The Baron had given to Herr Haase his usual welcome of a half smile, satiric and not unkindly. He turned now to Bettermann.
"But certainly," he answered. He slapped the ivory paper-knife against his palm. "I was not withdrawing from the bargain. I was merely endeavoring to point out to you at the instance of my friend here" a jerk of the elbow towards Von Wetten "the advantages of a million marks, or several million marks, plus the cashiering of Colonel von Specht from the army, over the personal satisfaction which you have demanded for yourself. But since you insist."
Bettermann, doubled up in his low chair, broke in abruptly: "Yes, I insist!"
The Baron smiled his elderly, temperate smile. "So be it," he said.
"Well, my good Haase, what have you to tell us?"
Herr Haase brought his heels together, dropped his thumbs to the seams of his best trousers, threw up his chin, and barked:
"Your Excellency, I have seen the Herr Colonel Graf von Specht. He died at ten minutes past eleven this morning."
His parade voice rang in the room; when it ceased the silence, for a space of moments, was absolute. What broke it was the voice of Von Wetten.
"Thank God!" it said, loudly and triumphantly.
The Baron swung round to him, but before he could speak Bettermann gathered up the slack of his long limbs and rose from his chair. He stood a moment, gaunt in his loose and worn clothes, impending over the seated baron.
"So that was it! Well" He paused, surveying the pair of them, the old man, the initiate and communicant of the inmost heart of the machine through which his soul had gone like grain through a mill, and the tall Prussian officer, at once the motor and millstone of that machine. And he smiled. "Well," he repeated, "there's the end of that!"