He sat quietly, in the stillness of the surrounding forest, and waited. Sometimes they came out early, but at other times the fulfillment of his purpose required great patience. He was in no hurry. He had all day.

Several hours passed. There was considerable activity about, but not of the sort for which he had arisen before dawn and made this long walk. Still he kept the binoculars to his eyes, slowly panning back and forth for his quarry.

Suddenly he saw a door open, the door to the roof. His heart began to pound!

There she was! Carrying a book as always.

She sat down, resting her back against the battlement. If only the binoculars were powerful enough to see what she was reading!

He watched for twenty or so minutes. She sat motionless, unaware of the silent witness to her morning’s activity.

She glanced up, seeming to ponder a passage she had just read, then rose and quickly left the rooftop perch.

Still he watched, waiting.

Five minutes later the object of his observation emerged, this time from a door on the ground floor, and, still carrying the book, walked across the courtyard, then disappeared under the arch and into the depths of the huge garden. He tried to follow her movements, but the growth was too thick, and for a minute or two she was lost to his sight.

Still searching to recover her trail, he noticed some movement up by the house out of the corner of his eye. Quickly he turned his magnified eyes back up to his right.

There was the baron. Here was perhaps the kingpin to his entire scheme! He deserved careful attention as well.

The baron had just come from the house and likewise now leisurely crossed the grassy courtyard, following nearly in the exact footsteps of his daughter.

The baron is taller, the watcher thought to himself. He would be able to follow his movements more easily.

7 Der Frühlingsgarten

7

Der Frühlingsgarten

South of Baron von Dortmann’s house, and comprising nearly a full hectare, sat the spacious green lawns, hedges, and circuitous pathways through what the elder Dortmann had called his Frühlingsgarten, or Spring Garden, and which his son, the present baron, after his extensive schooling, had made the envy of every horticulturist between the estate and Berlin.

It was situated on the south slope leading down across the stream and toward the pinewood beyond the shallow valley. The baron had terraced and interlaced the entire space with so many varieties of plants and such a maze of paths and walkways and little stairways and bridges and hedges and overarching arbors and twists and turns and dead-end courtyards of specialty plants or flowers, that one quickly forgot, from within its depths, that it was not built on level ground.