After Noah agrees to find out everything that Mary did on her wedding day, Wilson and Potter open Meinike's suitcase in the drugstore. The next day, Wilson goes fishing with Noah and, sensing that the teenager dislikes Rankin, asks him to help in his investigation. At the same time, Rankin goes to check up on Meinike's body in the woods and is upset when Red, Mary's dog, begins to dig at the site. Later that night, however, Wilson remembers that Rankin had said that Karl Marx was not a 'German' because he was a Jew, and decides to continue his investigation. While dining with Wilson, Mary, her brother Noah and her father, Rankin speaks disparagingly about Germany and convinces Wilson of his innocence. Wilson soon narrows his list of suspects to Rankin, who has been fixing the church clock, then poses as an antique dealer and clock enthusiast in order to ingratiate himself to Mary and the professor. Potter tells him about the mysterious Meinike and his suitcase. Wilson, meanwhile, revives and, as Mary and Rankin are being married, heads for the drugstore, where owner Mr.

When Meinike, who claims to have found God, reveals that he was followed to Harper, Rankin chokes him to death and buries him under a pile of leaves. There, Rankin informs Meinike that he is marrying Mary, the daughter of a Supreme Court Justice, only because she is the perfect cover for him. Fleeing, Meinike goes to Rankin's home, where he meets the unsuspecting Mary Longstreet and learns that she and Rankin are to be married that evening.Īfter Meinike finally locates Rankin near the school, a nervous, tense Rankin orders him to the woods. At the school, Meinike becomes aware that he is being followed by Wilson and knocks him unconscious in the gymnasium. As soon as Meinike arrives in Harper, which boasts an old, ornate church clock, he deposits his suitcase at the local drugstore and heads for the school at which Rankin is a teacher. After some resistance, Meinike learns that Kindler, an avowed clock enthusiast, is living under the name Professor Charles Rankin in a small Vermont town called Harper.

Watched carefully by Wilson, the freed Meinike travels to Latin America and there contacts a former Nazi cohort about the whereabouts of Kindler. In post-war Germany, Wilson, an American delegate to the Allied War Crimes Commission, demands that Nazi prisoner of war Meinike be allowed to escape so that he may lead the Commission to his former boss, Franz Kindler, the most dangerous and elusive Nazi of all.

Rm holland the stranger