accustomed. He knew well by now the gentle, almost soothing, hum
of busy streets, as the traffic and the footsteps went over the
noiseless pavements, and the air murmured with the clear subdued
notes of the bells and the melodious horns of the swifter
vehicles; all this had something of a reassuring quality,
reminding the listener that he lived in a world of men, active
and occupied indeed, but also civilized and self-controlled.

But the silence of this inner quarter of Berlin was completely
different. Its profoundness was sinister and suggestive. Now and
again came a rapid hooting note, growing louder and more
insistent, as some car, bound on revolutionary work, tore up some
street out of sight at forty miles an hour and away again into
silence. Several times he heard voices in sharp talk pass beneath
his window. Occasionally somewhere overhead in the great
buildings sounded the whir of a lift, a footstep, the throwing up
of a window. And to each sound he listened eagerly and intently,
ignorant as to whether it might not mark the news of some fresh
catastrophe, the tidings of some decision that would precipitate
his world about him.

As to the progress of events he knew nothing at all.

Since that horrible instant when the door had closed in his face
and the Cardinal had gone again as mysteriously as he had come--now
three days ago--he had heard no hint that could tell him how things
developed. He had not even dared to ask the taciturn servant in
uniform who brought him food as to the fate of the old man.
For he knew with a certainty as clear as if he had seen the dreadful
thing done, that his friend and master was dead--dead, as the