very often with this man, and I spent a good deal
of useless time in speculating about him. Was he married or single? That
was a point on which much depended, and I was half inclined to pray
that he might prove to be a bachelor. Marital responsibilities were all
against my hopes. Marital confidences might well upset the best-laid
plans I could devise.

I was thinking thus as I paced the Ring Strasse on the third day after
my arrival in Vienna. I lingered in the capital against the grain, for I
was eager to be at work, but it was part of a policy which I had already
settled. Itzia was not the sort of place for which one would make a
straight road, unless one had special business there, and it was
the merest seeming of having any special business there which I was
profoundly anxious to avoid. So I lingered in Vienna, and on this third
day, pacing the chief street, I felt a sudden hand clapped upon my
shoulder, and, turning, faced Brunow.

"Here you are," he cried, still keeping his hand upon my shoulder as I
turned. "I have been to the bank and to your hotel. I have been hunting
you, in point of fact, all day, and here at last I come upon you by
chance."

"What brings you in Vienna?" I asked him. I did my best to be cordial,
but I was sorry for his intrusion, and would willingly have known him to
be a thousand miles away.

He glanced swiftly and warily about him, and, seeing nobody within
ear-shot, answered in an easy tone:

"I have come to assist in your enterprise, Fyffe, and I mean to see you
through it."

"I think," I told him, "that I prefer to go through my enterprise
alone."

"My dear fellow," said Brunow, "I couldn't dream of allowing you to
run any risk alone in such a cause. And besides that, I have a little
selfish reason of my own. In addition, you don't speak the language, and
will be in a thousand corners. I was bred here, and speak the language
like a native. I have already the _entree_ to the place you desire to
get into, and I can introduce you. My sympathetic friend--" He broke
off suddenly because a foot-passenger drew near. "It is, as you say,
a beastly journey, but, as you say again, it's done with, and when you
know Vienna as well as I do, you will say it pays for the trouble ten
times over. Vienna, my dear fellow, is the jolliest and the handsomest
city in the world." The passenger went by, and he resumed at the dropped
word. "My sympathetic friend will recognize me, and at my return will