BrokenTune

Taking a last glance back at the figure upon which the disgruntled doctor was now engaged in stripping of its misleading apparel, something struck him concerning it which, until that moment, had not.

The shaven head without the wig intensified tremendously the Teutonic caste of the dead man’s face, even masked in make-up as it was. There, unquestionably, was your Prussian of the officer class. During his many visits to the Continent upon police business he had seen dozens who might have been blood brothers of the dead man. He had little doubt that, when the face was eventually cleaned off, the scars of student duelling affairs would be found bitten into it.

‘Espionage, right enough,’ he murmured. ‘But in what connection, and who was sufficiently antagonistic to what you were up to, to make a slaughterhouse end of you, such as they have done?’

The book had a strong start but the latest revelations and assumptions have been entirely ridiculous, even for the time of original publication. 

This story is headed towards Passenger to Frankfurt territory if it doesn't manage to turn a corner fairly soon.