The card read: “Willibald Girke, Private Detective. The Girke and Graurock Private Detective Agency. Puttbuser Street 2, Berlin, C.” III “Have you anything new to report?” the Privy Councillor asked. A swift glance showed him in this face, too, that well-known and contemptible greed for power and possession and success that stopped in its hard determination at no degradation and no horror. “Your written communications did not satisfy me, so I summoned you in order to have you define more closely the methods to be used in your investigations.” The formal phraseology hid Herr Wahnschaffe’s inner uncertainty and shame. Girke sat down. His speech was tinged with the dialect of Berlin. “We have been very active. There is plenty of material. If you’ll permit me, I can submit it at once.” He took a note-book out of his pocket, and turned the leaves. His ears were very large and stood off from his head. This fact impressed one as a curious adaptation of an organism to its activity and environment. His speech was hurried; he sputtered his sentences and swallowed portions of them. From time to time he looked at his watch with a nervous and uncertain stare. He gave an impression as of a man whom the life of a great city had made drunken, who neither slept nor ate in peace through lack of time, whose mind was shredded from a ceaseless waiting for telephone calls, letters, telegrams, and newspapers. He spoke with hurried monotony. “The apartment on Kronprinzenufer has been kept. But it is not clear whether your son may be regarded as still occupying it. During the past month he passed only four nights there. It seems that he turned the apartment over to the student of medicine, Amadeus Voss. We have been watching this gentleman right along as you directed. The style in which this young man lives is most unusual, in view of his origin and notorious poverty. It is obvious, of course, where he gets the money. He is matriculated at the university; and so is your son.” “Suppose we leave Voss out for the moment,” Herr Wahnschaffe interrupted, still burdened by his uncertainty and shame. “You wrote me that my son had rented in succession quite a series of dwellings. I should like an explanation of this, as well as the exact facts of his present whereabouts.”