The courteous gentlemen who sat at my right side and at my left spoke in German or French or English as the occasion suited, while old Von Heeringen boomed away in rumbling German phrases.

As I ate I studied him.
Three weeks later, less a day, I met by appointment Lord Kitchener and spent forty minutes, or thereabouts, in his company at the War Office in London.

In the midst of the interview, as I sat facing Kitchener I began wondering, in the back part of my head, who it was Lord Kitchener reminded me of.

Suddenly the answer came to me, and it jolted me.

The answer was Von Heeringen.
Physically the two men--Kitchener of Khartoum and Von Heeringen, the Gray Ghost of Metz--had nothing in common; mentally I conceived them to be unlike.