leaned across the desk to bring his ear closer to his mouth, and for one horrible moment Holliday entertained the notion that the beard was about to fall off, and he cringed a little with anticipatory embarrassment. This, however, did not happen. The beard merely waggled as the man nodded in response to the portier 's words. He then turned and went out into the street through the revolving door.
The portier handed Hira m a cablegram. It was from Beau held, his Managing Editor in New York, and read:
'Congratulations relieved you are safe 500 bonus awaiting you stop suggest you lay low until our men square Paris rap stop expect results from there shortly stop contact Wallace Reck our man in Prague stop further instructions shortly.'
Hiram smiled, and for the moment the depression that had gripped him since he had arrived in Prague lifted. He was remembering the days on the copy-desk when a two-dollar bonus for a cleverly written headline was money. He went to a vacant table in the lobby lounge and ordered a tall glass of Pilsener, and sat sipping it, a quiet, inconspicuous figure in a raincoat and a crushed felt hat. Men and women at nearby tables glanced at him and then returned to their whispering. Here and there newspapers were lowered. Eyes speculated upon him. The newspapers were raised again. There were a half-dozen secret agents of various nations in the lounge. They noted the attire, the round face with what seemed to be washed-out blue eyes behind steel-rimmed spectacles, the bland expression, and marked him down as a dull and harmless American tourist.
No one could possibly have suspected that this undistinguished, colourless, close-to-middle-age fellow was a man pursuing a stubborn and unreasonable quest, the results of which were to have repercussions in a grey building in Berlin's Wilhelmstrasse and cost a traitor his life. . For in Hiram Holliday's wallet there burned the clipping cut from the Paris Herald, a brief notice to the effect that the P rincess Adelheit (Heidi) von Fü rstenhof of Styria, well known in Paris, was thought to be living in exile in Prague.
And Hiram had hunted for Heidi in Prague. He had looked for her high and low, but the search had been conducted by him according to his own nature, his recent weird experiences in London and Paris, and also in terms of the gloomy, rain-spattered, hag-ridden, romantic old middle-European city. Before Paris and London he probably would have acted a great deal differently. He would have gone to Wallace Reck, or any of the three big Press service correspondents in Prague, and asked whether they knew of any such person, and if so, where she was. And one or all of them might have told him.
But he had been touched by the purest adventure in Paris and London, and Hiram Holliday was a man who never had known physical adventure before. Even to dream about such things as had actually befallen Hiram is dangerous and heady stuff. He had been thrown into bizarre and dramatic events too suddenly, and it had affected his balance and disturbed the cold, even detached mental attitude of the veteran copy-desk man who reads everything set before his eyes, and accepts or believes nothing. When he had first arrived in Paris he had not yet been able to evaluate the physical adventure that he had lived through in London. He had regarded it as a bizarre accident and had been content to consider it as such. He had put aside the temptation to try to see Heidi again.
The days as Grognolle in the Cirque Antoine had altered him. The climax to that adventure had tipped the scales and he suddenly saw life as from an orchestra seat, extravagantly and theatrically. It became inconceivable to him that he should ever again encounter this Princess he knew at first only as a girl named Heidi, in any but romantic circumstances. She was, he told himself, in danger. The idea grew into a conviction fed only by his imagination, and out of that conviction grew a stubborn determination, to
The portier handed Hira m a cablegram. It was from Beau held, his Managing Editor in New York, and read:
'Congratulations relieved you are safe 500 bonus awaiting you stop suggest you lay low until our men square Paris rap stop expect results from there shortly stop contact Wallace Reck our man in Prague stop further instructions shortly.'
Hiram smiled, and for the moment the depression that had gripped him since he had arrived in Prague lifted. He was remembering the days on the copy-desk when a two-dollar bonus for a cleverly written headline was money. He went to a vacant table in the lobby lounge and ordered a tall glass of Pilsener, and sat sipping it, a quiet, inconspicuous figure in a raincoat and a crushed felt hat. Men and women at nearby tables glanced at him and then returned to their whispering. Here and there newspapers were lowered. Eyes speculated upon him. The newspapers were raised again. There were a half-dozen secret agents of various nations in the lounge. They noted the attire, the round face with what seemed to be washed-out blue eyes behind steel-rimmed spectacles, the bland expression, and marked him down as a dull and harmless American tourist.
No one could possibly have suspected that this undistinguished, colourless, close-to-middle-age fellow was a man pursuing a stubborn and unreasonable quest, the results of which were to have repercussions in a grey building in Berlin's Wilhelmstrasse and cost a traitor his life. . For in Hiram Holliday's wallet there burned the clipping cut from the Paris Herald, a brief notice to the effect that the P rincess Adelheit (Heidi) von Fü rstenhof of Styria, well known in Paris, was thought to be living in exile in Prague.
And Hiram had hunted for Heidi in Prague. He had looked for her high and low, but the search had been conducted by him according to his own nature, his recent weird experiences in London and Paris, and also in terms of the gloomy, rain-spattered, hag-ridden, romantic old middle-European city. Before Paris and London he probably would have acted a great deal differently. He would have gone to Wallace Reck, or any of the three big Press service correspondents in Prague, and asked whether they knew of any such person, and if so, where she was. And one or all of them might have told him.
But he had been touched by the purest adventure in Paris and London, and Hiram Holliday was a man who never had known physical adventure before. Even to dream about such things as had actually befallen Hiram is dangerous and heady stuff. He had been thrown into bizarre and dramatic events too suddenly, and it had affected his balance and disturbed the cold, even detached mental attitude of the veteran copy-desk man who reads everything set before his eyes, and accepts or believes nothing. When he had first arrived in Paris he had not yet been able to evaluate the physical adventure that he had lived through in London. He had regarded it as a bizarre accident and had been content to consider it as such. He had put aside the temptation to try to see Heidi again.
The days as Grognolle in the Cirque Antoine had altered him. The climax to that adventure had tipped the scales and he suddenly saw life as from an orchestra seat, extravagantly and theatrically. It became inconceivable to him that he should ever again encounter this Princess he knew at first only as a girl named Heidi, in any but romantic circumstances. She was, he told himself, in danger. The idea grew into a conviction fed only by his imagination, and out of that conviction grew a stubborn determination, to
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