hind time when he reached at length the two
wagons-lits carriages standing by themselves in a wilderness of
tracks.

Limping, perspiring, purple in the face, he came alongside of them,
peering up at their windows. A face showed at one of them, spectacled
and bearded, gazing motionlessly through the panes with the effect of
a sea-creature in an aquarium. It vanished and reappeared at the end
door of the car.

"Hi! You, what do you want here?" called the owner of the face to
Herr Haase.

Herr Haase came shuffling towards the steps.

"Ich stelle Mich vor; I introduce myself," he said ceremoniously.
"Haase sent by his Excellency, the Herr Baron von Steinlach."

The other gazed down on him, a youngish man, golden-blond as to beard
and hair, with wide, friendly eyes magnified by his glasses. He was
coatless in the heat, and smoked a china-bowled German pipe like a
man whose work is done and whose ease is earned; yet in his face and
manner there was a trace of perturbation, an irritation of
nervousness.

"Oh!" he said, and spoke his own name. "Civil-doctor Fallwitz. I've
been expecting somebody. You'd better come inside, hadn't you?"

Outside was light and heat; inside was shadow and heat. Dr. Fallwitz
led the way along the corridor of the car, with its gold-outlined
scrollwork and many brass-gadgeted doors, to his own tiny
compartment, smelling of hot upholstery and tobacco. Herr Haase
removed his hat and sank puffing upon the green velvet cushions.

"You are hot, nicht wahr?" inquired Dr. Fallwitz politely.

"Yes," said Herr Haase. "But, Herr Doktor, since you are so good it
is not only that. If it is gross of me to ask it but if I might take
off my boots for some moments. You see, they are new."

"Aber ich bitte," cried the doctor.

The doctor stood watching him while he struggled with the buttons,
and while he watched he frowned and gnawed at the amber mouthpiece of
his pipe.

He waited till Herr Haase, with a loud, luxurious grunt, had drawn
off the second boot.

"There will be a row, of course," he remarked then. "These
Excellencies and people are only good for making rows. But I told
them he couldn't be moved."

Herr Haase shifted his toes inside his socks. "You mean Colonel von
Specht? But isn't he here, then?"

The young doctor shook his head. "We obeyed orders," he said. "We had
to. Those people think that life and death are subject to orders. I
kept him going till we got here, but about an hour