PTER VI: HERR VON KWARL

Herr Von Kwarl sat at his favourite table in the Brandenburg Cafe, the
new building that made such an imposing show (and did such thriving
business) at the lower end of what most of its patrons called the
Regentstrasse. Though the establishment was new it had already achieved
its unwritten code of customs, and the sanctity of Herr von Kwarl's
specially reserved table had acquired the authority of a tradition. A
set of chessmen, a copy of the Kreuz Zeitung and the Times, and a slim-
necked bottle of Rhenish wine, ice-cool from the cellar, were always to
be found there early in the forenoon, and the honoured guest for whom
these preparations were made usually arrived on the scene shortly after
eleven o'clock. For an hour or so he would read and silently digest the
contents of his two newspapers, and then at the first sign of flagging
interest on his part, another of the cafe's regular customers would march
across the floor, exchange a word or two on the affairs of the day, and
be bidden with a wave of the hand into the opposite seat. A waiter would
instantly place the chessboard with its marshalled ranks of combatants in
the required position, and the contest would begin.

Herr von Kwarl was a heavily built man of mature middle-age, of the blond
North-German type, with a facial aspect that suggested stupidity and
brutality. The stupidity of his mien masked an ability and shrewdness
that was distinctly above the average, and the suggestion of brutality
was belied by the fact that von Kwarl was as kind-hearted a man as one
could meet with in a day's journey. Early in life, almost before he was
in his teens, Fritz von Kwarl had made up his mind to accept the world as
it was, and to that philosophical resolution, steadfastly adhered to, he
attributed his excellent digestion and his unruffled happiness. Perhaps
he confused cause and effect; the excellent digestion may have been
responsible for at least some of the philosophical serenity.

He was a bachelor of the type that is called confirmed, and which might
better be labelled consecrated; from his early youth onward to his
present age he had never had the faintest flickering intention of
marriage. Children and animals he adored, women and plants he accounted
somewhat of a nuisance. A world without women and roses and asparagus
would, he admitted, be robbed of much of its charm, but with all their
charm these things were tiresome and thorn