"So, if you will tell us the figure that will content you, we can dispatch the matter," continued the Baron. "That is your part to name a figure. Supposing always" his voice slowed; the words dropped one by one "supposing always that there is a figure!"
The other continued to stare, gaunt as a naked tree in the evening flush, his face white under his tumbled hair, the jagged scar showing, upon it like a new wound.
"You don't suppose you'll get the thing for nothing, do you?" he broke out suddenly.
The Baron shook his head. "No," he said, "I don't think that. But it has struck me I may not need my cheque-book. You see, for all I can tell, Herr Bettermann, the window may be insured; and the police may not hear of the fish; and as for the machine well, the machine may be for sale; but you have less the manner of a salesman, Herr Bettermann, than any man I have ever seen."
The gaunt youth glowered uncertainly. "I'm not a salesman," he retorted resentfully.
The Baron nodded. "I was sure of it," he said. "Well, if you will let me, I'll be your salesman for you; I have sold things in my time, and for great prices too. Now, I can see that you are in a difficulty. You are a patriotic Swiss citizen and you have scruples about letting your invention go out of your own country; is that it? Because, if so, it can be arranged."
He stopped; the lean youth had uttered a spurt of laughter, bitter and contemptuous.
"Swiss!" he cried. "No more Swiss than yourself, Herr Baron!"
"Eh?" To Herr Haase, watching through his mask of respectful aloofness, it was as though the Baron's mind and countenance together snapped almost audibly into a narrowed and intensified alertness. The deep, white-fringed brows gathered over the shrewd pale eyes. "Not a Swiss?" he queried. "What are you, then?"
"Huh!" the other jeered, openly. "I knew you the moment I saw you. Old Herr Steinlach, eh? Why, man, I've been expecting you and getting ready for you ever since your blundering, swaggering spy there" with a jerk of a rigid thumb towards Von Wetten "and this fat slave" Herr Haase was indicated here "first came sniffing round my premises. I knew they'd be sending you along, with your blank cheques and your tongue; and here you are!"