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Page 46
"I have already told you," I said firmly, "that I don't want your money.
You know my terms!"
He rose up from his seat and his figure seemed to tower.
"Terms?" he cried in a voice that quivered with suppressed passion,
"terms? Understand that I give orders. I accept terms from no man. We
waste time here talking. Come, take the money and give me the paper."
I shook my head. My brain was clear, but I felt the crisis was coming. I
took a good grip with my hands of the marble slab covering the radiator
behind me to give me confidence. The slab yielded: mechanically I noted
that it was loose.
The man in front of me was shaking with rage.
"Listen!" he said. "I'll give you one more chance. But mark my words
well. Do you know what happened to the man that stole that document? The
English took him out and shot him on account of what was found in his
house when they raided it. Do you know what happened to the interpreter
at the internment camp, who was our go-between, who played us false by
cutting the document in half? The English shot _him_ too, on account of
what was found in letters that came to him openly through the post? And
who settled Schulte? And who settled the other man? Who contrived the
traps that sent them to their doom? It was _I_, Grundt, _I_, the
cripple, _I_, the Clubfoot, that had these traitors despatched as an
example to the six thousand of us who serve our Emperor and empire in
darkness! You dog, I'll smash you!"
He was gibbering like an angry ape: his frame was shaking with fury:
every hair in the tangle on his face and hands seemed to bristle with
his Berserker frenzy.
But he kept away from me, and I saw that he was still fighting to
preserve his self-control.
I maintained a bold front.
"This may do for your own people," I said contemptuously, "but it
doesn't impress me, I'm an American citizen!"
He was calmer now, but his eyes glittered dangerously.
"An American citizen?" he said in an icy tone. Then he fairly hissed at
me:
"You fool! Blind, besotted fool! Do you think you can trifle with the
might of the German Empire? Ah! I've played a pretty game with you, you
dirty English dog! I've watched you squirming and writhing whilst the
stupid German told you his pretty little tale and plied you with his
wine and his cigars. You're in our power now, you miserable English
hound! Do you understand that? Now call on your fleet to come and save
you!
"Listen! I'll be frank with you to the last. I've had my suspicions of
you from the first, when they telephoned me that you had escaped from
the hotel, but I wanted to make _sure_. Ever since you have been in this
room it has been in my power to push that bell there and send you to
Spandau, where they rid us of such dirty dogs as you.
"But the game amused me. I liked to see the Herr Englander playing the
spy against _me_, the master of them all. Do you know, you fool, that
old Schratt knows English, that she spent years of her harlot's life in
London, and that when you allowed her a glimpse of that passport, your
own passport, the one you so cleverly burned, she remembered the name?
Ah! you didn't know that, did you?
"Shall I tell you what was in that telegram they just brought me? It was
from Schratt, our faithful Schratt, who shall have a bangle for this
night's work, to say that the corpse at the hotel has a chain round its
neck with an identity disc in the name of Semlin. Ha! you didn't know
that either, did you?
"And _you_ would bargain and chaffer with me! _You_ would dictate your
terms, you scum! _You_ with your head in a noose, a spy that has failed
in his mission, a miserable wretch that I can send to his death with a
flip of my little finger! You impudent hound! Well, you'll get your
deserts this time, Captain Desmond Okewood ... but I'll have that paper
first!"
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