“Should you have trouble with the company’s agent,” he said, “call on me, and I’ll introduce you to my friend, the owner of the Staats-Zeitung.”

PART II

I

A few moments later Frederick felt the solid pier beneath his feet.  His brain reeled lightly.  The crowd on the pier cheered and hurrahed.  In that shouting, shrieking, roaring, swaying mass of humanity, he and Ingigerd, who was clinging to his arm, seemed exposed to the danger of another sort of drowning.  Suddenly he found himself confronted by a little Japanese, or someone whom at first glance he took to be a Japanese, and heard him saying: 

“How d’ye do, Doctor von Kammacher?  Don’t you know me?  How d’ye do, Doctor von Kammacher?  Don’t you know me?” several times in rapid succession.

Frederick tried to recall the man to his memory.  He scarcely knew who he himself was, with those cheers thundering in his ears, with hands on all sides shaking his hands, and newsboys flourishing newspapers behind him and above him and under his very nose.

“Don’t you know me, Doctor von Kammacher?” the Japanese repeated, grinning.

“By Jove,” cried Frederick, “now I recognise you.  You are Willy Snyders.  How do you come to be here?”

While studying several semesters in Breslau, Frederick had eked out his income by tutoring a boy, a rather desperate case, whose father, a furniture manufacturer, paid handsomely for his son’s private lessons.  Frederick’s pupil turned out to be a good-hearted chap, an amusing scapegrace, who soon became his devoted slave.  It was this scapegrace, now a full-grown man, that Frederick recognised in the jolly Japanese.

“How I come to be here?  I’ll explain later,” said Willy, his nostrils dilating with the joy of seeing his teacher again.  “The first thing is, have you already engaged rooms, and shall I slip you past that damned lot of reporters?  Or do you want to be interviewed?”

“For heaven’s sake, no!  Not for the world.”

“Then stick close to me,” shouted Willy.  “A cab is waiting for us, and we’ll drive straight to our folks.”

Frederick introduced Ingigerd.

“I must first see this young lady safe to a hotel.  And even then I can’t leave her entirely alone.”

Willy instantly took in the situation, but it did not change his plans.

“Miss Hahlstroem can stop with us, too.  She will be far more comfortable than in a hotel.  The only question is, can she put up with Italian cooking?”

“I don’t anticipate any difficulties from your macaroni and spaghetti al sugo,” said Frederick, who read Ingigerd’s willingness in her eyes.  “So I’ll follow your lead as you followed mine years ago.”

“All right!  Forward, march!” Willy’s joy in his booty was patent.