The effect of my words was almost electrical. He sat up, staring at me almost dazed at my statement.
"It is true, Heltzendorff. Alas! True!" he replied. But he would even then give me no inkling of the reason of his fear.
"If this Herr Minckwitz means mischief, then surely it would be easy to secure his arrest for some offence or other, and you need not appear in it," I suggested.
"I've thought of all that. But if the police lay hands upon him, then he will revenge himself on me. He will carry out his threat—and—and, Heltzendorff, I could never hold up my head again."
"Why?"
"I can't be more explicit. I'm in a hole, and I cannot extricate myself."
I reflected for a moment. Then I said:
"You appear to fear some action of Minckwitz's. If that is so, I will return to Hanover and watch. If there is any hostile intent, I will endeavour to prevent it. Fortunately, he does not know me."
Next night I was back again in Hanover, having stopped in Berlin to pick up a friend of mine upon whose discretion I could rely implicitly—a retired member of the detective force named Hartwieg. Together we started to watch the movements of the mysterious Polish musician, and to our surprise we found that he had three friends, one of them a furrier living in the Burgstrasse, who visited him regularly each evening. They always arrived at the same hour, and generally left about eleven o'clock. Through five days we kept watch, alternately closely shadowing the man who called himself Sembach, and becoming acquainted with his friends, most of whom seemed of a very queer set.
There was no doubt that Minckwitz and the two young women were associates of some criminal gang, and, further, I was staggered one evening to watch the arrival at the house of a young man whom I recognized as Brosch, an under-valet of the Emperor's at the Neues Palais.