“I am not the court,” returned Brice, nettled.  “But I think I can promise you a fifty per cent reduction in what would be the average sentence for such an offense, and a lighter job in prison than falls to the lot of most Federal criminals.”

“Good,” approved Hade, adding:  “But not good enough.  I’m still in the thirties.  I’m tougher of constitution than I look.  They can’t sentence me for more than a span of years.  And when my term is up, I can enjoy the little batch of 1804 dollars I’ve laid by.  I think I’ll take my chance, unless you care to raise the ante.”

Brice glanced around at the men who stood on the veranda.  Then he lowered his voice, so as not to be heard by them.

“You are under courtmartial sentence of death as a spy, Mr. Hade,” he whispered.  “The war is over.  That sentence won’t be imposed, in full, I imagine, in times of peace.  But your war record will earn you an extra sentence that will come close to keeping you in Atlanta Penitentiary for life.  I believe I am the only member of the Department who knows that Major Heidenhoff of the Wilhelmstrasse and Rodney Hade are the same man.  If I can be persuaded to keep that knowledge from my superiors, in return for full information as to where the 1804 dollars are cached—­those you’ve already taken from the inlet—­and if the mortgage papers on this place are destroyed —­well—?”

“H’m!” mused Hade, his black eyes brooding and speculative.  “H’m!  That calls for a bit of rather careful weighing.  How much time will you give me to think it over and decide?  A week?”

“Just half an hour,” retorted Gavin.  “My other men, who took your silly band of cutthroats to jail, ought to be back by then.  I am waiting here till they report, and no longer.  You have half an hour.  And I advise you to make sane use of it.”

Hade got slowly to his feet.  The smile was gone from his lips.  His strange black eyes looked indescribably tired and old.  There was a sag to his alert figure.

“It’s hard to plan a coup like mine,” he sighed, “and then to be bilked by a man with not one-tenth my brain.  Luck was with you.  Blind luck.  Don’t imagine you’ve done this by your wits.”

As he spoke he shuffled heavily to the adjoining music-room, and let his dreary gaze stray toward its two windows.  On the veranda, framed in the newly unshuttered window-space, stood four Secret Service men, grimly on guard.

Hade strode to one window after the other, with the cranky mien and action of a thwarted child, and slammed the shutters together, barring out the sinister sight of his guards.  Gavin did not try to prevent him from this act of boyish spite.  The master-mind’s reaction, in its hour of brokenness, roused his pity.

From the windows, Hade’s gloomy eyes strayed to the piano.  On it lay a violin case.  He picked it up and took out an age-mellowed violin.

“I think clearer when I play,” he said, glumly, to Brice.  “And I’ve nearly a million dollars’ worth of thinking to do in this half hour.  Is it forbidden to fiddle?  Milo’s father paid $4,000 for this violin.  It’s a genuine Strad.  And it gives me peace and clear vision.  May I play, or—?”