He came forward
to the light of the lamp hanging overhead.
"That reminds me . . . " he said a second time, and having secured
their attention, he instituted a search in the many pockets of his
nondescript clothing. He still wore a dirty handkerchief bound over
one eye. It served to release him from duty in the trenches or work
on the frozen fortifications. By this simple device, coupled with
half a dozen bandages in various parts of his person, where a frost-
bite or a wound gave excuse, he passed as one of the twenty-five
thousand sick and wounded who encumbered Dantzig at this time, and
were already dying at the rate of fifty a day.
"A letter . . . " he said, still searching with his maimed hand.
"You mentioned the name of the Colonel de Casimir. It was that
which recalled to my mind . . . " He paused, and produced a letter
carefully sealed. He turned it over, glancing at the seals with a
reproving jerk of the head, which conveyed as clearly as words a
shameless confession that he had been frustrated by them . . . "this
letter. I was told to give it you, without fail, at the right
moment."
It could hardly be the case that he honestly thought this moment
might be so described. But he gave the letter to Mathilde with a
gesture of grim triumph. Perhaps he was thinking of the cellar in
the Palace on the Petrovka at Moscow, and the treasure which he had
found there.
"It is from the Colonel de Casimir," he said, "a clever man," he
added, turning confidentially to Sebastian, and holding his
attention by an upraised hand.
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