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"I knew of Kore I had heard of him and his shirkers' and deserters' agency in my travels and I went straight to him. He sent me to Haase's ... this was towards the end of June. It was when I was at Haase's that I sent out that message to van Urutius that fell into your hands. That happened like this.
The Baron made a little gesture of impatience, indulgent and paternal. He leaned a hand on the table and looked over Herr Haase's head to the tall young officer. "We are not limited as to colonels, either," he answered. "We must think ourselves lucky, I suppose, that he went no higher than a colonel. There was a moment when I thought he was going very much higher to the very top, Von Wetten.
"I meant to stay quietly in Berlin, going daily between Haase's and the factory and wait, for a month or two, in case that message got home. But Kore began to give trouble. At the beginning of July he came to see me and hinted that the renewal of my permis de séjour would cost money. I paid him, but I realized then that I was absolutely in his power and I had no intention of being blackmailed.
"I was rather friendly with a chap that frequented Haase's, a man employed in the packing department at the Metal Works at Steglitz. He was telling us one night how short-handed they were and what good money packers were earning. I was sick of being cooped up in that stinking cellar, so, more by way of a joke than anything else, I offered to come and lend a hand in the packing department.
Gallows' birds, sneak thieves, receivers, bullies, prostitutes and harpies of every description came together every evening in Herr Haase's beer-cellar. Many of the men wore the soiled and faded field-grey of the soldier back from the front, and in looking at their sordid, vulpine faces, inflamed with drink, I felt I could fathom the very soul of Belgium's misery.
His strong hands tightened; the paper-knife broke with a snap. "And that is Germany to-morrow broken. We have failed." He threw the two pieces from him to the floor and stared under the pent of his brows at Von Wetten. Their eyes engaged. But one of the pieces slid across the floor to Herr Haase's feet.
But what was most noticeable about him, when he lifted his face to the light, was the scar of which Von Wetten had spoken a red and jagged trace of some ugly wound, running from the inner corner of the right eye to the edge of the jaw. He murmured some inaudible acknowledgment of Herr Haase's scrupulously correct greeting. Then, as actually as though an arm of flesh and blood had thrust him back.
The waves they raised slapped loudly at the wall below the parapet, and there were suddenly dead fish floating pale-bellied on the surface. "Mines!" It was a whisper behind Herr Haase's large shoulder. "English mines!" Herr Bettermann straightened himself upright behind the tripod. "There's a fine for killing fish like that," he remarked bitterly. "And the window besides, curse it!"
The unknown quantity in my reckonings was the time it would take Clubfoot to send out a warning all over Germany to detain Julius Zimmermann, waiter and deserter, wherever and whenever apprehended. At the first turning I came to after leaving Haase's, tram-lines ran across the street. A tram was waiting, bound in a southerly direction, where the centre of the city lay.
The old baron had stepped back to Herr Haase's side; as the young man put his hands to the apparatus, he crisped himself with a sharp intake of breath for the explosion. A switch clicked under the young man's thumb, and he began to move the machine upon its pivot mounting, traversing it like a telescope on a stand.
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