“Heinrich,” he said.

In the slit in Marco’s sleeve was the sketch of the man with smooth curled hair, who looked like a hair-dresser.  They had found a corner in which to take their final look at it before they turned back to come in.  Heinrich, who came forth from the small back room, had smooth curled hair.  He looked extremely like a hair-dresser.  He had features like those in the sketch—­his nose and mouth and chin and figure were like what Marco had drawn and committed to memory.  But—­

He gave Marco a chair and tied the professional white covering around his neck.  Marco leaned back and closed his eyes a moment.

“That is not the man!” he was saying to himself.  “He is not the man.”

How he knew he was not, he could not have explained, but he felt sure.  It was a strong conviction.  But for the sudden feeling, nothing would have been easier than to give the Sign.  And if he could not give it now, where was the one to whom it must be spoken, and what would be the result if that one could not be found?  And if there were two who were so much alike, how could he be sure?

Each owner of each of the pictured faces was a link in a powerful secret chain; and if a link were missed, the chain would be broken.  Each time Heinrich came within the line of his vision, he recorded every feature afresh and compared it with the remembered sketch.  Each time the resemblance became more close, but each time some persistent inner conviction repeated, “No; the Sign is not for him!”

It was disturbing, also, to find that The Rat was all at once as restless as he had previously been silent and preoccupied.  He moved in his chair, to the great discomfort of the old hair-dresser.  He kept turning his head to talk.  He asked Marco to translate divers questions he wished him to ask the two men.  They were questions about the Citadel—­about the Monchsberg—­the Residenz—­the Glockenspiel—­the mountains.  He added one query to another and could not sit still.

“The young gentleman will get an ear snipped,” said the old man to Marco.  “And it will not be my fault.”

“What shall I do?” Marco was thinking.  “He is not the man.”

He did not give the Sign.  He must go away and think it out, though where his thoughts would lead him he did not know.  This was a more difficult problem than he had ever dreamed of facing.  There was no one to ask advice of.  Only himself and The Rat, who was nervously wriggling and twisting in his chair.

“You must sit still,” he said to him.  “The hair-dresser is afraid you will make him cut you by accident.”

“But I want to know who lives at the Residenz?” said The Rat.  “These men can tell us things if you ask them.”

“It is done now,” said the old hair-dresser with a relieved air.  “Perhaps the cutting of his hair makes the young gentleman nervous.  It is sometimes so.”

The Rat stood close to Marco’s chair and asked questions until Heinrich also had done his work.  Marco could not understand his companion’s change of mood.  He realized that, if he had wished to give the Sign, he had been allowed no opportunity.  He could not have given it.  The restless questioning had so directed the older man’s attention to his son and Marco that nothing could have been said to Heinrich without his observing it.