But in addition to this man's wasted appearance, his eyes were hollow, there were deep lines about his mouth and he wore a haggard look that had something strangely pathetic about it. His air of brooding sadness seemed to attract me, and I found my eyes continually wandering back to his face. And then, without warning, through some mysterious whispering of the blood, the truth came to me that this was my brother. I don't know whether it was a passing mood reflected in his face or the shifting lights and shadows in his eyes that lifted the veil. I only know that through those features ravaged by care and suffering and in spite of them I caught a glimpse of the brother I had come to seek. I rattled a spoon on the table and called softly out to the verandah. "_Kellner!_" The man turned. I beckoned to him. He came over to my table. He never recognized me, so dull was he with disappointment ... me with my unshaven, unkempt appearance and in my mean German shoddy ... but stood silently, awaiting my bidding. "Francis," I said softly ... and I spoke in German ... "Francis, don't you know me?" He was magnificent, strong and resourceful in his joy at our meeting as he had been in his months of weary waiting. Only his mouth quivered a little as instantly his hands busied themselves with clearing away my breakfast. "Jawohl!" he answered in a perfectly emotionless voice. And then he smiled and in a flash the old Francis stood before me. "Not a word now," he said in German as he cleared away the breakfast. "I am off this afternoon. Meet me on the river promenade by the Schiller statue at a quarter past two and we'll go for a walk. Don't stay here now but come back and lunch in the restaurant ... it's always crowded and pretty safe!" Then he called out into the void: "Twenty-six wants to pay!" Such was my meeting with my brother. CHAPTER XVI A HAND-CLASP BY THE RHINE That afternoon Francis and I walked out along the banks of the swiftly flowing Rhine until we were far beyond the city. Anxious though I was that he should reveal to me that part of his life which lay hidden beneath those lines of suffering in his face, he made me tell my story first. So I unfolded to him the extraordinary series of adventures that had befallen me since the night I had blundered upon the trail of a great secret in that evil hotel at Rotterdam. Francis did not once interrupt the flow of my narrative. He listened with the most tense interest but with a growing concern which betrayed itself clearly on his face. At the end of my story, I silently handed to him the half of the stolen letter I had seized from Clubfoot at the Hotel Esplanade. "Keep it, Francis," I said. "It's safer with a respectable waiter like you than with a hunted outcast like myself!"