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?