The old man swung round on him, replaced the pince-nez.
“Shot by the English.—You’ll never equal him, Kranz.”
Kranz shrugged his shoulders.
“Excellenz, I believe neither in God nor Devil—until the other day I believed that death finished us completely—but I assure you solemnly upon my—upon anything which you think will bind me—that the soul, or whatever you choose to call it, of Karl Wertheimer speaks through that girl!” There was a pause of silence in which the old man’s eyes probed him to the depths. He proffered no comment and Kranz continued, his voice intensely earnest. “The English shot Karl Wertheimer in London—but they did not kill him. His—his soul is here, in Berlin, in this room, alive as ever, as eager as ever to work for the Fatherland!”
“He always had patriotic notions,” murmured the old man, with a sly smile at the obviously cosmopolitan Kranz, “—that is why he was such an invaluable agent. Go on with your little romance.”
“It is no romance, Excellenz, I assure you—it is living fact. Karl Wertheimer was a useful agent while he lived upon this earth—but he is immeasurably more useful now that he is a—a spirit. There are no walls that can keep him out—there is nothing he cannot see if he chooses to—there is no conversation he cannot overhear——”
“H’m!” grunted the old man, “admitted that if he is a spirit he can do all this—how can he communicate it to us?”
“Through this girl!”
“Who is she, this girl?”
“The daughter of some shopkeeper or other. I followed her ankles one evening in the Park—it was night, and I could not see her face.” He smiled cynically. “I won’t trouble Your Excellency with the details. I brought her in here and no sooner had she sat down in that chair when she swooned off. I was just cursing my luck—I saw her face for the first time then!—and wondering how I was going to get rid of her, when Karl spoke to me. I confess, Excellenz, it gave me a pretty bad turn. It was so utterly unexpected—his voice coming from her lips. However, I pulled myself together—and we had a most interesting conversation——”