The hall-door had slammed a moment previously. There had been a step upon the oilcloth-covered basement staircase, and now it bore Miss Ling's first-floor lodger, Herr von Rosius, the "quiet gentleman," who taught German to English students and English to Germans at the Institute of Languages in Berners Street, W.—across the threshold of her tidy kitchen, pipe in mouth and hat in hand.
"Meine Herren, I haf to beg your pardons! I seek the Fräulein Ling——" he was beginning, when suddenly the tall, broad-shouldered figure in the ill-fitting checked tweed clothes was petrified into rigidity. The felt hat he had civilly removed dropped from his hand, his jaws clenched on his inseparable meerschaum. Bolt upright, crimson to the hair, and staring through his steel-rimmed spectacles, he stood confronting the huge white letters that disfigured Miss Ling's brown distemper.
"Kreuzdonnerwetter! was ist dies?" Carolan heard him mutter in his own tongue. "Es ist in jedermanns Mund!" Then he recovered himself almost instantly, picked up his hat, and gave good-evening in his stiff, yet civil, way.
XXIV
"Good evening! Miss Ling is out, and won't be back for an hour," explained Mr. Knewbit, "but if there was anything you were wanting in a hurry, I'll see that you get it, somehow."
"Thanks, thanks!" said Herr von Rosius pleasantly. "So that I shall have my bill within an hour I shall need nothing. Pray inform the Fräulein I haf just received a cable from my family in Germany. They tell me I am wanted at home."
"Sorry, sorry!" said Mr. Knewbit in his pouncing manner. "Sudden, sudden! Hope no bad news?"
Von Rosius's pale blue eyes might have been stones, they were so hard, and had so little expression. He removed and wiped his glasses with his silk handkerchief, and said, carefully replacing them:
"Nein, ganz und gar nicht, but my mother is in need of me. So I have resigned my post at the Berners Street Institute of Languages, and got my passport from our North German Consul in your city. Be so good to give my message to the Fräulein. I go upstairs to pack my trunks and bags!"