What am I to think? What is this matter?”
“I act in the public interest,” Herr D——told me. “My fortune is not great, but I can assure you that in the event of your success you will be well recompensed; although you are to take it that I alone am your principal, yet there are substantial resources available to me.”
“Perhaps it would be best if you described the problem to me?”
“You are not averse to travel?”
“No.”
“Very well then,” he said, and so saying launched into one of the most astonishing relations—no,
When he fell silent, I said, “Herr D——, after all you have told me, I would accept this mission though there were not a sou to be made from it. Perhaps once in a lifetime one comes across a case that must be pursued for its own sake; I think I have found mine.”
He leaned forward and grasped my hand with a warmth of feeling that was, I believe, very foreign to his usual nature. “Find and destroy the Dream-Master,” he said, “and you shall sit upon a chair of gold, if that is your wish, and eat from a table of gold as well. When will you come to our country?”
“Tomorrow morning,” I said. “There are one or two arrangements I must make here before I go.”
“I am returning tonight. You may call upon me at any time, and I will apprise you of new developments.” He handed me a card. “I am always to be found at this address—if not I, then one who is to be trusted, acting in my behalf.”
“I understand.”
“This should be sufficient for your initial expenses. You may call on me should you require more.” The check he gave me as he turned to leave represented a comfortable fortune.
I waited until he was nearly out the door before saying, “I thank you, Herr Baron.” To his credit, he did not turn; but I had the satisfaction of seeing a red flush rising above the precise white line of his collar before the door closed.
Andree entered as soon as he had left. “Who was that man? When you spoke to him—just as he was stepping out of your office—he looked as if you had struck him with a whip.”
“He will recover,” I told her. “He is the Baron H——, of the secret police of K——. D——was his mother’s name. He assumed that because his own desk is a few hundred kilometers from mine, and because he does not permit his likeness to appear in the daily papers, I would not know him; but it was necessary, both for the sake of his opinion of me and my own of myself, that he should discover that I am not so easily deceived. When he recovers from his initial irritation, he will retire tonight with greater confidence in the abilities I will devote to the mission he has entrusted to me.”
“It is typical of you, monsieur,” Andree said kindly, “that you are concerned that your clients sleep well.”
Her pretty cheek tempted me, and I pinched it. “I am concerned,” I replied, “but the baron will not sleep well.”
M
y train roared out of Paris through meadows sweet with wildflowers, to penetrate mountain passes in which the danger of avalanches was only just past. The glitter of rushing water, sprung from on high, was everywhere; and when the express slowed to climb a grade, the song of water was everywhere too, water running and shouting down the gray rocks of the Alps. I fell asleep that night with the descant of that icy purity sounding through the plainsong of the rails, and I woke in the station of I——, the old capital of J——, now a province of K——.
I engaged a porter to convey my trunk to the hotel where I had made reservations by telegraph the day before, and amused myself for a few hours by strolling about the city. Here I found the Middle Ages might almost be said to have remained rather than lingered. The city wall was complete on three sides, with its merloned towers in repair, and the cobbled streets surely dated from a period when wheeled traffic of any kind was scarce. As for the buildings—Puss in Boots and his friends must have loved them dearly: there were bulging walls and little panes of bull’s-eye glass, and overhanging upper floors one above another until the structures seemed unbalanced as tops. Upon one gray old pile with narrow windows and massive doors, I found a plaque informing me that though it had been first built as a church, it had been successively a prison, a customhouse, a private home, and a school. I investigated further, and discovered it was now an arcade, having been divided, I should think at about the time of the first Louis, into a multitude of dank little stalls. Since it was, as it happened, one of the addresses mentioned by Baron H——, I went in.
Gas flared everywhere, yet the interior could not have been said to be well lit—each jet was sullen and secretive, as if the proprietor in whose cubicle it was located wished it to light none but his own wares. These cubicles were in no order; nor could I find any directory or guide to lead me to the one I sought. A few customers, who seemed to have visited the place for years, so that they understood where everything was, drifted from one display to the next. When they arrived at each, the proprietor came out, silent (so it seemed to me) as a specter, ready to answer questions or accept a payment, but I never heard a question asked, or saw any money tendered— the customer would finger the edge of a kitchen knife, or hold a garment up to her own shoulders, or turn the pages of some moldering book, and then put the thing down again, and go away.
At last, when I had tired of peeping into alcoves lined with booths still gloomier than the ones on the main concourse outside, I stopped at a leather merchant’s and asked the man to direct me to Fraulein A——.
“I do not know her,” he said.
“I am told on good authority that her business is conducted in this building, and that she buys and sells antiques.”
“We have several antique dealers here. Herr M——.”
“I am searching for a young woman. Has your Herr M——a niece or a cousin?”
“—handles chairs and chests, largely. Herr O——, near the guildhall—”
“It is within this building.”
