It was a stranger; a well-dressed, sharp-featured man and unmistakably a Jew. "Herr Lassen?" he asked. I nodded. "My name is Rudolff."
"What is it?"
"It would be better for me to tell you my business privately," he replied, with a gesture toward a couple of people passing on the stairs.
I took him into my sitting-room with an extremely uncomfortable notion that he was from the police.
"I am in a position to do you a considerable service, Herr Lassen," he said, squinting curiously round the room.
"Who sent you to me and how did you know where to find me?"
"Your arrival in the city is scarcely a secret, and I obtained your address from your friends in the Karlstrasse. No one sent me to you, sir."
He wasn't from the police. That was a relief, and nothing else mattered. "And the service you spoke of?"
"You will not be surprised to hear that a number of people wish to find you?"
"As it's been easy for you, would it be difficult for them?"