LITMIR.BIZ

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      Fawley, after several weeks of devious and strenuous wanderings, crossed the very fine hall of Berlin’s most famous hotel, well aware that he was now approaching the crucial point of his enterprise. Frankfurt, thanks to his English and French connections, had been easy. At Cologne and some of the smaller towns around, even if he had aroused a little suspicion, he had learnt all that he needed to know. But in Berlin, for the first time, outside aid was denied to him and he became conscious that he was up against a powerful and well-conducted system of espionage. The very politeness of the hotel officials, their casual glance at his credentials, their meticulous care as to his comfort—all these things had seemed to him to possess a sinister undernote. He chose for his headquarters a small suite upon the sixth floor, with the sitting room between his bedroom and bathroom; but his first discovery was that the one set of keys attached to the double doors was missing and he only obtained the keys giving access to the corridor after some considerable delay…

      Yet to all appearance he had been received as an ordinary and welcome visitor. According to his custom, he was travelling under his own passport and without any sort of compromising papers, yet all the time he fancied that these polite officials, some of whom seemed to be always in the background, were looking at him from behind that masked expression of courtesy and affability with definite suspicion.

      For two days he lounged about the city as an ordinary tourist, without any particular attempt at secrecy, asking no questions, seeking no new acquaintances, and visiting only the largest and best-known restaurants. On the third morning after his arrival there was a thunderous knocking at the door, and in reply to his invitation to enter there rolled in, with his fat creaseless face, and pudgy hand already extended, Adolf Krust. Fawley laid down his pipe and suffered his fingers to be gripped.

      “So you gave us all the slip, you crafty fellow,” the visitor exclaimed. “And you left my little friend in such distress with a copy of an A.B.C. in her hand and tears in her eyes; and all that we know, or rather that we do not know, is that the Daily Mail tells us that Major Fawley, late of the American Army, has left the Hôtel de France for London. London, indeed! The one place in the world that for you and me and for those like us is dead. What should you be doing in London, eh?”

      “I may go there before I finish up,” Fawley replied, smiling. “After all, I am half English, you know.”

      “You are of no country,” Adolf Krust declared, sinking into the indicated easy-chair and blowing out his cheeks. “You are the monarch of cosmopolitans. You are a person who carries with him always a cult. You have upset us all in Monte Carlo. Some believe that you were drowned when that clumsy fool, that idiot nephew of Von Salzenburg, drove you on to the sea wall of the harbour in that fearful mistral.”

      “It was an excellent stage disappearance for me,” Fawley observed. “I was just a shade too much in the limelight for my safety or my comfort.”

      “You speak the truth,” his visitor agreed. “Only two days after you left, the French military police were swarming in the hotel. Every one was talking about you. There were some who insisted upon it that you were a dangerous fellow. They are right, too, every time; but all the same, you breathe life. Yes,” Krust concluded, with a little sigh of satisfaction, “it is well put, that—you breathe life.”

      “Perhaps that is because I have so often loitered in the shadow of death,” Fawley remarked.

      Krust shrugged his tightly encased shoulders. In the city he had abandoned the informal costume of the Riviera and was attired with the grave precision of a senator.

      “In the walk of life we traverse,” he said, “that is a matter of course…Ach, but this is strange!”

      “What is strange?”

      “To find you, after all my persuadings, in my beloved Berlin.”

      “I have also visited your beloved Frankfurt and Cologne,” Fawley confided drily, perfectly certain that his visitor was well acquainted with the fact.

      The blue eyes grew rounder and rounder.

      “You take away the breath,” Krust declared. “As the great young man used to say—you sap the understanding. You have seen Von Salzenburg?”

      Fawley shook his head.

      “Not I!” he answered. “Some day, if there is anything that might come of it, we will see him together.”

      Krust’s eyes became more protuberant than ever. This was a strange one, this man! He wondered whether, after all, Greta had told the truth, whether she had not all the time kept back something from him. Fawley pushed a box of cigarettes across the table. His caller waved them away and produced a leather receptacle the size of a traveller’s sample case.

      “You are not one of those who object to the odour of any good tobacco, even if it be strong?” he asked. “You have seen my cigars. You will not smoke them, but they are good. They are made in Cologne and they cost two pfennig each, which in these days helps the pocketbook.”

      “Smoke one, by all means,” Fawley invited. “Thank goodness, it is warm weather and the windows are open!”

      “You joke at my taste in tobacco,” Krust grumbled, “but you do not joke at my taste in nieces, nicht? What about the little Greta?”

      “Charming,” Fawley admitted with a smile. “Every one in Monte Carlo wondered at your luck.”

      “It is all done by kindness and a little generosity,” the other remarked, with an air of self-satisfaction. “I have not the looks. I certainly have not the figure; but there are other gifts! One has to study the sex to know how to please.”

      “How did you find me out here?” Fawley asked abruptly.

      “I have intelligent friends in Berlin who watch,” was the cautious reply. “You were seen down south at the march of the Iron Army. You were seen at the new Russian Night Club in Düsseldorf the other night, where there are not many Russians but a good deal of conversation. People are curious just now about travellers. I have been asked what you do here.”

      Fawley yawned.

      “Bore myself chiefly,” he admitted. “I find Germany a far better governed country than I had anticipated. I have few criticisms. A great brain must be at work somewhere.”

      Krust rolled a cigar between his fingers. It was a light-coloured production, long, with faint yellow spots. Every few seconds he knocked away the ash.

      “A great brain,” he repeated, as if following out a train of thought of his own. “I will tell you something, friend Fawley. What you think is produced by a great brain is nothing but the God-given sense of discipline which every true German possesses. There is no one to thank for the smoothness with which the great wheel revolves. It is the German people themselves who are responsible.”

      “Prosperity seems to be returning to the country,” Fawley reflected. “I find it hard to believe that these people will suffer themselves to be led into such an adventure as a new war.”

      Krust pinched his cigar thoughtfully.

      “The German has pride,” he said. “He would wish to reëstablish himself. In the meantime, he does not hang about at street corners. He works. You want to see underneath the crust. Why not accept my help? Unless some doors are unlocked, even you, the most brilliant Secret Service agent of these days, will fail. You will make a false report. You will leave this country and you will not understand.”

      “Berati has his methods and I have mine,” Fawley observed. “I admit that I am puzzled but I do not believe that either you or Von Salzenburg could enlighten me…Still, there would be no harm in our dining and spending the evening together. My ears are always open, even if I do not promise to be convinced.”

      Krust sighed.

      “To go about openly with you,” he regretted, “would do neither of us any good. It would give me all the joy in the world to offer you

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