"Excellenz!" he said, in a strange, loud voice, rather like a man in a trance. "Your Excellency's papers, received by the train arriving from Bern at eleven-thirty-five."
The other smiled, raising to him a pink and elderly face, with a clipped white moustache and heavy tufted brows under which the faint blue eyes were steady and ironic. He was a large man, great in the frame and massive; his movements had a sure, unhurried deliberation; and authority, the custom and habit of power, clad him like a garment. Years and the moving forces of life had polished him as running water polishes a stone. The Baron von Steinlach showed to Herr Haase a countenance supple as a hand and formidable as a fist.
"Thank you, my good Haase," he said, in his strong deliberate German.
"You look hot. This sun, eh? Poor fellow!"
But he did not bid him sit down. Instead, he turned to the linen envelope, opened it, and shook out upon the table its freight of lesser envelopes, typed papers, and newspaper-clippings. Deliberately, but yet with a certain discrimination and efficiency, he began to read them. Herr Haase, whose new patent leather boots felt red-hot to his feet, whose shirt was sticking to his back, whose collar was melting, watched him expressionlessly.
"There is a cloud of dust coming along the lake road," said the Baron presently, glancing through the window. "That should be Captain von Wetten in his automobile. We will see what he has to tell us, Haase."
"At your orders, Excellency," deferred Herr Haase.
"Because" he touched one of the papers before him "this news, Haase, is not good. It is not good. And this discovery here, if it be all that is claimed for it, should work miracles."
He glanced up at Herr Haase and smiled again. "Not that I think miracles can ever be worked by machinery," he added.
It was ten minutes after this that the column of dust on the lake road delivered its core and cause in the shape of a tall man, who knocked once at the door and strode in without waiting for an answer.
"Ah, my dear Von Wetten," said the Baron pleasantly. "It is hot, eh?"