I was thinking thus as I paced the Ring Strasse on the third day after my arrival in Vienna. I lingered in the capital against the grain, for I was eager to be at work, but it was part of a policy which I had already settled. Itzia was not the sort of place for which one would make a straight road, unless one had special business there, and it was the merest seeming of having any special business there which I was profoundly anxious to avoid. So I lingered in Vienna, and on this third day, pacing the chief street, I felt a sudden hand clapped upon my shoulder, and, turning, faced Brunow. “Here you are,” he cried, still keeping his hand upon my shoulder as I turned. “I have been to the bank and to your hotel. I have been hunting you, in point of fact, all day, and here at last I come upon you by chance.” “What brings you in Vienna?” I asked him. I did my best to be cordial, but I was sorry for his intrusion, and would willingly have known him to be a thousand miles away. He glanced swiftly and warily about him, and, seeing nobody within ear-shot, answered in an easy tone: “I have come to assist in your enterprise, Fyffe, and I mean to see you through it.” “I think,” I told him, “that I prefer to go through my enterprise alone.” “My dear fellow,” said Brunow, “I couldn't dream of allowing you to run any risk alone in such a cause. And besides that, I have a little selfish reason of my own. In addition, you don't speak the language, and will be in a thousand corners. I was bred here, and speak the language like a native. I have already the _entree_ to the place you desire to get into, and I can introduce you. My sympathetic friend--” He broke off suddenly because a foot-passenger drew near. “It is, as you say, a beastly journey, but, as you say again, it's done with, and when you know Vienna as well as I do, you will say it pays for the trouble ten times over. Vienna, my dear fellow, is the jolliest and the handsomest city in the world.” The passenger went by, and he resumed at the dropped word. “My sympathetic friend will recognize me, and at my return will be immediately on the _qui vive_. Negotiations will be as good as opened the very minute of my arrival. You'll want an interpreter, and here am I sworn to the cause, and secret as the tomb. In effect, I'm going, and I don't see how the deuce you expected to get on without me.” “I suppose,” I asked him, “you know what to expect if we fail and are caught?” He took me by the arm and walked with me along the road, sinking his voice to a confidential murmur.