"Welcome, young sirs."
Roque waved the way into a wide hall, at the end of which yawned a great fireplace. Bowing before them the boys saw the tallest man they had ever met outside of a sideshow, a very giant, who wore a long gray coat, with a good day's output for a button factory in front.
"This is my man of business, young sirs—Paul Zorn."
The "young sirs" instantly formed the opinion that Zorn would have no trouble in cracking a cocoanut between the row of glittering teeth he displayed when Roque so introduced him.
"We are going to put our young friends into store clothes, Paul. I hope you will be able to properly fit them, and it will also be my care that you do."
"Confound the man," thought Henri, "he has never since he called me out of the machine shifted his eye long enough for me to get a hand on that tissue, and now he's going to act as my valet. He's just full of suspicion."
Billy, also, had been figuring some in his mind just what would break loose if Roque should find the sailor's note in Henri's possession. All of the powers of argument this side of the North Sea would then avail nothing in the matter of convincing Roque that he had not been double-crossed.
The only crumb of comfort that Billy felt he could hope for if the drop fell was that Roque would quit his comedy acting behind the scenes for the once—but that was scant comfort, surely, under this cloud of anxiety.
The boys soon knew what Roque had meant by "store clothes," for it was a regular storehouse of the styles of all nations that the makeup magician maintained in the second floor back of his Hamburg home—uniforms galore, the garb of the fighting man in the Old World war, known under the folds of Britain's Union Jack, the Tricolor of France, the black double-headed eagle of Russia, the sable Cross of the German Empire; the attire of the dandy civilian, the sedate tradesman, the student, the clerk, the livery of house and carriage service, and, indeed, what not?
"A nice little collection, young sirs," observed Roque, which remark again prompted the giant Zorn to display his mouthful of shining molars.