"He would have been sliced in two if I hadn't come to the front. A hop-pole isn't half bad. I'll bet that lady's man has a bad arm for some time to come. As for the vintner, he had good reasons for taking to his heels."
"Good reasons?" But there was a sly look in the clerk's eyes.
"No questions, if you please. And tell no one, mind, what has taken place."
"Very well, Excellency." And quietly the clerk returned to his table of figures. But later he intended to write a letter, unsigned, to his serene highness.
Carmichael, scowling, undertook to answer his mail, but not with any remarkable brilliancy or coherency.
And in this condition of mind Grumbach found him; Grumbach, accompanied by the old clock-mender from across the way, and a Gipsy Carmichael had never seen before.
"What's up, Hans?"
"Tell your clerk to leave us," said Grumbach, his face as barren of expression as a rock.
"Something serious, eh?" Carmichael dismissed the clerk, telling him to return after the noon hour. "Now, then," he said, "what is the trouble?"
"I have already spoken to you about it," Grumbach returned. "The matter has gone badly. But I am here to ask a favor, a great favor, one that will need all your diplomacy to gain for me."