It was at this agonizing point in his reflections that his attention was attracted by the peculiar antics of a dog emerging from the Schellingstrasse. It had dropped something and was howling, grovelling in evident appeal at the feet of a woman who soundly berated it. The woman stamped her huge foot and pointed to the object the dog had dropped. Howling and yelping an almost human protest, the dog picked up the object and ran past Ordham into the Ludwigstrasse, then discarded his burden once more, sat down on his haunches, and lifted up his voice in a series of cries that sounded like an appeal to the winking stars.

Ordham, his curiosity excited, went forward, and bending down, examined the object of the dog’s aversion. It was a block of ice. The poor beast was howling with a toothache. Ordham looked at the woman as much in amazement as in anger. She could have carried the ice in her skirt; it was inconceivable to him that any one could maltreat a dog. But as he opened his mouth to relieve his indignation, he realized that any attempt to penetrate the thick Bavarian skull with his inadequate German would be a mere waste of time. He picked up the piece of ice and dropped it into the pocket of his overcoat.

“If you will lead the way,” he said, “I will carry it for you.”

The astonished housewife stared in amazement, ejaculated “Ach Gott!” then, with a laugh of deep good-natured contempt, led off with a swing that exhibited the tops of her man’s boots, the red blanket petticoat above them, and the full flounces of her pantalets. She was almost as broad as long, her waist line being in no place distinguishable from the solid expanses above and below. Her skirts were short; she wore a shawl crossed over her upper amplitudes and pinned behind. A small Tyrolean hat sat jauntily above a walnut of plastered hair. She was a street sweeper, inured to every sort of hardship, and not likely to sympathize with a dog’s aching teeth. But no doubt she fed him as well as she could afford.

The strange procession made its way up the stately Ludwigstrasse, deserted but for the sentries before a palace. Once or twice Ordham, contemplating his guide, who swung like a vast pendulum, laughed silently. The grateful dog flew up and down, or frisked about his heels in an ecstasy of relief. At the Odeonsplatz were two belated cabs. Ordham handed into one the woman, the dog, and the ice, paid the driver, and sank into the other with a sigh of gratitude, not only for the more familiar mode of locomotion, but for the temporary diversion afforded by a dog with a toothache! For a few moments he had forgotten his bills and Frau von Wass. When he reached the Legation his throat was very sore, and fortune so far favoured him that on the following day he really was laid up with bronchitis. His servant took a verbal message to the Frau Geheimrath, which, after sharp questioning, she was forced to accept.

XV
POTTERS CONFER

On this same morning there was a brief but pithy interview between Styr and Excellenz in the very centre of the Nachmeister gardens.

“So! so!” exclaimed the old woman; her grey eyes glittered like ice, the corners of her mouth were down, of her nose up. “It comes to this! Poor Fritz! We can save the young man if we are quick enough, but what of my poor old friend? . . . Ach, yes! You are not interested. He is old. You—yourself—look full of insolent youth this morning. I have never seen you in this mood. Cultivate it. You look twenty-eight. Myself, were I your age, should prefer to look more like a woman than a goddess. Also! Fritz must suffer in any case, so all we can do is to save the young man and spare the old one a lesion. Fritz is the vainest man in Germany or he would have found her out long since. He remains in Berlin ten days. You think she intends to make Mr. Ordham elope with her before his return. I wonder! Gott! I fancy it would take more than ten days to work our young friend up to that heroic pitch. More likely she has planned a coup of some sort. Otherwise—I doubt. He will politely promise to meet her at the train. At the last moment he will send a message—but in haste! ‘I am so sorry! I can’t go to-day. I have a cold.’ I know all the ingenious devices of that charming youth, and so, I doubt not, does Frau Hélène. He has not eaten of the big black cake of life yet, merely nibbled at its edges.”

“He is likely to choke on a slice unless we are quick enough.”

“True. Also! I repeat, she must know all his little ways by this time, have discovered that he is by no means as ingenuous as he looks, nor as easy to manage. She moves and lives in a network, a very maze, of intrigue. Only the devious ways appeal to her. You may be sure she has some plot on foot which the sudden departure of Fritz disarranged. That would account for her excitement that same afternoon. I have watched this little drama from the first, but she seems to have been playing a deeper game than I fancied—and different! I have watched many of her little dramas in the last twenty years. Of late it would seem that she had been lulling the suspicions of our young friend while she laid her wires. But what and where are those wires? There is only one way to find out and that is through her maid.”