Envoy Extraordinary by E. Phillips Oppenheim

Matresser looked curiously around him when, some short time later, he entered the great raftered hall where log fires were burning at either end, and where the whole of the little company whom he was to meet were assembled. The host of the gathering, to all of whom he had announced his desire to be known simply as Count Heinrich von Helm, came forward to introduce him, which he did in a few brief words and without formality.

There was the famous Italian scientist and recently-established politician, Corletti, dressed like the others in shooting kit, but wearing it without the ease and air of habitude which Curtels, for instance, displayed. Next, to Matresser's astonishment, he found himself shaking hands with the Archduke Johann von Arnsburg, the popular young representative of a great monarchical house. Then there was an old acquaintance, the world-renowned General Besserley, a brilliant soldier at the commencement of the war, afterwards Chief of the Secret Service at Washington, and subsequently a representative of his country in Europe on various economic and social missions. He was presented next to a man who seemed somehow out of his place in such an assembly, who wore the rough shooting clothes almost of a peasant and in whose fine dark eyes there lurked something of fatigue with life which none of the others displayed.