“What? I mean, what do you mean he wasn’t so high then? Who?”

“I retired, what was it… six years ago? He was only a colonel, a very young colonel. What a man! What a soldier! You’ve never seen a fighter like him. They say he resigned his commission to fight in Africa. A guerrilla fighter with the Boer commandos.”

“Did you know him?”

“Me? A sergeant from Berlin know a Prussian aristocrat? What could you be thinking, my friend?”

Curtis gripped the table to right himself as a sudden burst of pain nearly knocked him off his chair. He put all his might into composing his voice. “I meant, did you serve under him?”

“I only knew him by reputation. He was admired. Still is, I’m sure.”

“Why did they call him Monkey?”

“Not to his face,” the sergeant chuckled. “Mein Gott, Colonel Semmler would have sliced their ears off and made them eat them.”

“Semmler… But why did they call him ‘Monkey’?”

“He looked like one. Enormous arms and big brows like a monkey.” The sergeant glanced about and lowered his voice. “Not quite the picture of the purebred Prussian aristocrat, if you know what I mean. More the sturdy peasant, like me.”

“I thought Semmler was a Prussian name?”

“Of course. And they said he’s a Roth, too—buckets of superior Prussian blood, if not the superior shape. My friend, are you all right? You look at death’s door.”

“What is his first name?”

“Christian.”

Arthur Curtis gathered his spirit in an effort to stand.

“I am thinking it is more than the schnapps. Bad oysters. I had a dozen at lunch. Perhaps… I better go—here, let me pay.”

“No, no, my friend. You always pay. You hardly touched your beer. I’ll pay and finish it for you. You go home and get to bed.”

THE TELEGRAPH OFFICES IN THE main railroad stations were open all night. He would cable Semmler’s name and description to Isaac Bell, care of the New York office, and just to be sure he would also wire it to the Van Dorn field office in Paris. He headed for the nearest station, hoping that his lurching pace would not draw attention on the well-lit streets. He paused just inside the main entrance to check in a kiosk mirror that no blood showed on his coat, and as he did, he saw across the vast hall that the police were checking the papers of the men lined up at the telegraph office. They’d be doing the same at every office open all night and, he realized with a touch of panic, at the hospitals, too. And as the night wore on and the streets and bars and restaurants emptied, they would stop any man still about.