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royalties, it was soothing to an author’s ego even if it didn’t help his bank account.
    But Renwick said, “We have a friend in common.”
    “Oh?”
    “Dwight O’Malley.”
    Grant raised an eyebrow. “O’Malley?” was all he could say. “Yes. Old Dwight. He was supposed to be here this week-end. He called me last night from Geneva—has to postpone his visit for a few weeks. Mentioned that he’d just had a note from you, and was sorry he’d miss you. Told me to try and track you down at your hotel and hoist one for him.”
    Geneva was correct: so was Grant’s scrawled note to O’Malley before leaving New York. Grant’s attack of disbelief ended. The amusing side of life was its pleasant surprises. Coincidences did happen. “How long have you known him?”
    “Off and on since college. He went into the army along with me. You did your service with him in Germany, didn’t you?”
    “We trained together, but in Germany I stayed with the poor bloody infantry. O’Malley went into—” Grant stopped short. O’Malley had disappeared into some hush-hush outfit: codes, it was thought. Intelligence? Was he still following along with that? Grant looked with a fresh eye on Robert Renwick. “Were you posted to Germany too?”
    Renwick nodded. “Up among the potato fields. Never will forget the smell of dung that the farmers scattered around. When I asked a Fräulein what was the awful stench, she giggled and said “ Landluft! Country air, we call it.” Never could eat a potato since then.”
    “Are you still in the army?” Grant asked bluntly.
    “No. I’m at present attached—temporarily—to our Embassy here.”
    “So you’re just visiting Vienna?”
    “For a couple of months.”
    “Where’s your home ground? Washington?”
    “Actually, it has been Brussels for the last few years.” NATO? Grant wondered. Tactfully, he said, “I used to live in Washington. Thought we might have more friends in common.” He looked at the silent girl, who was still fascinated by the torrent of rain sweeping over the car’s windows.
    Renwick noticed his speculation. “Avril’s a pure Londoner, even if she spent the first three years of her life in New York. I’m helping her lose her accent.”
    “Neat duty you’ve drawn in Vienna,” Grant said with a grin, and refrained from asking more questions. He had reached the end of the allowed quota, he decided. Renwick’s frankness—if he were connected with some form of Intelligence—had better not be tested much more. Then Grant asked himself three questions: why so much frankness? A method of winning trust? Or just natural friendliness? Renwick would be a gregarious type, as much outgoing and forthright as the girl was introspective and silent. “Avril is a charming name,” he told her profile. “Were you born in April? Then you should like rain-showers.”
    She turned her dark eyes on him. They were her best feature, he thought—large and soft and luminous, reminding him of a Byzantine portrait. She smiled. “Only if it’s warm rain.”
    Renwick cut in with, “What about you? Staying long in Vienna, city of my dreams?”
    “Two weeks, I hope.” Perhaps less, damn it.
    “Business or pleasure?”
    “A little of each. Museums and Weinstüberl .”
    “Of course, you’re the expert on art.”
    “Hardly.”
    “Don’t know much about painting,” Renwick confessed. “I belong to the I-know-what-I-like school. What’s your favourite field? Impressionism, Abstract, Contemporary Realism, or just good old-fashioned Dutch and Flemish?”
    Grant’s spine stiffened. The girl might have sensed it. “Isn’t this rain appalling?” she asked softly.
    “In Brussels, of course,” Renwick went on, very casual, very conversational, “they still worship the seventeenth-century masters. You see nothing but reproductions of them all around the place.”
    “It was a pretty good century for painting,” Grant said evenly.
    “Still is, for those who are now