A fool like that is unfathomable.

He continued: "It's five months or more since I have spoken to anybody who has seen him." As I have said, we were not much interested; but Schomberg, of course, could not understand that.

He was grotesquely dense.

Whenever three people came together in his hotel, he took good care that Heyst should be with them.
"I hope the fellow did not go and drown himself," he would add with a comical earnestness that ought to have made us shudder; only our crowd was superficial, and did not apprehend the psychology of this pious hope.
"Why?
Heyst isn't in debt to you for drinks is he ?" somebody asked him once with shallow scorn.
"Drinks! Oh, dear no!" The innkeeper was not mercenary.

Teutonic temperament seldom is.