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And yet, bearded as he was, there was a lurking expression about his features that bordered upon effeminacy, and made the treble of his voice sound even more thin and womanish as he answered Wyde's greeting. "Good morning, too, mein Herr. A stranger to our town, I see." "Yes; but soon not to be called one, I hope. I am here for the winter."
With the same painful effort as before, the old man straightened himself and made a piercing clairvoyant examination into and through Ronald Wyde's eyes, as if reading the brain beyond them. "I think I can trust you," he mumbled at last. "Come with me."
Ronald Wyde's first impulse, as he shambled into the open air, was to go home; but he thought of the confusion his sadly-mixed identity would cause in Frau Spritzkrapfen's quiet household, and came to a dead stop to consider the matter. Then he decided to quit the town for the interminable four days to go to Dresden, or anywhere.
A flat brass plate pressed between his shoulders, and one of the carbon points, clamped in a little insulated stand, rested on his bosom and quivered with the quickened motion of the heart beneath it. The other point touched the dead man's breast. "Are you ready?" "Yes." The old man pressed a key, and as he did so a sharp sting, hardly worse than a leech's bite, pricked Ronald Wyde's breast.
Wyde's offence was one of remissness rather than of excessive care for his personal appearance. With regard to beards in the same reign Lincoln's Inn exacted that such members "as had beards should pay 12d. for every meal they continued them; and every man" was required "to be shaven upon pain of putting out of commons."
His fellow-passengers cast him sidelong looks, and gave him a wide berth. Even the quaint, flat-arched windows of one pane each, that winked out of the red-tiled roofs like sleepy eyes, seemed to leer drunkenly at him as they scudded by. Ronald Wyde's account of those days in Dresden was vague and misty.
Herr Lebensfunke smiled feebly at this movement. "A subject received this morning from Berlin," he said, in answer to Wyde's look of inquiry. "A sad piece of extravagance, mein Herr a luxury to which I can rarely afford to treat myself." Ronald Wyde bent over the body and looked into its face. A rough, red face, that had seemingly seen forty years of low-lived dissipation.
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