CHAPTER XIV
THE STRETCHING OF THE WEB
It was about five minutes after seven when the Bursche, the Colonel's military servant, an immense, chubby-faced, curly haired Pomeranian peasant lad whose legs in their tight trousers looked like plump sausages, whose chest beneath the crimson cloth plastron was exaggeratedly round and extended, like a potter pigeon's, and whose hands in white cotton gloves looked like those of a German edition of Fred Stone in the rôle of the "Scarecrow," opened the double doors of the Wedekind salon and announced in a stentorian voice:
"Herr Graves!" which he pronounced as if it were spelled "Graafase."
Tom, a sunny smile on his face, stepped into the room, shook hands first with the Colonel, who greeted him effusively, with the Colonel's wife, a tall, rawboned woman in cut purple velvet and diamonds, with a hooked nose, very intelligent black eyes, a fringe of false reddish hair falling over her forehead, and the voice of a grenadier, and was then introduced the rounds of the company. There was one civilian, a Professor Conrad Heffer, a small, spectacled man in illy fitting evening dress and a crumpled white necktie that had worked its way past the collar and was threatening the professor’s tiny, red ears. The other guests were all officers and their wives, in full regimentals, some in the uniform of the Uhlans, others
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