“I went to your room, Herr Arndt, as usual at four-thirty, but you were gone out, and the portier told me you left no message.”
Grey hesitated over a reply. He realized that he was on the verge of a discovery. It was very evident now that he was not alone in Paris—that he had acquaintances, at least; probably companions; and that one of them was dying. In order to learn more he must give no indication of the change that had been wrought in him in the last few hours.
“Dying!” he exclaimed, in a tone of surprise; “I had no idea it was so serious.”
His German was excellent. In his early youth he had spent two years at Göttingen, and had lived for one winter with a German family in Vienna.
“Yes,” went on the young man, excitedly, “the Herr Doctor says it is a matter now of hours only, perhaps minutes. They have sent for a priest. Herr Schlippenbach—poor old Herr Schlippenbach—he is quite unconscious.”
“He can recognise no one?”
“No, Herr Arndt, he just lies staring at the ceiling, and breathing very hard and loud. Oh, it is so pitiful! And the Fräulein, she is sobbing, sobbing, sobbing all the time.”
Herr Arndt. So that is the name he is known by here in Paris, at the Hôtel Grammont, by those he has met—those he has travelled with, perhaps! And there is a Fräulein in the party! Herr Schlippenbach’s daughter, probably. A hundred questions crowded for utterance, but he held them back.
“It was the Fräulein who sent for the priest, I suppose?” he ventured.
“Yes, Herr Arndt; she and Herr Captain Lindenwald. When Herr Schlippenbach dies Fräulein von Altdorf will have a great fortune; yes?”