mop himself. "Aber what a heat, what
a heat!"

The brass-buttoned hotel porter, a-sprawl in a wicker chair in the
hall, lowered his newspaper and looked up over his silver spectacles.
He was comfortably unbuttoned here and there, and had omitted to
shave that morning, for this was July, 1916, and since the war had
turned Switzerland's tourists into Europe's cannon-fodder, he had run
somewhat to seed.

"Yes, it is warm," he agreed, without interest, and yawned. "You have
come to see" he jerked his head towards the white staircase and its
strip of red carpet "to see him not? He is up there. But what do you
think of the news this morning?"

Herr Haase was running, his handkerchief round the inside of his
collar. "To see him! I have come to see the Herr Baron von
Steinlach," he retorted, crossly. "And what news are you talking
about now?" He continued to pant and wipe while the porter read from
his copy of the Bund, the German official communique of the previous
day's fighting on the Somme.

"I don't like it," said the porter, when he had finished. "It looks
as if we were losing ground. Those English."

Herr Haase pocketed his handkerchief and took the large envelope in
his hand again. He was a bulky, middle-aged man, one of whose
professional qualifications it was that he looked and sounded
commonplace, the type of citizen who is the patron of beer-gardens,
wars of aggression, and the easily remembered catchwords which are
the whole political creed of his kind. His appearance was the bushel
under which his secret light burned profitably; it had indicated him
for his employment as a naturalized citizen of Switzerland and the
tenant of the pretty villa on the hill above Thun, whence he drove
his discreet and complicated traffic in those intangible wares whose
market is the Foreign Office in Berlin.

He interrupted curtly. "Don't talk to me about the English!" he
puffed. "Gott strafe England!" He stopped. The porter was paid by the
same hand as himself. The hall was empty save for themselves, and
there was no need to waste good acting on a mere stage-hand in the
piece.

"The English," he said, "are going to have a surprise."

"Eh?" The slovenly man in the chair gaped up at him stupidly. Herr
Haase added to his words the emphasis of a nod and walked on to the
stairs.

In the corridor above, a row of white-painted bedroom doors had each
its number. Beside one of them a tall young man was sunk spinelessly
in a cha