As for the vintner, he had good reasons for taking to his
heels."
"Good reasons?" But there was a sly look in the clerk's eyes.
"No questions, if you please. And tell no one, mind, what has taken
place."
"Very well, Excellency." And quietly the clerk returned to his table of
figures. But later he intended to write a letter, unsigned, to his
serene highness.
Carmichael, scowling, undertook to answer his mail, but not with any
remarkable brilliancy or coherency.
And in this condition of mind Grumbach found him; Grumbach, accompanied
by the old clock-mender from across the way, and a Gipsy Carmichael had
never seen before.
"What's up, Hans?"
"Tell your clerk to leave us," said Grumbach, his face as barren of
expression as a rock.
"Something serious, eh?" Carmichael dismissed the clerk, telling him to
return after the noon hour. "Now, then," he said, "what is the trouble?"
"I have already spoken to you about it," Grumbach returned. "The matter
has gone badly. But I am here to ask a favor, a great favor, one that
will need all your diplomacy to gain for me."
"Ah"
"For myself I ask nothing. A horrible blunder has been made. You will go
to the grand duke and ask immunity for this Gipsy and this clock-mender,
as witnesses to the disclosure which I shall make to his highness.
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