'Hello Mr. Vintrex, I'd begun to think you wasn't coming for that envelope you left with me. Hang on half-a-mo', and I'll go and get it for you.'
It was obvious that she took me for Lothar, so I let her continue to think so, and she slouched off down into the basement. The moment she had disappeared I tried the door of the room in which I had seen him. It opened at my touch and I walked in on the off chance that I might find something there which would give me a clue to his whereabouts.
A young man with long hair was seated there tapping away at a typewriter. I asked quickly if he happened to know the address of the previous tenant and how long it was since he had left. With a shrug, he replied, 'No, I don't even know his name. But I've been here a fortnight.'
I thanked him and backed out just in time to meet the landlady as she reappeared up the basement stairs. She handed me an envelope and with a murmur of thanks I left the house.
It had jumped to my mind that Lothar had left some paper with the woman because he thought it too dangerous to carry about with him, so he was still in this country and, with luck, it might be something which would enable me to trace him; or, rather, enable the police to do so, as, by then, I had made up my mind to put them on to him as an enemy agent.
With trembling fingers I opened the envelope. It contained only a single sheet of paper with the following words printed on it in capitals - 'Congratulations on Dinah. She must love you a lot, and I'm sorry I won't be in England when you have your next night out. I wonder how she will take it when you have to tell her about the Wilberforce woman?'
My feelings can be imagined as the full implications of the swinish double trick he had played me sank in. And as he had evidently left the country it was useless to go to the police.
Desperately I wondered what to do. At first I felt inclined to tell the truth, both to Dinah and to a solicitor as my defence in the divorce case now pending against me. But since Lothar could no longer be laid by the heels and brought into court as evidence of my innocence, I knew that I should never be believed. I had told Dinah about Lothar, and his being my identical twin, during our engagement, but I don't think his name had been even mentioned between us since. If only I'd told her about my seeing him in London, or gone to the police then, I would have had some sort of case, but to state now that my twin brother had turned up out of the past and impersonated me would sound laughably thin.
One thing I could do was to subpoena the woman with whom Lothar had lodged because, obviously, I could not have been living in her house and at Farnborough at the same time; and that, in due course, I did, but it did not save the situation.
For some days I said nothing to Dinah, but I became so ill from worry that I decided the only way to escape a nervous breakdown was to come clean with her. Of course, I did not tell her that Lothar had slept with her that night I was in London, or that he was a Russian agent, as the first would have inflicted grievous pain on her unnecessarily and the second, if it now got out - my not having reported that at the time - might have cost me my job to no good purpose. I told her only that I had seen Lothar in London and that he had used my name when caught with the Wilberforce woman.
Dinah behaved very well; but it was obvious that she did not believe my story. She took a night to think things over, then told me that our future must depend on what transpired when the case was heard. If I could prove my innocence she would most humbly beg my pardon for having doubted me. If I'd suffered a temporary aberration and it was a single slip, she would forgive me. But if it emerged that I had been having a regular affair with this woman, she would have to think again. In the meantime she meant to go back and live with her parents.
As the case could not be heard until the autumn session, I spent a miserable summer. At last it came on and in court I saw Mrs. Wilberforce for the first time. She was a Spanish type black-haired and good looking, and had plenty of sex appeal. I suppose I should have expected it, but to my horror she greeted me as an old friend, and said, with a reproachful smile:
'I do think, Otto, you've behaved awfully badly in not writing or coming to see me all this time. What's done's done, and it couldn't have made matters any the worse for you'
All I could do was to make no reply and give her a stony stare.
The case did not take long, as my only witness, the lodging-house woman, let me down completely. My solicitor had told me that she had proved extremely awkward and refused to sign a statement; and now in court she declared on oath that she had never before set eyes on me.
Her reason was not far to seek. She must have been in the pay of the Russians to take lodgers that they sent her, ask no questions and keep her mouth shut. Evidently she believed me to be a Soviet agent and, for her own safety, had determined to deny all knowledge of me, so that should I later be arrested she would escape being involved in the case.
The verdict, of course, went against me; but after that I thought my fortunes were changing for the better. The cross-examination of the Wilberforces' cleaning woman had disclosed that her mistress frequently entertained men alone in the flat when her husband was absent; so the damages awarded to Wilberforce were much less than I had feared I should have to pay and, as this also revealed her as unlikely to be the kind of woman I would have had a regular affair with, I had good hopes that Dinah would return to me.
Alas, I had underestimated Lothar's vindictiveness. With diabolical cunning he had left a hidden landmine to make more certain the wrecking of my marriage. Like so much else about us, our writing was so similar that he had never had any difficulty in forging mine, and he had made most skilful use of a letter purporting to have been written by me to Mrs. Wilberforce.
In it he referred with filthy delight to certain obscenities in which they had indulged on his previous visits to her, and said how greatly he was looking forward to another session of the same kind when he came to see her at six o'clock on the evening of my dinner in London. But instead of sending it to her he had sent it to her husband with an anonymous note to the effect that the writer had found it in a handbag that she had left behind in a night-club. It was this which had led Wilberforce to turn up at their flat unexpectedly at the hour given, as Lothar had evidently planned he should, and so catch them in bed together.
Fortunately for my reputation, as the case against me appeared such a clear one the contents of the letter had not been disclosed in court but only mentioned as the reason for Wilberforce having surprised his wife. But the solicitors who were holding a watching brief for Dinah requested a sight of it afterwards, and their report to her proved my final undoing. She started divorce proceedings against me and early in 1951 was granted her decree nisi.
I have not seen Lothar in the flesh, or heard anything of him, since our one meeting in May 1950. But I feel certain that he is now in England, and have the impression that he is living somewhere near the East Coast. Anyway, he is endeavouring to condition my mind to a state in which I would be prepared to meet him again. Should he succeed, it is quite possible that this time I shall murder him. It is in case I should do so that I have set all this down; as it may be regarded as some justification for my act, and stand me in better stead than would the same account if extracted from me, piece by piece, under police examination after the crime had been committed.
Apart from the poignant tragedy unfolded in it, this second instalment gave Verney considerable concern. From it there could be no doubt that Lothar had completely gone over to the Russians. Therefore, if he was now in England and endeavouring to get hold of his brother, the odds were all against his wanting to do so only for personal reasons; it was much more likely that he hoped to induce him to give away information connected with his secret work and was, in fact, a Soviet agent.