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to welcome you at last!’
    To be transformed incontinently from a tolerably familiar Meredith to a totally unknown Birdsong had been disconcerting enough; now – and at the mere crossing of a further threshold – to be hailed as that Birdsong’s Teutonic equivalent was bewildering in the utmost degree.
    Meredith, however, clicked his heels in an appropriately Germanic manner, bowed coldly, and at the same time held up a hand which uncompromisingly forbade Mr Bubear’s nearer approach. Then he pointed to a chair – quite an insignificant chair and remote from this now grovelling person’s desk. ‘Mr Bubear,’ he said briskly, ‘please take place.’ The situation, he reflected, was becoming increasingly problematical, but a little stiffness in point of English idiom could hardly be out of the way.
    Obediently Mr Bubear sat down – whereupon Meredith crossed over to the desk and sat down in its vacant swivel chair. Lying in front of him was now the weapon which Mr Bubear had just abandoned. This successful coup de théâtre he had by no means intended, and he looked from Mr Bubear to the revolver with considerable misgiving. Could he fire the thing? Could he discharge it with sufficient accuracy to hit Mr Bubear between the eyes, or in the stomach? And would this be at all helpful? Would it be at all helpful to take the less conclusive step of shooting him through the arm or leg?
    These were questions outside the common run of Meredith’s experience and required – like so much else in this extraordinary situation – a little reflecting on. Meanwhile, something had better be said – and it would be advantageous if a tone of reprobation could be maintained. Herr Vogelsang therefore looked sternly at the agitated Bubear – whom he was meeting, he remembered, for the first time. ‘Herr Bubear ,’ he said chillily, ‘es freut mich sehr Sie kennen lernen zu dürfen .’ He paused on this extreme of formality, which, whether intelligible or not, seemed to serve its purpose of having a further depressant effect upon the person to whom it was addressed. ‘And the Titian,’ he continued suddenly, ‘the sogenannte Venus : you let it lie about like a sack of potatoes, yes?’
    Mr Bubear raised imploring hands. ‘But, my dear sir, the crate is being made at this moment! I assure you that every instruction is being attended to. And the painting stands, as you must have noted, well in our porter’s view. A well-armed and resolute man, Herr Vogelsang.’
    Meredith, with much artistic restraint, responded with some moments’ silence and a smile in which nastiness was modified by absence of mind. Then he fell to tapping the desk slowly and gently with his little finger, and was pleased to observe that Bubear hung upon the sound as if it were a knell. ‘Your porter’, he said in measured accents, ‘I do not greatly care for. And your man in the shop above’ – Meredith paused and smiled again – ‘must go.’
    ‘But certainly, Herr Vogelsang.’ And Bubear bobbed after the manner of a tailor of whom one has bespoken a new suit. ‘Allow me to make a memorandum.’ Bubear’s shaking hand dived into a pocket and produced a notebook and pencil. ‘He will be removed tomorrow and a reliable replacement made. There will be no difficulty.’ And Bubear smiled ingratiatingly. ‘A suitable incident shall be arranged.’
    This was an unexpected disaster – and Meredith saw at once that the continued existence of the wretched tobacconist whose doom he had so lightly pronounced was a charge upon his conscience prior even to the safety of the Duke of Nesfield’s Juvenal. ‘You may let the man be,’ he said sombrely. ‘Give him work on – on the crates, and so forth. He may be useful later in some hazardous assignment. I will see that he is placed on the expendable list.’
    Bubear bowed respectfully – plainly more impressed by the cold-blooded flavour of this than inclined to notice the nice turns of native English