The Kraftstudt and Co. was not in the telephone directory either.

Burning with impatience I waited for the Monday. Whenever I looked up from those neatly penned equations concealing complicated physical processes, my thoughts would turn to Kraftstudt Co. Men of vision, I thought. In our time and age when mankind endeavours to clothe its every idea in mathematical garbs, it would be hard to imagine a more profitable occupation.

Incidentally, who was this Kraftstudt? I had been resident in the town quite a long time but the name rang no bell. As a matter of fact, I did vaguely recollect having heard the name before. But I couldn't remember when or where, no matter how hard I jogged my memory.

Came the Monday. Pocketing the sheet of equations, I started out in search of 12 Weltstrasse. A fine drizzle forced me to take a taxi.

"It's a goodish way off," said the cabby, "beyond the river, next door to the lunatic asylum."

I nodded and off we went.

It took us about forty minutes. We passed through the town gates, went over a bridge, skirted a lake and found ourselves in the country. Early green shoots could be seen here and there in the fields along the unmetalled road, and the car stalled between banks of mud every now and then, its back wheels skidding furiously.

Then roofs appeared, then the red brick walls of the lunatic asylum standing in a little depression and jocularly referred to in town as the Wise Men's Home.

Along the tall brick wall bristling with bits of broken glass ran a clinker lane. After a few turnings the taxi pulled up at an inconspicuous door.

"This is Number Twelve."

I was unpleasantly surprised to find that Kraftstudt Co.'s premises were in the same building as the Wise Men's Home. Surely Herr Kraftstudt hasn't ganged up the loonies to do "all manner of mathematical work" for him, I thought-and smiled.

I pressed the doorbell. I had to wait long, the better part of five minutes. Then the door opened and a pale-faced man with thick tousled hair appeared and blinked in the daylight.