Delmar gladly acceded to all these conditions. He promised to leave his present place of abode, which was full of sad memories for him, to sell his business and go to some other German town, where he hoped to invest the ten thousand thalers with success, and where he might make use of his dead child's baptismal certificate to legitimate his adopted son, so that no one could have the slightest cause for suspicion that he was not really and truly his son.
Delmar and Steineck were thus soon agreed; the latter paid down a thousand thalers for a retainer as it were, and it was settled that Delmar should immediately proceed to close up his affairs in H----, and should inform Steineck when he was ready to move elsewhere by an advertisement in a certain Berlin newspaper. It was made a principal condition of their agreement that Delmar should never make the slightest attempt to discover Steineck's place of residence.
A month later Herr von Heydeck read in the Berlin paper that Delmar was ready to receive the child. To effect the infant's removal was the hardest part of Heydeck's task. He would admit no one to his confidence in the matter; neither Dr. Putzer nor his wife should know whither the child was taken; thus only could the secret remain such forever.
Late in the evening Heydeck left the castle in his carriage, driven by Melcher; the boy had been drugged, and was in deep slumber. The Bavarian town of Rosenheim was selected by Delmar as the place where the child was to be delivered up to him.
All went well: Delmar was on the spot, and received the boy with the promised sum of money. He immediately departed for Munich, and Herr von Heydeck returned to the Tyrol, firmly convinced that Delmar had no idea who had delivered the child to him.
Six months later he informed Dr. Putzer that he had placed the child in an establishment in Switzerland, where it had died of the measles. As there was no reason to doubt this, Putzer made no further investigations in the matter: indeed, any such would have been useless, so perfect had been Herr von Heydeck's precautions.
Thus everything seemed happily concluded. Herr von Heydeck had no treachery to fear, for Dr. Putzer and his wife had as much to dread from discovery as he had himself, and Melcher and his sister, if they had been capable of understanding matters, were entirely dependent upon their master, to whom they clung with slavish devotion.
And yet Herr von Heydeck was not content. The phantom of possible discovery pursued him awake and in dreams. In vain he repeated to himself that he had nothing to fear, that there was no flaw in the precautions he had taken; he could not banish the dread lest his sin should one day find him out.
Become more misanthropic than ever, he secluded himself from all human companionship, and if he had not been obliged to visit the baths every year for the sake of his health, he never would have left Castle Reifenstein.
But when years passed by and nothing was heard further of the boy, when he married again and enjoyed a happiness of which he had never dreamed, he became reassured. The dreadful dreams in which he saw his secret discovered and himself about to receive the punishment of his crime, tortured him no longer; he had even felt perfectly secure for years, when suddenly he had been startled out of this security by the appearance at the castle of his nephew's companion.