"Five hours!" I interrupted. "You do not know me! That much is hard to find without running into the middle of the night, or into the middle of the day—which is worse for a busy man. I have just five minutes to spare this afternoon, which will be quite time enough to tell me who you are and why you have sought me."
"You do not know me because you do not expect to see me on this hemisphere," he continued. "Nor did I expect to find you a potent force in the commercial world, only three years after a literary and linguistic preparation for a scholarly career. Why, the mädchens of Heidelberg have hardly had time to forget your tall, athletic figure, or ceased wondering if you were really a Hebrew——"
"You seem to be altogether familiar with my history," I put in with a little heat. "Kindly enlighten me equally well as to your own."
"I gave you the pleasure of an additional year of residence at the University of Heidelberg not long ago," he answered.
"I do not know how that can be, for to my uncle I owe my entire education there."
"Perhaps an unappreciated trifle of it you owe to your instructors and lecturers. Do you forget that I refused to pass your examinations in physics, and kept you there a year longer?"
"You are not Doctor Anderwelt, then?"
"Hermann Anderwelt, Ph.D., at your service, sir," he replied somewhat proudly.
"But when and why did you leave your chair at Heidelberg?"
"It is to answer this that I ask the five hours," he said slowly.