at was the lame fellow. Now, there is one thing we learn in the
cavalry...."

But I had ceased to listen. In his irresponsible chatter the boy used a
word that struck a harsh note which went jarring through my brain. He
had mentioned "the lame fellow," using a German word "der Stelze." In a
flash I saw before me again that scene in the squalid bedroom in the Vos
in't Tuintje--the candle guttering in the draught, the livid corpse on
the floor and that sinister woman crying out: "Der Stelze has power, he
has authority, he can make and unmake men!"

The mind has unaccountable lapses. The phrase had slipped out of my
German vocabulary. I had not even recognized it until the boy had rapped
it out in a context with which I was familiar and then it had come back.
With it, it brought that tableau in the dimly lit room, but also
another--a picture of a vast and massive man, swarthy and sinister, with
a clubfoot, limping heavily after Karl, the waiter, on the platform at
Rotterdam.

That, then, was why the young lieutenant had glanced down at my feet at
the station at Goch, The messenger he had come to meet, the bearer of
the document, the man of power and authority, was clubfooted, and I was
he!

But seeing I was free of any physical deformity, to say nothing of the
fact that I in no way resembled the clubfooted man I had seen on the
platform at Rotterdam, why had the young lieutenant accepted me so
readily? I hazarded the reason to be that he had orders to meet a person
who had not been further designated to him except that he would arrive
by a certain train. The Major at the station would be responsible for
establishing my _bona fides_. Once that officer had turned me over to
the emissary, the latter's sole responsibility consisted in conducting
me to the unknown goal to which the special train was rapidly bearing
us. Such are the marvels of discipline!

My companion was, indeed, the model of discretion in everything touching
myself and my business. Curiosity about your neighhour's affairs is a
cardinal German failing, yet the Count manifested not the slightest
desire to learn anything about me or my mission to Berlin. You may be
sure that I, for my part, did nothing to enlighten him. It was not,
indeed, in my power to do so. Yet the young man's reserve was so marked
that I was convinced he had his orders to avoid the topic.

As the train rushed through Westphalia, through busy stations with
glimpses of sidings full of