Fraulein Spy [antikvár]

OLD SCENT, NEW DANGER Herr Friedrich Hauser stared. His whisky glass thudded down onto the solid oak tabletop and the mellow liquid fountained out to trickle down his bony hand. "Now just a minute, my good friend," he said thickly. "Please. I think you will have to repeat for me how you reached that particular conclusion." His dry left hand sought the silk handkerchief in his breast pocket and mopped clumsily at the right. "It is perhaps that I am enjoying too much this so splendid beverage that you were good enough to send me, but for some reason I am unable to foUow you." He laughed, a fruity little gurgle that contrasted oddly with the bony leanness of his frame but seemed to go well with the slurred tones of too much whisky and well-being. Nick disliked him intensely. "From which point would you like me to repeat, Herr Hauser?" he said respectfully. "From Bonn? T^e ranch? Here ia Buenos Aires?" "Oh, Bonn is all right. Gruber," he said munificently. "I understand that you work for the magazine Achtung! I know about the magazine. Sometimes I even buy it, when there is a very sensational story, you know what I mean?" Nick knew what he meant. That was why he had chosen the Achtung! as his cover, and why he had transformed Nick Carter of AXE into Karl Gruber of West Germany's answer to Confidential. Achtung! was a magazine for lovers of the lurid, for political hysterics, for sensation-starved housewives. Achtung! found a minor government clerk with his fingers in the stamp drawer and enlarged him into Rot in Government; Achtung! found mommy kissing Santa Claus and spotlighted her as Corruption in Society; Achtung! looked through every keyhole and under every bed and found a Commimist spy—a depraved and sex-crazed Communist spy—wherever its hot-eyed gaze