He carried an alligator portfolio in his waistcoat pocket.  In that portfolio, among other things, was a letter he had received the very day he left Paris: 

* * * * *

Dear Frederick,

It’s no use.  I left the sanatorium in the Harz and returned to my parents’ home a lost man.  That cursed winter in the Heuscheuer Mountains!  After a stay in tropical countries, I should not have thrown myself into the fangs of such a winter.  Of course, the worst thing was my predecessor’s fur coat.  To my predecessor’s fur coat I owe my sweet fate.  May the devil in hell take special delight in burning it.  I need scarcely tell you that I gave myself copious injections of tuberculin and spat a considerable number of bacilli.  But enough remained behind to provide me with a speedy exitus letalis.

Now for the essential.  I must settle my bequests.  I find I owe you three thousand marks.  You made it possible for me to complete my medical studies.  To be sure, they have failed me miserably.  But that, of course, you cannot help, and, curiously enough, now that all’s lost, the thing that most bothers me is the horrid thought that I cannot repay you.

My father, you know, is principal of a public school and actually managed to save some money.  But he has five children beside myself, all of whom are unprovided for.  He looked upon me as his capital which would bring more than the usual rate of interest.  Being a practical man, he now realises he has lost both principal and interest.

In brief, he is afraid of responsibilities which unfortunately I cannot shoulder in the better world to come—­faugh, faugh, faugh!—­I spit three times.  What shall I do?  Would you be able to forego the payment of my debt?

Several times, old boy, I have been two thirds of the way over already, and I have left for you some notes on the states I have passed through, which may not be lacking in scientific interest.  Should it be possible for me, after the great moment, to make myself noticeable from the Beyond, you will hear from me again.

Where are you?  Good-bye.  In the vivid, flashing orgies of my nocturnal dreams, you are always tossing in a ship on the high seas.  Do you intend to go on an ocean trip?

It is January.  Isn’t there a certain advantage in not needing to dread April weather any longer?  I shake hands with you, Frederick von Kammacher.

Yours,
George Rasmussen.

* * * * *

Frederick, of course, had immediately sent a telegram from Paris, which relieved the son, dying a heroic death, from solicitude for his hale father.

Though Frederick von Kammacher had profound troubles of his own to occupy his mind, his thoughts kept recurring to the letter in his pocket and his dying friend.  To an imaginative person of thirty, his life of the past few years is in an eminent degree present to his mind.  There had been a tragic turn in Frederick’s own life, and now tragedy had also entered his friend’s life, a tragedy far more awful.