On Sundays, Darmstaedter like to gather around him all the trappings of a good German Herr, which included a sealskin coat with a fir collar, a wife of impeccable reputation and a fully equipped carriage, preferably of English origins. These trappings he then usually took to the most fashionable and popular church; except today.

Ordering the coachman to take the carriage to Alt Brno he ignored the surprised look on his wife's face, settled back in his seat and thought about his most recent case. On the surface all was going well. His informers, of whom Pech was only one, had infiltrated most of the Hussite groups that were Darmstaedter's special responsibility. There was little went on at meetings of Czech nationalists that he did not know about the next morning.

Most of his informers reported the vacuous vaporings of the Czechs in great detail, but little that was said ever led to direct action. It was mostly hot air and over heated rhetoric. Until now. The actions taken recently against those parts of the Imperial army camped in Brno were trivial, and largely ineffective, as the censor saw to it that none of their agitations were ever reported in the paper. But, never the less, they amounted to an escalation in Hussite activity, and one that was very disturbing.

Anarchists in other countries had caused considerable damage, and even attacked heads of state. It was a short step, in Darmstaedter's mind, between throwing mud at soldiers and throwing bombs at princes.

Of all the Hussites in his dossiers the name of Matous Klacel occurred most often. Going back as far as the revolution of 1848, Brother Matthew had written, talked and tried hard to bring about a greater degree of equality between the ethnic Germans and ethnic Czechs in Moravia. Since that time there had been constant and increasing tension between the Germans and Czechs in Brno, a tension that even extended to Napp's little monastery.

Darmstaedter's dossiers also included the names Sembera, Rambousek and Krizkovsky; ethnic Czech monks whose loyalty was questionable, but one name stood out as a friend and supporter of the status quo, and someone who had frequently been of service in the past. It was to meet this person that the Darmstaedter carriage was making its way to Alt Brno and the church that stood beside the Augustinian monastery.