Hochwald staggered and leaned upon the back of a chair. His face was ghastly, for Rowland opened the bag and took out the packages one by one, exhibited them and put them on the table.
"I think they are all here," he said. "Twenty-five of them--mostly in thousand franc notes--a thousand in a package. Would you like to count them, Herr Hochwald?"
There was no reply and Rowland put the packages in the bag again.
Herr Hochwald waited in a moment of hesitation and then crossed the room toward a door beyond the speaker's table. But before he reached it, a strange thing happened, for a man rose from a seat upon the left in a corner where he had sat silent and unobtrusive all the evening, a very tall man in a long linen coat with a slouch hat pulled well down over his eyes.
"Stop that man!" he cried in quick, sharp accents. "He is under arrest!"
Hochwald halted and the two men nearest him instinctively caught him by the arms. All eyes were upon the tall man who spoke as though with authority. Georg Senf stared at him. Rowland looked up quickly. But Zoya Rochal turned a startled look in his direction and muttered an exclamation.
"And who are you, sir," asked Senf anxiously.
The tall man threw off his slouch hat and linen coat and revealed a cadaverous figure, clad in the field gray uniform of a Prussian General. His face was thin, wrinkled and yellow and his small eyes were hidden under the thatch of his brows. He pushed forward, those nearest him making way quickly and as he did so they saw the decorations which glittered on his breast.
"The pelican!" whispered Rowland to Zoya Rochal.
A silence had fallen--a hush rather--which differed from that which had been compelled before. It seemed now as though the breath of every person was held in suspense, in awe--or was it terror?