"Visitors?" I repeated with a lift of the brows. "Ah, let us be perfectly frank with one another."
"Certainly. Will you lead the way?"
"Well, we know that Fräulein Korper is in your house." He paused for me to make the admission.
"If she were there, I should certainly know it. My sister would scarcely----"
"Won't you admit it?" he interrupted. "And save time?"
"Hadn't you better tell me first why you think it?"
He laughed. "You were leaving Berlin and changed your plans at the last moment. At the station you were with your sister whose looks had so changed--she was dark, you know, not fair--that no one could recognize her. The dark young lady drove with you to your house. Your German servant, Gretchen, I think her name is, saw her on her arrival. You discharged that most worthy young woman suddenly. There is a lady in your house who sings the songs of the accomplished Chalice Mennerheim in a voice which is the counterpart of Fräulein Korper's. Need I say any more?"
"My dear Borsen, nobody knows better than you the absolute unreliability of merely circumstantial evidence. Herr Dormund came yesterday to see my sister, and would instantly have recognized her as the lady he saw at the station, but just as she was coming down to him, he had to leave the house."
"Very well, then we'll assume she is not there. But report says that you take a deep personal interest in her. Do you know who she is?" and he went on to tell me what Althea herself had already told me about the Baron von Ringheim, her father, his ill reputation as an irreconcilable, the desire to arrest him, and further that Althea herself was believed to have been helping him in his designs.
"All of which means?" I asked when he ended.