But Marguerite's mind had already flown to other things. She was looking at him again with a frown of concentration.
“I am beginning to remember your name,” she said.
“Is it not strange how a name comes back with a face? And I had quite forgotten both your face and your name, Herr ... Herr ... von Holz”—she broke off, and stepped back from him—“von Holzen,” she said slowly. “Then you are the malgamite man?”
“Yes, Fräulein,” he answered, with his grave smile; “I am the malgamite man.”
Marguerite looked at him with a sort of wonder, for she knew enough of the Malgamite scheme to realize that this was a man who ruled all that came near him, against whom her own father and Tony Cornish and Major White and Mrs. Vansittart had been able to do nothing—who in face of all opposition continued calmly to make malgamite, and sell it daily to the world at a preposterous profit, and at the cost only of men's lives.
“And you, Fräulein, are the daughter of Mr. Wade, the banker?”
“Yes,” she answered, feeling suddenly that she was a schoolgirl again, standing before her master.
“And why are you in The Hague?”
“Oh,” replied Marguerite, hesitating for perhaps the first time in her life, “to enlarge our minds, mein Herr.” She was looking at the paper he held in his hand, and he saw the direction of her glance. In response, he laughed quietly, and held it out towards her.
“Yes,” he said, “you have guessed right. It is the Vorschrift, the prescription for the manufacture of malgamite.”