The lawyer stood up. That was all he did; but it stopped Count Karlstein’s restless prowling and finger-gnawing and sideways kicks at the great log in the fire as effectively as if a gunshot had sounded. Meister Haifisch had a presence that commanded your attention. Like an actor, he knew how to make every movement count. And his audience—both of us, one in the shadows beside the door and one scowling beside the fire—was held still, waiting for his next words.

Which were simple. “Good night, Count Karlstein,” was all he said; but his voice held such a charge of contempt that it would have shamed the devil himself.

“Oh, sit down, man,” said Count Karlstein irritably; and I knew he’d realized that if he wanted to tamper with the truth, Meister Haifisch wasn’t the man to put a legal seal on the doing of it. “Come and sit down again. I’m out of sorts—don’t mind me. Go through it again, will ye…?” And he threw himself into the carved oak chair at the other side of the fireplace, bent down to tear off a strip of bark from one of the logs in the hearth, and shredded it slowly into tiny pieces as Meister Haifisch spoke.

“The only son of old Count Ludwig Karlstein was stolen from his cradle twenty years ago. I have traced him as far as Geneva, where a child answering to the same description was placed in a foundlings’ home a short while after he disappeared. That child—if it was he—grew up and became a groom, working in the stables of the Black Bear Inn; then he joined the army—and that is the last we know. His regiment was scattered at the Battle of Bodelheim; he may have been taken prisoner, or he may be dead. And that, I repeat, is all we know.”

Count Karlstein grunted and slapped his thigh in irritation.

“That’s the best you can do?”

“That is the best anyone can do, Count Karlstein. There is no one in Switzerland who knows more about the affairs of the estate of Karlstein than I do; and so what I have told is the limit of human knowledge on the subject.”

Was there a hint of sarcasm in his tone? Maybe, but Count Karlstein didn’t hear it if there was. For he looked up then, and saw me. He sprang to his feet with an oath.

“How long have you been there, hussy?” he snarled.

“Only a moment, sir! I knocked, but you didn’t hear me!”

The lawyer was watching; otherwise I think the count would have hit me. He sent me out impatiently to fetch some wine, and when I came back, I found that he and Meister Haifisch had given up all attempts at conversation and were standing at opposite ends of the room, examining the books, or the pictures, or the snow-filled darkness outside the window.