Then I told them of the other name Stumm and Gaudian had spoken. I told of my discovery as I lay in the woodman’s cottage.
“The ‘I’ is not the letter of the alphabet, but the numeral. The name is Von Einem—Hilda von Einem.”
“Good old Harry,” said Sandy softly. “He was a dashed clever chap. Hilda von Einem? Who and where is she? for if we find her we have done the trick.”
Then Blenkiron spoke. “I reckon I can put you wise on that, gentlemen,” he said. “I saw her no later than yesterday. She is a lovely lady. She happens also to be the owner of this house.”
Both Sandy and I began to laugh. It was too comic to have stumbled across Europe and lighted on the very headquarters of the puzzle we had set out to unriddle.
But Blenkiron did not laugh. At the mention of Hilda von Einem he had suddenly become very solemn, and the sight of his face pulled me up short.
“I don’t like it, gentlemen,” he said. “I would rather you had mentioned any other name on God’s earth. I haven’t been long in this city, but I have been long enough to size up the various political bosses. They haven’t much to them. I reckon they wouldn’t stand up against what we could show them in the U-nited States. But I have met the Frau von Einem, and that lady’s a very different proposition. The man that will understand her has got to take a biggish size in hats.”
“Who is she?” I asked.
“Why, that is just what I can’t tell you. She was a great excavator of Babylonish and Hittite ruins, and she married a diplomat who went to glory three years back. It isn’t what she has been, but what she is, and that’s a mighty clever woman.”
Blenkiron’s respect did not depress me. I felt as if at last we had got our job narrowed to a decent compass, for I had hated casting about in the dark. I asked where she lived.