d by care and suffering and in spite of
them I caught a glimpse of the brother I had come to seek.

I rattled a spoon on the table and called softly out to the verandah.

"_Kellner!_"

The man turned.

I beckoned to him. He came over to my table. He never recognized me, so
dull was he with disappointment ... me with my unshaven, unkempt
appearance and in my mean German shoddy ... but stood silently, awaiting
my bidding.

"Francis," I said softly ... and I spoke in German ... "Francis, don't
you know me?"

He was magnificent, strong and resourceful in his joy at our meeting as
he had been in his months of weary waiting.

Only his mouth quivered a little as instantly his hands busied
themselves with clearing away my breakfast.

"Jawohl!" he answered in a perfectly emotionless voice.

And then he smiled and in a flash the old Francis stood before me.

"Not a word now," he said in German as he cleared away the breakfast.
"I am off this afternoon. Meet me on the river promenade by the Schiller
statue at a quarter past two and we'll go for a walk. Don't stay here
now but come back and lunch in the restaurant ... it's always crowded
and pretty safe!"

Then he called out into the void:

"Twenty-six wants to pay!"

Such was my meeting with my brother.

CHAPTER XVI

A HAND-CLASP BY THE RHINE

That afternoon Francis and I walked out along the banks of the swiftly
flowing Rhine until we were far beyond the city. Anxious though I was
that he should reveal to me that part of his life which lay hidden
beneath those lines of suffering in his face, he made me tell my story
first. So I unfolded to him the extraordinary series of adventures that
had befallen me since the night I had blundered upon the trail of a
great secret in that evil hotel at Rotterdam.

Francis did not once interrupt the flow of my narrative. He listened
with the most tense interest but with a growing concern which betrayed
itself clearly on his face. At the end of my story, I silently handed to
him the half of the stolen letter I had seized from Clubfoot at the
Hotel Esplanade.

"Keep it, Francis," I said. "It's safer with a respectable waiter like
you than with a hunted outcast like myself!"

My brother smiled wanly, but his face assumed the look of grave anxiety
with which he had heard my tale. He scrutinized the slips of paper very
closely, then tucked them away in a letter-case, which he buttoned up in
his hip pocket.

"Fortun