tapped me on the knee.

"You will be sensible, Okewood," he said confidentially. "You've lost.
You can't save yourself. Your life was forfeit from the moment you
crossed the threshold of his Majesty's private apartments ... but you
can save _her_."

I shook his huge hand off my leg.

"You won't bluff me," I answered roughly. "You daren't touch the
Countess Rachwitz, an American lady, niece of an American ambassador,
married into one of your leading families ... no, Herr Doktor, you must
try something else."

"Do you know why Schmalz is here?" he asked patiently, "and those
soldiers?... You must have passed through the cordon to come here. Your
little friend is in preventive arrest. She would be in gaol (she doesn't
know it), but that His Majesty was unwilling to put this affront on the
Rachwitz family in their great affliction."

"The Countess Rachwitz has nothing whatever to do with me," ... rather a
foolish lie, I thought to myself too late, as I was in her house.

But Clubfoot remained quite unperturbed.

"I shall take you into my confidence, my dear sir," he said, "to show
that I know you to be stating an untruth. The Countess, on the contrary,
is, to use a vulgar phrase, in it up to the neck. Thanks to the amazing
imbecility of the Berlin police, I was not informed of your brief stay
at the Bendler-Strasse, even after they were called in by the invalid
American gentleman in the matter of your hasty flight when asked to have
your passport put in order. But we are systematic, we Germans; we are
painstaking; and I set about going through every possible place that
might afford you shelter.

"In the course of my investigations I came across our mutual friend,
Herr Kore. A perusal of his very business-like ledgers showed me that on
the day following your disappearance from the Esplanade he had received
3,600 marks from a certain E. 2 ... all names in his books were in
cipher. Under the influence of my winning personality, Herr Kore told me
all he knew; I pursued my investigations and then discovered what the
asinine police had omitted to tell me, namely, that on the date in
question an alleged American had made a hurried flight from the Countess
Rachwitz's apartment in the Bendler-Strasse. An admirable fellow ... Max
or Otto, or some name like that ... anyhow, he was valet to Madame's
invalid brother, was able to fill in all the lacunae, and I was thus
enabled to draw up a very strong case against your well-mea