When a servant had ushered Brainard into a private salon of the old Bible Hotel, and discreetly closed the door, an alert, middle-aged German with grizzled hair and close-trimmed beard rose from a table and advanced with outstretched hand.
“Mr. Brainard, I presume?” he said in fluent English. “I am Adolf Schneider.”
“So it’s important enough for the old boy to come himself!” Brainard thought as they shook hands.
Herr Schneider cast a quick look at the small bag which the servant had taken from Brainard’s hand and placed beside his coat and hat.
“You haven’t brought the papers with you!” the banker exclaimed with unconscious disappointment.
“They are in a safe place,” Brainard replied; “but I have a pretty complete inventory of them.”
He drew from his pocket a copy of the list that he had made on board the Toulouse, and also a copy of the power of attorney that Krutzmacht had signed. The former he handed to the banker, who seized it with a poorly assumed air of indifference, and ran his eye down the list.
Herr Schneider’s face expanded, it seemed to Brainard, as he neared the bottom; but without making any comment he took a list from his pocket and compared it with Brainard’s. When he had finished, he looked at the young man with fresh interest.
“There’s some more stuff—books and files of papers, which I packed in a trunk,” Brainard explained. “But I had to leave the trunk behind me. It should be safe in Chicago by this time, and I can get it, if it’s still there, when I return to America.”
“You were thorough!” the banker exclaimed with a smile. “You did not leave much behind you.”