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Updated: June 16, 2025
He was a boy again, and he was carrying posies to the pretty little fräulein in the Adlergasse. Dreams never last, and sometimes they are rudely interrupted. A hand was put upon his shoulder authoritatively. The police officer who had examined his passports that morning stood at Grumbach's elbow.
"Herr Grumbach," he said quietly, "his excellency the chancellor has directed me to bring you at once to the palace." "To the palace?" Grumbach's face was expressive of great astonishment. The officer saw nothing out of the ordinary in this expression. Any foreigner would have been seized with confusion under like circumstances. "To the palace?" Grumbach repeated.
The inherent respect for caste had not been beaten out of Grumbach's blood; he had come from a brood in a peasant's hovel. To him the word gentleman would always signify birth and good clothes; what the heart and mind were did not matter much.
And deeper, firmer, became his belief and conviction that Grumbach's affair vitally concerned her highness. What blunder had been made? He would soon know. He welcomed the knock on his door. Grumbach came in, carrying under his arm a small bundle. He was pale but serene, like a man who had put his worldly affairs in order. "Well, Captain, what did his Highness say?" "Where are your companions?"
Upon Gretchen's left arm, otherwise perfection, there was a white scar, rough and uneven, more like an ancient burn than anything else. Grumbach's eyes rested upon the scar and became fixed. "Where did you get that?" he asked. He spoke with a strange calm. "The scar? I do not remember. Grandmother says that when I was little I must have been burned." "Gott!" "What did you say, Herr?" "Nothing.
Soon I shall be shaking the dust of Dreiberg, and I want to know beforehand what this Chinese puzzle is. What did you do that compelled your flight from Ehrenstein?" Grumbach's pipe hung pendulent in his hand. He swung it to and fro absently. "I am waiting. Remember, you are an American citizen, for all that you were born here.
When they came for a man on a serious charge, in Ehrenstein, they came in pairs or fours. So then, there could be pending nothing vital to his liberty or his incognito. Besides, his papers were all right, and now there would be Carmichael to fall back on. "The palace is lighted up," was Grumbach's comment as the two passed the sentry outside the gates.
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