost, that I had nowhere to go. I had pondered long enough the means to find Sebastian's last love to know that there was practically no other way of finding her name. Her name! I felt I should recognize it at once if I got at those greasy black folios. Ought I to give it , up and turn to the collection of a few other minor details concerning Sebastian which I still needed and which I knew where to obtain?

It was in this bewildered state of mind that I got into the slow local train which was to take me back to Strasbourg. Then I would go on to Switzerland perhaps…. But no, I could not get over the tingling pain of my failure; though I tried hard enough to bury myself in an English paper I had with me: I was in training, so to speak, reading only English in view of the work I was about to begin…. But could one begin something so incomplete in one's mind?

I was alone in my compartment (as one usually is in a f second-class carriage on that sort of train), but then, at the next station, a little man with bushy eyebrows got in, greeted me continentally, in thick guttural French, and sat down opposite. The train ran on, right into the sunset. All of a sudden, I noticed that the passenger opposite was beaming at me.

'Marrvellous weather,' he said and took off his bowler hat disclosing a pink bald head. 'You are English?' he asked nodding and smiling.

'Well, yes, for the moment,' I answered.

'I see, saw, you read English djornal,' he said pointing with his finger – then hurriedly taking off his fawn glove and pointing again (perhaps he had been told that it was rude to point with a gloved index). I murmured something and looked away: I do not like chatting in a train, and at the moment I was particularly disinclined to do so. He followed my gaze. The low sun had set aflame the numerous windows of a large building which turned slowly, demonstrating one huge chimney, then another, as the train clattered by.

'Dat,' said the little man, 'is "Flambaum and Roth", great fabric, factory. Paper.'

There was a little pause. Then he scratched his big shiny nose and leaned towards me.

'I have been,' he said, 'London, Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle.' He looked at the thumb which had been left uncounted.

'Yes,' he said. 'De toy-business. Before de war. And .I was playing a little football,' he added, perhaps because he noticed that I glanced at a rough field with two goals dejectedly standing at the ends – one of the two had lost its crossbar.

He winked; his small moustache bristled.

'Once, you know,' he said and was convulsed with silent laughter, 'once, you know, I fling, flung de ball from "out" direct into goal.'

'Oh,' I said wearily, 'and did you score?'

'De wind scored. Dat was a robinsonnada!'

'A what?'

'A robinsonnada – a marrvellous trick. Yes…. Are you voyaging farr?' he inquired in a coaxing super-polite voice.

'Well,' I said, 'this train does not go farther than Strasbourg, does it?'

'No; I mean, meant in generahl. You are a traveller?'

I said yes.

'In what?' he asked, cocking his head.

'Oh, in the past I suppose,' I replied.

He nodded as if he had understood. Then, leaning again towards me, he touched me on the knee and said: 'Now I sell ledder – you know – ledder balls, for odders to play. Old! No force! Also hound-muzzles and lings like dat.'

Again he tapped my knee lightly, 'But earlier,' he said, 'last year, four last years, I was in de police – no, no, not once, not quite…. Plain-clotheses. Understand me?'

I looked at him with sudden interest.

'Let me see,' I said, 'this gives me an idea….'

'Yes,' he said, 'if you want help, good ledder, cigaretteйtui, straps, advice, boxing-gloves….'

'Fifth and perhaps first,' I said.

He took his bowler which lay on the seat near him, put it on carefully (his Adam's apple rolling up and down), and then, with a shiny smile, briskly took it off to me.

'My name is Silbermann,' he said, and stretched out his hand. I shook it and named myself too.

'But dat is not English,' he cried slapping his knee. 'Dat is Russian! Gavrit parussky? I know also some odder words… Wait! Yes! Cookolkah – de little doll.'

He was silent for a minute. I rolled in my head the idea he had given me. Should I try to consult a private detective' agency? Would this little man be of any use himself?

'Rebah!' he cried. 'Der's anodder. Fish, so? and…. Yes. Braht, millee braht – dear brodder.'

'I was thinking,' I said, 'that perhaps, if I told you of the bad fix I am in….'

'But dat is all,' he said with a sigh. 'I speak [again the fingers were counted] Lithuanian, German, English, French [and again the thumb remained]. Forgotten Russian. Once! Quite!'

'Could you perhaps….' I began.

'Anyfing,' he said. 'Ledder-belts, purses, notice-books, suggestions.'

'Suggestions,' I said. 'You see, I am trying to trace a person… a Russian lady whom I never have met, and whose name I do not know. All I know is that she lived for a certain stretch of time at a certain hotel at Blauberg.'

'Ah, good place,' said Mr Silbermann, 'very good' – and he screwed down the ends of his lips in grave approbation. 'Good water, walks, caseeno. What you want me to do?'

'Well,' I said, 'I should first like to know what can be done in such cases.'

'Better leave her alone,' said Mr Silbermann, promptly.

Then he thrust his head forward and his bushy eyebrows moved.

'Forget her,' he said. 'Fling her out of your head. It is dangerous and ewsyless.' He flicked something off my trouser knee, nodded and sat back again.

'Never mind that,' I said. 'The question is how, not why.'

'Every how has its why,' said Mr Silbermann. 'You find, found her build, her I picture, and now want to find herself yourself? Dat is not love. Ppah! Surface!'