Johann Stryj had departed as silently and undemonstratively as he had come. The chief spy was a born master of his craft. The only matter in which Nature had been less kind to him in his fitness for the work he had imposed upon himself was in the slightly furtive restlessness of his eyes. Otherwise the ideal had been achieved. His whole air of simple inoffensiveness left nothing to be desired.
Von Salzinger admitted these things to himself, in spite of the morose venom which the man's report upon Dorby had inspired.
This venomous mood, however, was not directed against his helper. It was inspired by his realization that his own purpose had been made more difficult of achievement. He had discovered that his efforts were not directed against private individuals, but against the British naval authority, an authority he had reason to know had nothing of the ineptitude of other departments of the Government.
Thus he sat back in the largest and most comfortable chair in his private sitting-room, with his trunk-like legs supported upon a smaller chair, and divided his savage mood between outlining the report he must now make to Berlin and the devouring of the contents of a large bier-stein, which stood on the table within reach.
He had nearly succeeded in achieving his double purpose, and incidentally relieving his unpleasant mood, when a diversion occurred in the form of a telephone summons from the hotel office below.
A visitor for him. Name of Von Berger. Would he see him at once?
Yes, Ludwig von Salzinger would be pleased to see him at once. This is what he 'phoned down. To himself he cursed bitterly in homely Prussian adjectives.
Von Berger was the last person he wanted to see in England until the outcome of his work was assured. This man's coming suggested all sorts of vague and disquieting thoughts. With Von Berger in England he would no longer be a free agent. He would be forced to yield the conduct of affairs to another—a man whom he felt had neither friendliness nor mercy for any soul on earth. He was more than disquieted. He was awed, and not a little apprehensive.
The latter was displayed in an almost schoolboy action that was pathetically humorous. He quickly removed his bier-stein—and concealed it.
The entrance of Von Berger was characteristic of the frigid, unyielding aspect he displayed at all times. No one could have encountered this personality and detected one soft spot in the whole of its make-up. It was almost as if something of the iron of his native Baltic shores had been bred into him through the ages of his ruthless ancestry. No iceberg in the northern reaches of his native inland sea could have gleamed more coldly bright than his hard eyes. No ice-bound crag could have been cut more sharply than the thin compressed lips of his set mouth.