‘Oh, no, no,’ said Blenkiron soothingly.  ’The Swiss are a nice people, and I would hate to add to the worries of a poor little neutral state . . .  All along both sides have been outside the law in this game, and that’s going to continue.  We’ve abode by the rules and so must you . . .  For years you’ve murdered and kidnapped and seduced the weak and ignorant, but we’re not going to judge your morals.  We leave that to the Almighty when you get across Jordan.  We’re going to wash our hands of you as soon as we can.  You’ll travel to France by the Underground Railway and there be handed over to the French Government.  From what I know they’ve enough against you to shoot you every hour of the day for a twelvemonth.’

I think he had expected to be condemned by us there and then and sent to join Ehrlich beneath the ice.  Anyhow, there came a flicker of hope into his eyes.  I daresay he saw some way to dodge the French authorities if he once got a chance to use his miraculous wits.  Anyhow, he bowed with something very like self-possession, and asked permission to smoke.  As I have said, the man had his own courage.

‘Blenkiron,’ I cried, ‘we’re going to do nothing of the kind.’

He inclined his head gravely towards me.  ‘What’s your notion, Dick?’

‘We’ve got to make the punishment fit the crime,’ I said.  I was so tired that I had to form my sentences laboriously, as if I were speaking a half-understood foreign tongue.

‘Meaning?’

’I mean that if you hand him over to the French he’ll either twist out of their hands somehow or get decently shot, which is far too good for him.  This man and his kind have sent millions of honest folk to their graves.  He has sat spinning his web like a great spider and for every thread there has been an ocean of blood spilled.  It’s his sort that made the war, not the brave, stupid, fighting Boche.  It’s his sort that’s responsible for all the clotted beastliness . . .  And he’s never been in sight of a shell.  I’m for putting him in the front line.  No, I don’t mean any Uriah the Hittite business.  I want him to have a sporting chance, just what other men have.  But, by God, he’s going to learn what is the upshot of the strings he’s been pulling so merrily . . .  He told me in two days’ time Germany would smash our armies to hell.  He boasted that he would be mostly responsible for it.  Well, let him be there to see the smashing.’

‘I reckon that’s just,’ said Blenkiron.

Ivery’s eyes were on me now, fascinated and terrified like those of a bird before a rattlesnake.  I saw again the shapeless features of the man in the Tube station, the residuum of shrinking mortality behind his disguises.  He seemed to be slipping something from his pocket towards his mouth, but Geordie Hamilton caught his wrist.

‘Wad ye offer?’ said the scandalized voice of my servant.  ’Sirr, the prisoner would appear to be trying to puishon hisself.  Wull I search him?’