As it sped away to the south Ruth sat back alone in the rear seat. Evidently she had been expected at the manor house; from the border or, perhaps, from Basel or from Lucerne Captain von Forstner had warned his household that he was bringing her with him. Had he described to his inferiors the relationship of his companion to him? Almost surely he had not. If they had arrived together, in the manner planned by von Forstner, his servants swiftly enough could have arrived at their own conclusions; but now that von Forstner was dead--accidentally, as all believed--matters lay so that his servants might judge the nature of her association with their master by the manner in which Ruth bore herself. Oberst-Lieutenant von Fallenbosch, who communicated by telephone at this time in the morning, suggested perilous complications, but perils were all about her now, in any case. The bold course upon which she was embarked was--if you thought about it--safer, in reality, than any other. So Ruth steadied herself as the car, clearing the woods, ran beside open acres to a huge and old German manor house set baldly upon a slope above the stream. A man was walking upon the terrace before the door; he sighted the car and started quickly to meet it, but as the car sped up he returned to the terrace and stood upon the lower step at the edge of the drive. He was a short, broadly built but nervous little man, upwards of thirty, spectacled, and with thick hair cropped somewhat after the military fashion; but he was not in uniform and his bearing was that of student or professional man, rather than of the military. When the car stopped he did not wait for the driver or one of the servants, who now had come out upon the terrace, but he himself opened the door and stood back quickly, staring at Ruth anxiously and rubbing together his fat red hands. “Herr Adler?” Ruth asked as she stood up. “Yes, _gnädiges Fräulein_. You have come from the captain?” Her drenched condition was witness to the fact, and Ruth observed that, besides, his little eyes sought the packets of papers and the memorandum book which she held. “I have come from America and more recently from France,” Ruth said, stepping down. They were alone now as Adler walked with her across the terrace. “I have come from Lucerne with Captain von Forstner.” “Yes, _gnädiges Fräulein_, I know; I know. And he is dead, they tell me. It is true that he is dead?” “He is dead,” Ruth confirmed. And she saw that the fact of von Forstner’s death bore far different consequences to Adler than to Dittman. The secretary was charged now with responsibilities which had been his master’s; it was these, more than the physical accident of von Forstner’s death, which overwhelmed and dismayed him. “But I have recovered his reports and personal memoranda,” Ruth assured. “Yes; yes. That is very fortunate.”