THE IRON HAND SAVES A LIFE!"
Meanwhile, the medal had to be returned to the hands of its owner, who must, P. C. Breagh was firm on that!—consent to receive it from the hands of the finder, if he wanted it back again. P. C. Breagh knew the Foreign Office, in the Wilhelm Strasse—the shabbiest residence in all that street of official palaces—with its high-pitched, red-tiled Mansard roof, its shabby gray stuccoed front (a main building with two short wings, pierced by twelve windows, and decorated with a sham-Hellenic frieze and shallow pilasters),—and its big, park-like garden stretching away behind.
So, clutching the precious token, P. C. Breagh plunged back into the crowd. It was dense, but no longer solid, and, still lustily singing, with intervals of cheering, it bore him down the Linden as far as the Brandenburg Gate.
There it split into three vociferating rivers of humanity. One of which streamed north-westward toward the offices of the Great General Staff, where Moltke, the ancient war-wizard, was busy over his maps! Another, desirous of refreshment, surged onward in the direction of the Thiergarten. The third flowed down the street of palaces, and with it went P. C. Breagh.
XVIII
The Foreign Office knocker was a colossal funereal wreath, of sooty bronze laurel, that wakened hollow startling echoes in the tomb-like void of a grim stone vestibule.
The vestibule lay at the end of a glass-roofed passage. On the right was a window, behind the window gleamed an eye, belonging to the Chancery janitor who had manipulated the door-levers. The door banged behind P. C. Breagh, and his hope climbed a central flight of stairs, gray-white marble, with bronze balusters badly in need of cleaning. The staircase was covered with worn Turkey carpet, was lighted from above by a green and gold cupola, and guarded by two conventional figures of sphinxes, carved in shiny blackish stone.
All these details the eye of P. C. Breagh gleaned over the arm of the Chancellor's door-porter, a seven-foot East Prussian, who wore plain black official livery and carried no gold-headed staff, yet would have snubbed the Rector of the University of Schwärz-Brettingen had he presented himself in this unceremonious way.
"What does he want? The young man must know that His Excellency the Royal Chancellor of the North German Confederation is engaged upon State business—not to be approached by strangers having no appointments or credentials previously obtained. An introduction to His Excellency is indispensable. Where has the young man lived that he does not know that?"