I had scarcely settled myself at a table when a man came along and clapped me on the shoulder.
"Wynn, by all that's wonderful. What are you doing here, old fellow?"
It was Percy Medhurst, a somewhat irresponsible, but very decent youngster, whom I had seen a good deal of in London, one way and another. He was a clerk in the British Foreign Office, but I hadn't the least idea that he had been sent to Berlin. He had dined at the Cayleys only a week or two back.
"I'm feeding--or going to feed. What are you doing here?" I responded, as we shook hands. I was glad to see him. Even his usually frivolous conversation was preferable to my own meditations at the moment.
"Just transferred, regular stroke of luck. Only got here last night; haven't reported myself for duty yet. I say, old chap, you look rather hipped. What's up?"
"Hunger," I answered laconically. "And I guess that's easily remedied. Come and join me."
We talked of indifferent matters for a time, or rather he did most of the talking.
"Staying long?" he asked at last, as we reached the coffee and liqueur stage. We had done ourselves very well, and I, at least, felt in a much more philosophic frame of mind than I had done for some hours past.
"No, only a few hours. I'm _en route_ for Petersburg."
"What luck; wish I was. Berlin's all right, of course, but a bit stodgy; and they're having a jolly lot of rows at Petersburg,--with more to come. I say, though, what an awful shame about that poor chap Carson. Have you heard of it?"
"Yes; I'm going to take his place. What do you know about him, anyhow?"
"You are? I didn't know him at all; but I know a fellow who was awfully thick with him. Met him just now. He's frightfully cut up about it all. Swears he'll hunt down the murderer sooner or later--"
"Von Eckhardt? Is he here?" I ejaculated.
"Yes. D'you know him? An awfully decent chap,--for a German; though he's always spouting Shakespeare, and thinks me an ass, I know, because I tell him I've never read a line of him, not since I left Bradfield, anyhow. Queer how these German johnnies seem to imagine Shakespeare belongs to them! You should have heard him just now!
'He was my friend, faithful and just to me,'
--and raving about his heart being in the coffin with Caesar; suppose he meant Carson. 'Pon my soul I could hardly keep a straight face; but I daren't laugh. He was in such deadly earnest."