"Ah. That explains. She asked to see him."
"Can I see her?" I asked, and received a ready assent.
I went to her with the mere intention of offering assistance, the last thing in my thoughts being that a momentous discovery was to be the result of the interview.
CHAPTER XIV
THE MURDERER
It will be readily understood that at the moment of my leaving the police official to go to Hagar Ziegler I was in a very unusual mood. Within the past twenty-four hours I had been within an ace of losing my life; I had seriously wounded if not actually killed a fellow-creature in order to escape; I had endured the bitter mortification of police detention; and had returned to Berlin to take up the thread of an exciting struggle. And now on the top of all had come the murder of the Jew, with its consequences of personal hazard to myself and its disastrous menace to my plans. The examination by the police had, moreover, been a great strain, and when I rose from it I felt both nervous and unstrung.
I say this in order to account in some measure for an act which was altogether foreign to my customary habit, and a paltering and cowardly hesitation which I have never been quite able to understand.
I had been treading on very ticklish ground in that part of the questioning which had related to my connexion with Ziegler's political associates, and I had been most unpleasantly conscious that a very little thing would have induced the official to order my detention. At a time when in Althea's interests my freedom was so essential, such a result would have been fatal, and the relief with which I had heard that I could leave the house was indescribable.
This was the predominant feeling as I went to the room to see Hagar. It was my part to assume indifference, however, and I plunged my hands into my pockets with every appearance of casual assurance.
As I did so my heart seemed to stop suddenly; a shiver of dread chilled me to the marrow; every muscle grew instantly tense and set; and then with a bound the blood began to rush through my veins at a rate which set every pulse throbbing violently.