He knew what was in the letter—nothing that the most searching eye could not read with safety. It was from that close friend and associate of Mr. Altinger, Mr. Alvin Gray, who had apparently been approached by Mr. Altinger (and Mrs. Carolyn Van Teller) in regard to transferring to Mr. Altinger the person and services of Mr. Nils Jorgensen, that very promising young man who should surely fill Mr. Altinger’s requirements for a confidential assistant supremely well.
There was a boy behind a long counter in the room. He took the letter which Mr. Jorgensen handed to him and vanished with it and was back almost immediately.
“This way, please,” he said. “Mr. Altinger’ll see you right away.” He sounded faintly surprised.
Rudolph Altinger was forty-eight years old. He was a little over medium height but seemed to be under it because of great shoulder-spread and depth of chest. He was grey-haired and blunt-faced and clean-shaven, with features which would have conveyed an impression of obstinate stupidity but for the extraordinary brightness and intelligence of his eyes. He dressed extremely well and kept himself in extremely good condition. He neither smoked nor touched alcohol, but was a bachelor with a violent and permanent leaning towards young and pretty and preferably brainless members of the other sex. He was a brilliant inventor, a sound engineer, an excellent if imitative architect and the shrewdest of business men. He was also—as Otto had been told and soon substantiated—a brilliant and daring guerrilla general. He was both egocentric and intensely egotistical—and Otto conceived a sort of unwilling admiration for him.
He drove Otto hard but himself harder. He kept an entirely legitimate business operating all over the country and made it succeed and worked upon it for an average of seven hours a day. He slept for another seven and thus had ten more which, after allowing a minimum for other personal activities, he dedicated to his labours for the Reich. Because it was his nature to be intensely secretive, he was at first as uncommunicative as possible with Otto, but as the weeks slipped by and time pressed upon him and he found that never, under any circumstances, would Otto, either in regard to the business of the firm or the business of the Fuehrer, let him down, he began increasingly to admit his lieutenant to fuller confidence. Once started on this path, he seemed to gather speed with every day, taking a sort of pleasure in keeping nothing back—so that by mid-June Otto was in possession of so much knowledge that he could have carried on the work of the ‘unit’ without a break. He knew the names and persons of the three hundred and fifty men who made up the permanent body, and the names of other key men who could be called upon for help when necessary, each of them able to provide other men for certain work at certain times. He knew the details of every ‘attack’ to come in the chain of which he had been told, and the approximate dates of each one. He knew even the names and addresses and signs of every other unit commander in the country and the names, all illustrious, of the four men who, with Carolyn Van Teller, formed the Staff Council for America. He knew all these things and a mass of further detail.
He was asked for his first report on Altinger exactly a month after he arrived in San Francisco, when he was well on the way to all the knowledge. He had a letter from his benefactress, a friendly, kindly inquiring note which wondered how her protégé was coming along and incidentally mentioned that her good friend (and incidentally a countryman of Nils’), Mr. Gunnar Bjornstrom, would be at the Mark Hopkins’ for a week or so: would Nils, like a dear boy, call upon old Mr. Bjornstrom and ask whether there was anything he could do for him?
Nils saw Mr. Bjornstrom—a withered, kindly, cheerful old gentleman. Mr. Bjornstrom gave him a drink and borrowed a pencil from him and asked him the time and was very courteous and entirely satisfactory. Otto reported to Mr. Bjornstrom.
“Altinger,” said Otto, “is a brilliant man. His work is good, and will get better. He is telling me everything by pieces and I will know it all soon. But—yet—I do not know what he thinks about himself when . . . after victory. It is too soon for me to know. He is an egoistical man. Very. But I do not know yet to what extent this carries him. I think that I can find out—but not yet.”
Mr. Bjornstrom seemed satisfied. He gave Otto another drink and they went to the theatre together.
Miss Irving, who was Altinger’s San Francisco secretary, brought the morning mail in to Otto.