This and more I heard discussed as I hurried back to Munich.  To Munich?  Yes; thither I was posting with all speed.  Not a shadow of doubt now remained in my mind.  I knew the assassin, and was resolved to track and convict him.  Do not suppose that this time I was led away by the vagrant activity of my constructive imagination.  I had something like positive proof.  No sooner had I learned that the murder had been committed at Grosshesslohe, than my thoughts at once carried me to a now memorable visit I had made there in company with Bourgonef and two young Bavarians.  At the hotel where we dined, we were waited on by the niece of the landlord, a girl of remarkable beauty, who naturally excited the attention of four young men, and furnished them with a topic of conversation.  One of the Bavarians had told us that she would one day be perhaps one of the wealthiest women in the country, for she was engaged to be married to a young farmer who had recently found himself, by a rapid succession of deaths, sole heir to a great brewer, whose wealth was known to be enormous.

At this moment Sophie entered bringing wine, and I saw Bourgonef slowly turn his eyes upon her with a look which then was mysterious to me, but which now spoke too plainly its dreadful meaning.

What is there in a look, you will say?  Perhaps nothing; or it may be everything.  To my unsuspecting, unenlightened perception, Bourgonef’s gaze was simply the melancholy and half-curious gaze which such a man might be supposed to cast upon a young woman who had been made the topic of an interesting discourse.  But to my mind, enlightened as to his character, and instructed as to his peculiar feelings arising from his own story, the gaze was charged with horror.  It marked a victim.  The whole succession of events rose before me in vivid distinctness; the separate details of suspicion gathered into unity.

Great as was Bourgonef’s command over his features, he could not conceal uneasiness as well as surprise at my appearance at the table d’hote in Munich.  I shook hands with him, putting on as friendly a mask as I could, and replied to his question about my sudden return by attributing it to unexpected intelligence received at Salzburg.

“Nothing serious, I hope?”

“Well, I’m afraid it will prove very serious,” I said.  “But we shall see.  Meanwhile my visit to the Tyrol must be given up or postponed.”

“Do you remain here, then?”

“I don’t know what my movements will be.”

Thus I had prepared him for any reserve or strangeness in my manner; and I had concealed from him the course of my movements; for at whatever cost, I was resolved to follow him and bring him to justice.