"You're not half so keen as I am," I told him truthfully. "If I am Lassen, what am I; where do I live; have I any friends anywhere; isn't there any one who knows me anywhere? It's such a devil of a mess."
"There's one thing certain, my friend, you're a German; and as for the rest you'll find plenty of people in Berlin who'll know you. The von Reblings, for instance. Which reminds me I have the Countess's letter;" he opened his despatch case and handed me a sealed envelope.
But I had already told the doctors that I could not write and could not read handwriting, although I had fumbled out some large print. That had been one of the specialities of my peculiar aphasia. So I just smiled vacantly and shook my head. "Will you read it to me?" I asked.
He agreed after some little demur, and a very charming letter it was. The Countess addressed me as "My dear Johann," wrote in the familiar thee and thou, said how anxious she and Rosa—especially Rosa, it seemed—had been about me; urged me to hurry to Berlin as soon as possible, where, of course, I should be the most welcome guest in the world, and signed herself "Your affectionate aunt, Olga von Rebling."
"Doesn't that remind you of anything?" asked Hoffnung.
"Not in the faintest. Who is Rosa?"
Instead of telling me, he smiled suggestively and I smiled back. "Did the Countess send you to fetch me?"
"Oh, no. I came officially. I'll tell you about that directly; but it is because of what she told us about you that I was sent. She received a letter from you from England saying that you were crossing in the Burgen, and when the newspapers reported the loss of the steamer and that you were the only survivor, she told me about it. I reported it at Headquarters, and—well, here I am in consequence."
"And you've never seen me, or Lassen, or whoever I am, before?"
"Never. I have seen a photograph of you, but it was taken some long time ago; and while you answer to the likeness in some respects, you certainly do not in others, although I can see that you may be Lassen, allowing for the difference of time."