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She motioned me to a chair near her, while Holknecht, utterly ignored, sank obscurely into a corner. "So you came," said the lady of black and scarlet, leaning back among her pillows and gazing at me through half closed eyes.
Just as I had succeeded in hooking the clasp, I heard a curdled oath and the neglected Holknecht hurled himself upon us, striking me on the temple with one fist and clutching at the throat of the girl with the other hand. The blow sent me reeling to the floor but in another instant I was up and had collared him and dragged him away. "Damn you both," he whimpered; "where do I come in?"
"She has already tried to make trouble," I said, "but nothing came of it." "But that," said Holknecht, "was before she saw me." "And what have you told her?" "I told her about Armstadt's going to the mines and you coming back to the hospital wearing his clothes and possessed of his folder and of your being out of your memory."
I entered the reception-room and found Holknecht, who had been my chemical assistant in the early days of my work in Berlin.
My assistant would now be of the rank I had previously been and as Holknecht was not eligible to such promotion I was removed entirely from all previous acquaintances and surroundings and so greatly decreased the chance of discovery of my true identity.
Seated in the only chair, I related what I knew of the affair at the locks. "It must have been," I concluded, after much speculation, "that Holknecht finally got the attention of the Chemical Staff and related what he knew of the incident of the potash mines. They had enough data about me to have arrived at the correct conclusion long ago. It was a question of getting the facts together."
He wasn't even sure you were not the other Karl Armstadt until I convinced him, and then he claimed that he had known it all the time; and yet he had never told it. Some men are as dull as books." "On the contrary, Holknecht is very sensible," I replied. "It is a grave affair of state and one that it is best not to probe into."
From my readings and from Holknecht's endless talking I had fairly well grasped the problem on which I was supposed to be working, and I now had Holknecht go carefully over the work he had done in my absence and we prepared a report.
"You mean," I replied, determined not to acknowledge his assumption of my other identity, "that you explained to her how the illness had changed me; and did that not make clear to her why she did not recognize me at first?" "There is no use," insisted Holknecht, "of your talking like that. I never could quite make up my mind about you, though I always knew there was something wrong.
The new research proved a blanket behind which to hide my ignorance. We needed new material, new apparatus, and new data and I encouraged Holknecht to advise me as to where to obtain these things and so gained requisite working knowledge. The experiments and demonstrations finished, I made my report.
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