Gaining the big drawing-room, Ray crossed to the long French window on the left and gazed cautiously out upon the street below.
As he did so I noticed the figure of a man in a dark overcoat and felt hat cross from the opposite pavement and ascend the stairs of the house next door. Ray glanced at his watch, which he could see by the light of the street lamp outside. Noticing the time, he became reassured.
"You see, Jack, that from here runs a balcony leading to that of Hartmann's house. We must creep along it and try and get a peep of our friend at home. I've watched that drawing-room window for a long time, and I believe that he makes it his business room."
Carefully he unfastened the French window, and bending low so as to escape the observation of any person passing by, we both crept along the narrow balcony until, by swinging from one balustrade to the other, we found ourselves standing over Hartmann's portico.
Even from where we stood we could hear voices. Forward we crept again until we were outside the windows of the drawing-room, crouching so that no inquisitive policeman could detect us.
The blind of the window at which I listened did not fit well, therefore, through the small crack, I was enabled to peer within. The room was a large, well-furnished one with a fire burning brightly; near it stood a large roll-top writing-table at which sat a fat, flabby, sardonic-faced man of about fifty-five. He had grey eyes full of craft and cunning, a prominent nose, and a short-cropped grey beard. Ray whispered that it was the great Hartmann.
Near the fire, seated nervously on the extreme edge of a chair, was a respectably dressed man, a German evidently, with his hat in his hand. The man presented the appearance of a hard-working mechanic, and was obviously ill at ease.
We watched them in conversation, but could not distinguish one single word of what was said. All we could gather was that the fat man was overbearing in his manner, and that the visitor was most humble and subservient against his will.
For a full half-hour we watched, but unable to gather anything further, we were compelled to return to the house next door and regain the street, where for still twenty minutes longer we waited for the visitor's exit. When at last he came forth we followed him to the corner of Knightsbridge, opposite the Hyde Park Hotel, where he boarded a motor-bus, from which he eventually descended at the corner of Gray's Inn Road walking thence to a house in Harpur Street, Bloomsbury, where we later on discovered he lodged, under the name of Leon Karff.