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Updated: May 31, 2025
"Beware equally of a sudden friend and a slow enemy." Roden and Von Holzen were at work in the little office of the malgamite works. The sun had just set, and the soft pearly twilight was creeping over the sand hills. The day's work was over, and the factories were all locked up for the night.
Roden failed to heed the significant fact that Von Holzen did not even ask him what line of conduct he intended to follow with regard to Cornish, nor seek in his autocratic way to instruct him on that point; but turned instead to other matters and did not again refer to Cornish or the letter he had written.
The man was dying. He was a Pole who understood no word of English. Indeed, these three men had no language in common in which to make themselves understood. "Can you do nothing at all?" asked Roden, for the second or third time. "Nothing," answered Von Holzen, without turning round. "He was a doomed man when he came here." The man lay on the bed and stared at Von Holzen's back.
Then, on the threshold, with a gravity and a glance that sent him away happy, she added, "I do not want you to discuss me with Otto von Holzen, you understand!" She stood with her hand on the bell, looking at the clock, while he went downstairs. The moment she heard the street door closed behind him she rang sharply. "The brougham," she said to the servant, "at once."
Von Holzen attempted to stop stumbled, half recovered himself, and fell headlong into the canal. In a moment Cornish and Roden were at the edge, peering into the darkness. Cornish gave a breathless laugh. "We shall have to fish him out," he said. And he knelt down, ready to give a hand to Von Holzen. But the water, smooth again now, was not stirred by so much as a ripple.
The thoughts were certainly tinged with pessimism, and lacked entirely the blindness of an enthusiasm by which men are urged to endeavour great things for the good of the masses, and to make, as far as a practical human perception may discern, huge and hideous mistakes. "Von Holzen is down below," said Roden, at length.
The light of the setting sun glowed through the window upon their faces, upon the bare walls of the room, rendered barer and in no way beautified by a terrible German print purporting to represent the features of Prince Bismarck. Von Holzen stood, with his hands clasped behind his back, and looked out of the window across the dreary dunes.
His evenings he usually passed at the Cafe de l'Europe, where an occasional truant malgamite worker would indulge in a mild carouse. From these grim revelers Cornish elicited a good deal of information. He was not actually, as his landlady suspected, in hiding, but desired to withhold as long as possible from Von Holzen and Roden the fact that he was in Holland.
For Percy knew nothing of the organized attempt on Cornish's life which she herself had frustrated. He seemed to know nothing of the grim and silent antagonism that existed between the two men, shutting his eyes to their movements, which were like the movements of chess-players that the onlooker sees but does not understand. Dorothy knew that Von Holzen was infinitely cleverer than her brother.
And the listeners turned round and stared at that hero, whom they discovered calmly and stolidly entrenched behind the eye-glass, his broad, tanned face surmounting a shirt front of abnormal width. "Herr von Holzen." No one seemed to know Herr von Holzen, or to care much whether he existed or not.
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