‘With you!’ Kehler exclaimed.
‘It appears so. No doubt you have been instructed?’
Kehler denied it energetically.
‘But you refused to participate in a certain design,’ he reminded me.
‘I laid down certain conditions, which you declined to fulfil, but which have since been complied with by your principal.’
The Bavarian was thunderstruck. I relied upon his having reported his failure to whomever it was that had sent him to me; and there was nothing impossible in the suggestion that I had in consequence been approached directly.
‘You have credentials, I suppose?’ he asked.
I nodded carelessly.
‘You will convince me, perhaps?’ he persisted.
‘Are you authorised to convince me?’ was my retort.