Kaufmann smiled urbanely.
“I had hoped,” he asserted, “that you would not have compelled me to say again that you must get them. I fancied perhaps that you would be sensitive to any mention of, shall we say, your past?”
“My past?” queried Trent blandly. He did not propose to be bluffed. Too often he had played that game himself. It might still be that this man, a German without question, had only guessed at his avocation and hoped to frighten him.
“Your past,” repeated the merchant. “The phrase has possibly too vague a sound for you. Let me say rather your professional activities.”
“I see,” Trent smiled, “you are interested in the writing of stories. My profession is that of a fiction writer.”
“You fence well,” Kaufmann admitted, “but I have a longer and sharper foil. I can wound you and receive never a scratch in return. You speak of fiction. Permit me to offer you a plot. Although a Swiss I have, or had, many German friends. We are still neutral, we of Switzerland, and you cannot expect us to feel the enmities this war has stirred up as keenly as you and your allies do.”
“That I have noticed,” Trent declared.
“Very well then. I have a close friend here, one Baron von Eckstein. You have perhaps heard of him—yes?”
Anthony Trent knitted his brow in thought.
“Married a St. Louis heiress, didn’t he?”