After his meeting with Superintendent Hoffmann, Siegfried Kircheis returns to the hotel he is staying in, only to find an invitation by Michael von Keyserling to a dinner in a restaurant as a gesture of thanks for saving his life. Kircheis decides to take up the invitation. During the dinner, he learns a little about Keyserling's past and that Keyserling is planning to meet up with his old friends, whom he says will not arrive till the next day. After the dinner, Kircheis meets up with Hoffmann again, who reveals to him that Keyserling's would-be assailant used to be a subordinate of his when he was in active service. While it is highly probable that Keyserling himself would not remember a low-ranking subordinate, their links with each other are too good to be a coincidence...