“_I?_ _I_ brought him? At any rate, I don’t remember a thing about it, but it may be so.” Hull then withdrew, exhausted and stupefied, brooding over the problem which had so strangely and suddenly opened up before him that evening. When he awoke, towards morning, he had a dim and fleeting remembrance, and he seemed to recall the stranger sitting at the same table with him in the Café Bastin. He had an idea that they had been talking together, and that it was about the theatre, but what they had said, and which theatre it was about, he had not the slightest idea. In the dim recesses of his mind he recalled merely the sensation of a dazzling reflector that seemed to throw its beams upon him during the conversation. Sleep was no longer possible, but, try as he would to pierce these elusive fragments of memory and penetrate to the reality behind them, he was quite unable to make anything out of them. * * * * * The next afternoon brought him no enlightenment either. By four o’clock he had obtained the twenty thousand marks, and he made his way to the Excelsior Hotel. At his request a telephone message was sent to Room 15. Herr Balling was there, he was told, and requested the gentleman to send up his card. This Hull did, following close upon it. In the middle of Room 15 he found a man whom he had never seen in his life before. He was a short, stout, clean-shaven man, apparently an American. He made a very stiff bow. “I beg your pardon,” said Hull. “I must have been directed wrongly. I wanted Room 15.” “This is it,” said the other. “Then Herr Balling must have given me the wrong number.” “My name is Balling.” “This time I am _not_ dreaming, I am in full possession of my senses,” said Hull to himself, and then aloud, he continued: “But the mystery can soon be explained. Did you write this?” and he extended the notebook in which the stranger of the previous night had written his name and address. “Certainly not,” replied the stout man. “Then I am not in your debt to the tune of twenty thousand marks?” “My time is very limited, and I am expecting a friend on business,” said the other, looking at his watch. “I will make way for your friend, sir, at once, and will only put one more question to you. It is not my fault that I am bothering you; I have been misled in some way.” The other nodded. “Possibly you are acquainted,” Hull went on, “with a gentleman of about sixty, with large grey eyes, a big nose and white whiskers. He wears good and well-cut clothes and a tall grey hat, and his name is also Balling.” “I can only repeat that I know nothing about him,” said the Balling of No. 15.