Herr Kesselmeyer entered unannounced, as a friend of the house, without hat or coat. He paused, however, near the door. His looks corresponded exactly to the description Tony had given to her Mother. He was slightly thick-set as to figure, but neither fat nor lean. He wore a black, already somewhat shiny coat, short tight trousers of the same material, and a white waistcoat, over which went a long thin watch-chain and two or three eye-glass cords. His clipped white beard was in sharp contrast with his red face. It covered his cheeks and left his chin and lips free. His mouth was small and mobile, with two yellowish pointed teeth in the otherwise vacant gum of his lower jaw, and he was pressing these into his upper lip, as he stood absently by the door with his hands in his trousers pockets and the black and white down on his head waving slightly, although there was not the least perceptible draught. Finally he drew his hands out of his pockets, bowed, released his lip, and with difficulty freed one of the eye-glass cords from the confusion on his waistcoat. He lifted his pince-nez and put it with a single gesture astride his nose. Then he made the most astonishing grimaces, looked at the husband and wife, and remarked: “Ah, ha!” He used this expression with extraordinary frequency and a surprising variety of inflections. He might say it with his head thrown back, his nose wrinkled up, mouth wide open, hands swishing about in the air, with a long-drawn-out, nasal, metallic sound, like a Chinese gong; or he might, with still funnier effect, toss it out, gently, _en passant_; or with any one of a thousand different shades of tone and meaning. His _a_ was very clouded and nasal. To-day it was a hurried, lively “Ah ha!” accompanied with a jerk of the head, that seemed to arise from an unusually pleasant mood, and yet might not be trusted to be so; for the fact was, Banker Kesselmeyer never behaved more gaily than when he was dangerous. When he jumped about emitting a thousand “Ah ha’s,” lifting his glasses to his nose and letting them fall again, waving his arms, chattering, plainly quite beside himself with light-headedness, then you might be sure that evil was gnawing at his inwards. Herr Grünlich looked at him blinking, with unconcealed mistrust. “Already--so early?” he asked. “Ah, ha!” answered Herr Kesselmeyer, and waved one of his small, red, wrinkled hands in the air, as if to say: “Patience, there is a surprise coming.” “I must speak with you, without any delay; I must speak with you.” The words sounded irresistibly comic as he rolled each one about before giving it out, with exaggerated movements of his little toothless, mobile mouth. He rolled his _r_’s as if his palate were greased. Herr Grünlich blinked more and more suspiciously.