I
ventured rather loudly.

Slowly the steel-blue eyes opened, and, without any start or
discomposure, the old man answered,--

"And I--my most successful enterprises are developed in my dreams."

His features and his accent agreed in pronouncing him German. He arose
calmly, buttoned the lowest button of his worn frock-coat, and, instead
of extending his hand to me, he poked it inside his coat, letting it
hang heavily on the single button. It was a lazy but characteristic
attitude. It tended to make his coat pouch and his shoulders droop. I
remembered having seen it somewhere before.

"Mr. Werner, I have a matter of the deepest and vastest importance to
unfold to you," he began, rather mysteriously, "for which I desire five
hours of your unemployed time----"

"Five hours!" I interrupted. "You do not know me! That much is hard to
find without running into the middle of the night, or into the middle of
the day--which is worse for a busy man. I have just five minutes to
spare this afternoon, which will be quite time enough to tell me who you
are and why you have sought me."

"You do not know me because you do not expect to see me on this
hemisphere," he continued. "Nor did I expect to find you a potent force
in the commercial world, only three years after a literary and
linguistic preparation for a scholarly career. Why, the _maedchens_ of
Heidelberg have hardly had time to forget your tall, athletic figure, or
ceased wondering if you were really a Hebrew----"

"You seem to be altogether familiar with my history," I put in with a
little heat. "Kindly enlighten me equally well as to your own."

"I gave you the pleasure of an additional year of residence at the
University of Heidelberg not long ago," he answered.

"I do not know how that can be, for to my uncle I owe my entire
education there."

"Perhaps an unappreciated trifle of it you owe to your instructors and
lecturers. Do you forget that I refused to pass your examinations in
physics, and kept you there a year longer?"

"You are not Doctor Anderwelt, then?"

"Hermann Anderwelt, Ph.D., at your service, sir," he replied somewhat
proudly.

"But when and why did you leave your chair at Heidelberg?"

"It is to answer this that I ask the five hours," he said slowly.

"Oh, come now, doctor, you used to tell me more in a two-hour lecture
than I could remember in a week," I answered, taking off my overcoat,
and touching an electric button at my desk. My offic