ss of everything, and of Christmas in
particular.

Otto Engler had one failing--his impudent inquisitiveness. After he had
left me it occurred to me that all the time we had been together he had
been constantly endeavouring to discover my recent movements, where I
had visited of late, where I intended spending Christmas, and my
subsequent movements.

Why did he desire to know all these particulars? He was a busybody, I
knew, and the worst gossip in the whole of that gossip-loving city on
the Weser. Therefore I attributed his inquisitiveness to his natural
propensity for prying into other people's affairs.

"Ah! my dear friend," he had said as he gripped my hand on leaving me,
"they often speak of you in Bremen. How we all wish you were back again
with us of an evening at the Wiener Cafe!"

"I fear I shall never go back," I said briefly. "Business nowadays keeps
me in London, as you know."

"I know--I know," he replied. "Remember, you have always had a true
friend in Otto Engler--and you always will, I trust."

Then he had entered the taxi which the hall-porter had called for him.

Next afternoon he called upon me at New Stone Buildings, as we had
arranged. Ray Raymond was seated with me. I introduced him, and we spent
a pleasant hour, chatting and smoking. Ray had also been in Bremen, and
the two men had, they found, many mutual friends. Then, when he had
left, Ray declared himself charmed by him.

"So different to the usual German," he declared. "There's nothing of the
popinjay about him, nothing of the modern military fop of Berlin or
Dresden, men who are, in my estimation, the very acme of bad breeding
and degenerate idiocy."

"No," I said. "Engler is quite a good fellow. I'm glad he's found me. I
expected to be deadly dull this Christmas."

"So do I," replied my friend. "I've got a wire this morning from the
Admiral saying he is down with influenza, and the Christmas house-party
is postponed. So I shall stay in town."

"In that case we might spend Christmas day together," I suggested.

This was arranged.

My German friend Otto saw me daily. I was introduced to his brother,
Wilhelm, a tall, thin, rather narrow-eyed man who, from his atrocious
German, I judged was from Dantzig. It was one evening in the Cafe Royal
that I first saw Wilhelm, who was seated playing dominoes with a rather
stout, middle-aged man in gold-rimmed spectacles, Heinrich Griesbach.

Both men expressed delight at meeting me, and I