And finally, from Basle, came the news that the train and its passengers had crossed the frontier; Colonel von Specht was in Switzerland.
"You, my good Haase, will meet the train," said the Baron von Steinlach. "The Embassy has arranged to have it shunted to a siding outside the station. You will, of course, tell them nothing of what is in contemplation. Just inform whoever is in charge that I will come later. And, Von Wetten, I think we will send the car with a note to bring Herr Bettermann here at the same time."
"Here, Excellency?"
"Yes," said the Baron. "After all, we want to keep the thing as quiet as possible, and that fellow is capable of asking a party of friends to witness the ceremony." There was malicious amusement in the eye he turned on Von Wetten. "And we don't want that, do we?" he suggested.
Von Wetten shuddered.
The siding at which the special train finally came to rest was "outside the station" in the sense that it was a couple of miles short of it, to be reached by a track-side path complicated by piles of sleepers and cinder-heaps. Herr Haase, for the purpose of his mission, had attired himself sympathetically rather than conveniently; he was going to visit a colonel and, in addition to other splendors, he had even risked again the patent leather boots. He was nearly an hour behind time when he reached at length the two wagons-lits carriages standing by themselves in a wilderness of tracks.
Limping, perspiring, purple in the face, he came alongside of them, peering up at their windows. A face showed at one of them, spectacled and bearded, gazing motionlessly through the panes with the effect of a sea-creature in an aquarium. It vanished and reappeared at the end door of the car.
"Hi! You, what do you want here?" called the owner of the face to
Herr Haase.
Herr Haase came shuffling towards the steps.
"Ich stelle Mich vor; I introduce myself," he said ceremoniously.
"Haase sent by his Excellency, the Herr Baron von Steinlach."