He shook his head ominously at the mention of von Gratzen. "I know a lot about him, and I wouldn't put a pfennig's reliance on any hope from that quarter," he said emphatically. "I don't say he won't do anything, mind you, because one never knows what he will do next. He's one of the sharpest and ablest men in the country; we all admit that; but——" and he gestured and shrugged his shoulders.
"Unreliable?" He nodded. "In a shifty unscrupulous way, you mean?"
"Oh dear, no; not that at all," he said vigorously. "Individual. That is the best word. If he thinks a thing should be done, he does it whether it is according to official rules or not. That is not German. He is not thorough, as we understand the word."
There remained only the other plan—that Nessa and I should get away in some disguise, and at a tentative suggestion about false papers, Feldmann laughed.
"You will easily understand that when a people are subject to so many rules and regulations as we are, plenty of men set their wits to work to break them. False identification cards are as common as false coins, and if you knew where to go, a few marks would buy one, or a genuine one either, for that matter," he declared; but he made no offer to get them, and it was better not to press the thing farther then.
I left soon afterwards. The failure to get Hans' permit and all that had passed about von Gratzen served to make the position more and more difficult and complicated. The man seemed to be an enigma even to those who were in constant touch with him, and it was ridiculous to imagine, therefore, that any one who had only seen him once should understand him. A close and careful review of the interview with him threw no light on the matter. He had been exceedingly kind and friendly; but there had been a moment of startling contrast. That one keen look of his; so sharp, intent and piercing that it had seemed almost to change him into a different man; and it might well be accepted as the one instant in which the mask had been allowed to drop.
In the morning there was another incident. A curt formal summons arrived summoning me to his office at noon. This, after the previous day's job in the Untergasse! He might at least have had the decency to write a private note; and naturally enough the thing increased my uneasiness.
And then, if you please, it turned out that he had named that time as it was the hour when he went home to lunch and wished to take me with him! How could one judge such a man?
I put the note before him, with a word to the effect that I had thought it was on official business, and he laughed it away, saying he had told his secretary just to ask me to call.
He couldn't make enough of me; kept speaking to me as "My boy," and "My dear boy"; smothered me with protestations of gratitude; and capped it all by asking me to make his house my home while I was in Berlin.