"So it goes on. A few moments of leisure, a little reading in an English paper, a new idiom-perhaps two-all very without excitement. How do you say that?"
"Placid."
"So. Placid. And then one day I take this paper from the pile, just as I might take any of the others, and I forget all about idiom." He took from his capacious pocket a once-folded copy of the Ack-Emma, and spread it in front of Robert on the desk. It was the issue of Friday, May the 10th, with the photograph of Betty Kane occupying two-thirds of the page. "I look at this photograph. Then I look inside and read the story. Then I say to myself that this is most extraordinary. Most extraordinary it is. The paper say this is the photograph of Betty Kann. Kann?"
"Kane."
"Ah. So. Betty Kane. But it is also the photograph of Mrs. Chadwick, who stay at my hotel with her husband."
"What!"
Mr. Lange looked pleased. "You are interested? I so hoped you might be. I did so hope."
"Go on. Tell me."
"A fortnight they stayed with me. And it was most extraordinary, Mr. Blair, because while that poor girl was being beaten and starved in an English attic, Mrs. Chadwick was eating like a young wolf at my hotel-the cream that girl could eat, Mr. Blair, even I, a Dane, was surprised-and enjoying herself very much."
"Yes?"