‘Let me explain,’ he went on.  ’I watched with amusement your gambols at Biggleswick.  My eyes followed you when you went to the Clyde and in your stupid twistings in Scotland.  I gave you rope, because you were futile, and I had graver things to attend to.  I allowed you to amuse yourself at your British Front with childish investigations and to play the fool in Paris.  I have followed every step of your course in Switzerland, and I have helped your idiotic Yankee friend to plot against myself.  While you thought you were drawing your net around me, I was drawing mine around you.  I assure you, it has been a charming relaxation from serious business.’

I knew the man was lying.  Some part was true, for he had clearly fooled Blenkiron; but I remembered the hurried flight from Biggleswick and Eaucourt Sainte-Anne when the game was certainly against him.  He had me at his mercy, and was wreaking his vanity on me.  That made him smaller in my eyes, and my first awe began to pass.

‘I never cherish rancour, you know,’ he said.  ’In my business it is silly to be angry, for it wastes energy.  But I do not tolerate insolence, my dear General.  And my country has the habit of doing justice on her enemies.  It may interest you to know that the end is not far off.  Germany has faced a jealous world in arms and she is about to be justified of her great courage.  She has broken up bit by bit the clumsy organization of her opponents.  Where is Russia today, the steam-roller that was to crush us?  Where is the poor dupe Rumania?  Where is the strength of Italy, who was once to do wonders for what she called Liberty?  Broken, all of them.  I have played my part in that work and now the need is past.  My country with free hands is about to turn upon your armed rabble in the West and drive it into the Atlantic.  Then we shall deal with the ragged remains of France and the handful of noisy Americans.  By midsummer there will be peace dictated by triumphant Germany.’

‘By God, there won’t!’ I had found my voice at last.

‘By God, there will,’ he said pleasantly.  ’It is what you call a mathematical certainty.  You will no doubt die bravely, like the savage tribes that your Empire used to conquer.  But we have the greater discipline and the stronger spirit and the bigger brain.  Stupidity is always punished in the end, and you are a stupid race.  Do not think that your kinsmen across the Atlantic will save you.  They are a commercial people and by no means sure of themselves.  When they have blustered a little they will see reason and find some means of saving their faces.  Their comic President will make a speech or two and write us a solemn note, and we will reply with the serious rhetoric which he loves, and then we shall kiss and be friends.  You know in your heart that it will be so.’

A great apathy seemed to settle on me.  This bragging did not make me angry, and I had no longer any wish to contradict him.  It may have been the result of the fall, but my mind had stopped working.  I heard his voice as one listens casually to the ticking of a clock.