Again he bared his golden teeth in a smile.

“By all means,” I said.  “But I fear we keep our young friend from his bed.  Doubtless, you have no secrets from him, but you will agree, Herr Doktor, that our conversation should best be tete-a-tete.”

“Schmalz, dear friend,” Clubfoot exclaimed with a sigh of regret, “much as I should like ...  I am indeed truly sorry that we should be deprived of your company, but I cannot contest the profound accuracy of our friend’s remark.  If you could go to the sitting-room for a few minutes....”

The young lieutenant flushed angrily.

“If you prefer my room to my company ... by all means,” he retorted gruffly, “but I think, in the circumstances, that I shall go to bed.”

And he turned on his heel and walked out of the room, shutting the door with rather more force than was necessary, I thought.

Clubfoot sighed.

“Ach! youth! youth!” he cried, “the same impetuous youth that is at this very moment hacking out for Germany a world empire amidst the nations in arms.  A wonderful race, a race of giants, our German youth, Herr Doktor ... the mainspring of our great German machine—­as they find who resist it.  A glass of wine!”

The man’s speech and manner boded ill for me, I felt.  I would have infinitely preferred violent language and open threats to the subtle menace that lay concealed beneath all this suavity.

“You smoke?” queried Clubfoot.  “No!”—­he held up his hand to stop me as I was reaching for my cigarette case, “you shall have a cigar—­not one of our poor German Hamburgers, but a fine Havana cigar given me by a member of the English Privy Council.  You stare!  Aha!  I repeat, by a member of the English Privy Council, to me, the Boche, the barbarian, the Hun!  No hole and corner work for the old doctor. Der Stelze may be lame, Clubfoot may be past his work, but when he travels en mission, he travels en prince, the man of wealth and substance.  There is none too high to do him honour, to listen to his views on poor, misguided Germany, the land of thinkers sold into bondage to the militarists!  Bah! the fools!”

He snarled venomously.  This man was beginning to interest me.  His rapid change of moods was fascinating, now the kindly philosopher, now the Teuton braggart, now the Hun incorporate.  As he limped across the room to fetch his cigar case from the mantelpiece, I studied him.

He was a vast man, not so much by reason of his height, which was below the medium, but his bulk, which was enormous.  The span of his shoulders was immense, and, though a heavy paunch and a white flabbiness of face spoke of a gross, sedentary life, he was obviously a man of quite unusual strength.  His arms particularly were out of all proportion to his stature, being so long that his hands hung down on either side of him when he stood erect, like the paws of some giant ape.  Altogether, there was something decidedly simian about his appearance his squat nose with hairy, open nostrils, and the general hirsuteness of the man, his bushy eyebrows, the tufts of black hair on his cheekbones and on the backs of his big, spade like hands.  And there was that in his eyes, dark and courageous beneath the shaggy brows, that hinted at accesses of ape-like fury, uncontrollable and ferocious.