"An oven," replied Von Wetten curtly. "This place is an oven. And the dust, ach!"
The elder man made a gesture of sympathy. "Poor fellow!" he said.
"Sit down; sit down. Haase, that chair!"
And Herr Haase, who controlled a hundred and twelve subordinates, who was a Swiss citizen and a trusted secret agent, brought the chair and placed it civilly, neither expecting nor receiving thanks.
The new-comer was perhaps twenty-eight years of age, tall, large in the chest and little in the loins, with a narrow, neatly-chiseled face which fell naturally to a chill and glassy composure. "Officer" was written on him as clear as a brand; his very quiet clothes sat on his drilled and ingrained formality of posture and bearing as noticeably as a mask and domino; he needed a uniform to make him inconspicuous. He picked up his dangling monocle, screwed it into his eye, and sat back.
"And now?" inquired the Baron agreeably, "and now, my dear Von
Wetten, what have you to tell us?"
"Well, Excellenz" Captain von Wetten hesitated. "As a matter of fact,
I've arranged for you to see the thing yourself this afternoon."
The Baron said nothing merely waited, large and still against the light of the window which shone on the faces of the other two.
Captain von Wetten shifted in his chair awkwardly. "At five, Excellenz," he added; "it'll be cooler then. You see, Herr Baron, it's not the matter of the machine I've seen that all right; it's the man."
"So!" The explanation, which explained nothing to Herr Haase, seemed to satisfy the Baron. "The man, eh? But you say you have seen the machine. It works?"
"It worked all right this morning," replied Von Wetten. "I took my own explosives with me, as you know some French and English rifle-cartridges and an assortment of samples from gun charges and marine mines. I planted some in the garden; the place was all pitted already with little craters from his experiments; and some, especially the mine stuff, I threw into the lake. The garden's on the edge of the lake, you know. Well, he got out his machine thing like a photographic camera, rather, on a tripod turned it this way and that until it pointed to my explosives, and pop! off they went like a lot of fireworks. Pretty neat, I thought."