Only the landlady was there, dour and indifferent to his nodded greeting. He climbed the stairs wearily, fatigued to his bones. At the door to his room, he searched unsuccessfully through his pockets for the key. He rattled the handle of the heavy door, also without success. For a few moments he remained befuddled, checking his pockets again and again, grumpily lecturing himself on the counterproductivity of fixated behavior. At last he remembered that he didn’t have the key. In a scene that had amused some of the old-timers, it had been wrestled from him by the proprietress when he had left that afternoon. Odd, with all the reading he’d done on European customs, he had overlooked the fact that you didn’t take your key with you when you left your hotel.

With a grumble and a sigh he went back downstairs and approached the landlady, who watched him with a malevolent eye. He took a breath and drew for the first time on his recent months of self-study.

"Guten Abend, gnadige Frau," he said. "Ich habe… Ich habe nicht mein, mein…" Here German Made Simple failed him. He made key-turning movements. She sat stolidly.

"Das Ding fur…fur die Tur?" he said, continuing to turn his imaginary key in the imaginary lock.

"Schlussel," she said with a disgusted shake of her head.

She turned, plucked the key and its large attached brass plate from the rack behind her, and plunked them on the desk.

"Ach, ja, Schlussel, Schlussel," he cried, grinning with his best try at hearty Teutonic joviality, wondering at the same time why in the world he was trying to placate her. She was, as ever, unresponsive.

Then back upstairs, under her suspicious glower, with heavy feet and a stomach beginning to go queasy. The second piece of Black Forest cake had been a mistake. Or maybe it was the twelfth glass of wine. With a hand less steady than it had been even an hour before, he inserted the big key in the lock and opened the door.