AFTER TWO DRINKS Rollo Martins' mind would always turn towards women—in a vague, sentimental, romantic way, as a Sex, in general. After three drinks, like a pilot who dives to find direction, he would begin to focus on one available girl. If he had not been offered a third drink by Cooler, he would probably have not gone quite so soon to Anna Schmidt's house, and if ... but there are too many "ifs" in my style of writing, for it is my profession to balance possibilities, human possibilities, and the drive of destiny can never find a place in my files.
Martins had spent his lunchtime reading up the reports of the inquest, thus again demonstrating the superiority of the amateur to the professional, and making him more vulnerable to Cooler's liquor (which the professional in duty bound would have refused). It was nearly five o'clock when he reached Cooler's flat which was over an ice-cream parlour in the American zone: the bar below was full of G.I.'s with their girls, and the clatter of the long spoons and the curious free uniformed laughter followed him up the stairs.
The Englishman who objects to Americans in general usually carried in his mind's eye just such an exception as Cooler: a man with tousled grey hair and a worried kindly face and long-sighted eyes, the kind of humanitarian who turns up in a typhus epidemic or a world war or a Chinese famine long before his countrymen have discovered the place in an atlas. Again the card marked "Harry's friend" was like an entrance ticket. His warm frank handclasp was the most friendly act that Martins had encountered in Vienna.
"Any friend of Harry is all right with me," Cooler said. "I've heard of you, of course."
"From Harry?"
"I'm a great reader of Westerns," Cooler said, and Martins believed him as he did not believe Kurtz.
"I wondered—you were there, weren't you?—if you'd tell me about Harry's death."
"It was a terrible thing," Cooler said. "I was just crossing the road to go to Harry. He and Mr. Kurtz were on the sidewalk. Maybe if I hadn't started across the road, he'd have stayed where he was. But he saw me and stepped straight off to meet me and this jeep—it was terrible, terrible. The driver braked, but he didn't stand a chance. Have a Scotch, Mr. Martins. It's silly of me, but I get shaken up when I think of it." He said as he splashed in the soda, "I'd never seen a man killed before."
"Was the other man in the car?"
Cooler took a long pull and then measured what was left with his tired kindly eyes. "What man would you be referring to, Mr. Martins?"