The feldwebel did not answer, but sat with his legs straight out in front of him, his heels together, and the palms of his hands touching between his knees.  The sergeants were all singing, smoking and drinking.  The Jew was back at his old post, watching every one with gimlet eyes.

“Think it over!” said Schubert, getting up.  “There is time until morning.  There is time until you leave this building.  After that—­” He shrugged his square shoulders brutally.

There was no sense in going out at once, as we had intended, with that combination of threat and promise hanging over us.

“Why not do what we said—­admit that we know what we don’t know—­and put ’em on the wrong scent?” Will whispered.

“I wish to God Monty were here!” groaned Fred.

“Rot!” Will answered.  “Monty is all you ever said of him and then some; but we’re able to handle this ourselves all right without him.  Tell ’em a bull yarn, I say!”

Fred relapsed into a sort of black gloom intended to attract the Muse of Strategy.  He was always better at swift action in the open and optimism in the face of visible danger, than at matching wits against something he could not see beginning or end of.

“Tell ’em it’s in German East!” urged Will.  “Offer to lead them to it on certain conditions.  Think up controversial proposals!  Play for timer!”

Fred shook his head.

“What if it turns out true?  Monty’s in Europe.  Suppose he should learn while he’s there that the stuff is really in German East—­we’d have spoiled his game!”

“If the stuff should really be in German East,” Will argued, “we’ve no chance in the world of getting even a broker’s share of it, Monty or no Monty!  Take my advice and tell ’em what they want to know!”

Meanwhile an argument of another kind had started across the room.  Schubert had related with grim amusement to Sergeant Sachse, who was sitting next him, our disapproval of the flogging of the father of the commandant’s abandoned woman.

“At what were they shocked?” wondered Sachse.  “At the flogging, or the intercourse, or because he sent the female packing when she proposed to have a child?  Do they not know that to have children about the premises would be subversive of military excellence?”

“They were shocked at all three things,” grinned Schubert, “but chiefly, I think, at the flogging.”

“Bah!  Such a tickling of a native’s hide doesn’t hurt him to speak of! 
 Wait until they see our court in the morning!”

It was that that raised the clamor.  Even Schubert, who might be supposed to have won promotion because he could stay sober longer than the others, was beginning to grow noisy in his speech and to laugh without apparent reason.  The rest were all already frankly drunk, and any excuse for dispute was a good one.  They one and all, including Schubert, denied Sachse’s contention that a flogging did not hurt enough to matter.