CHAPTER XXXVIIA USELESS ARGUMENT
“I’ve got to go the limit now in flattering this man’s vanity,” was the conclusion that flashed through Phil’s mind as he listened to his captor’s coldly worded spy-suspicion. “And I’ve got to work fast, too.”
Then he addressed the occupant of more than two-thirds of the seat as follows:
“Let me subject myself to a test under your detective microscope, if you please. I must tell my story rapidly, so that you cannot accuse me of taking time to think it up. If I tell the truth so that you can’t puncture it with any reasonable doubt, will you assume that I am not a spy until there is some evidence tending to prove that I am one?”
“Of course,” replied Topoff with high-pitched, cutting tone peculiar to him. Every time it rasped into Phil’s ear it gave him “apprehensive creeps,” but the situation was desperate now, and the boy decided to disregard it.
“You have recognized me, I take it, as the American soldier who engaged in a rather spectacularcontest with a squad under your command in Belleau Wood a few weeks ago,” Phil continued.
Topoff nodded with another affirmative squeak.
“Did you know that I was in that bunch of prisoners that you started to take back to your nearest railroad communication?—I presume that was where you were taking us?”
“You bet I knew it,” “the count” answered with a nod of significance, which indicated that the author of the “novel disarmament” of the boches in the wooded ravine had not been forgotten.
“Well, I was one of the fellows that engineered our escape,” Phil continued. “But I didn’t get the information myself about your identity. One of the other fellows who understood German overheard your conversation with Hertz down in the sandpit and told us all about it. Naturally we didn’t want to be blown to atoms with bombs dropped from Hertz’s aeroplane; so we decided to seek more healthful quarters. That’s all there is to it. Now, have I proved to your satisfaction that I’m not a spy?”
“No, you haven’t proved anything,” Topoff answered with a sneering look at his prisoner, “until you explain how you managed to hidea company of soldiers right in our midst ready to spring out and attack us in a manner that nobody in the wide world would ever think possible. If it hadn’t been for your little handful of men, we’d ’ave held the American army and would now be driving them back. Can you guess now what I’m going to do with you?”
“No,” Phil replied eagerly, but not without some apprehension.
“I’m going to put you through a ‘sweating’ process that will make the worst ‘sweating’ given a suspected criminal in the Tower of London look like a royal reception to the crown prince,” announced “Count Topoff” with some more of his villainous sharpness of voice. “You’re going to have an experience that will make you remember your uninvited visit to Europe away beyond the River Jordan or the River Styx, wherever you go after you give up the ghost.”
“But we were invited here,” Phil answered, with a chill of apprehension that his vanity plot was doomed to failure.
“You invited yourselves here,” piped the big fellow, with an angry swelling of his form decidedly uncomfortable to the boy beside him. “Any other statement from you is a lie.”
Phil ached to give the blustering boche a sharp answer about submarines and the tortureof women and children, but he wisely restrained the impulse.
“I think I can answer right now any questions you may put to me to settle your suspicion about my being a spy,” he said resolutely. “You’d better put the question to me now before I have time to think up a story. If I hesitate, you’ll know you’ve caught me; if I tell a clear, well-connected and rapid story, you ought to give me credit of telling the truth.”
“No,” insisted “the count,” whose constitutional brutality seemed to be showing itself more and more on the surface; “you had an opportunity to go on with your story without waiting for any more questions. You’ve been hesitating and talking about other things for several minutes in order to take time to think up an answer to the last question I put to you. When I told you you’d have to explain how you managed to hide a company of soldiers right inside our lines and near the battle front ready to spring out and throw our forces into confusion, why didn’t you answer right away?”
“Because you stopped me by putting another question,” Phil replied without hesitation. “You asked me if I could guess what you were going to do with me.”
“And you took that as an excuse to delayanswering the other question. You think you’re very sharp, don’t you?”
“I can answer that question in a very reasonable way,” Phil insisted. “It’s the only explanation any living man could give. You can’t, with all your experience, conceive of another intelligent explanation. The so-called company that I was with consisted of only the soldiers who escaped from the guard under your command a few weeks ago. We hid in the daytime and traveled at night, creeping nearer and nearer to the front. At last we got as near as we thought safe and hid ourselves in dark buildings and basements and waited for the American drive at Chateau Thierry. When it came and your soldiers were pushed back to the point where we were hidden, we jumped out and made our attack.”
“Too thin, too thin, my boy,” declared Topoff with a sneer. “I thought you’d cook up some such story.”
“Keep up your ‘sweating’ process,” Phil insisted. “Don’t give me any time to think up anything more. Fire your questions at me like a machine-gun. Surely with your keenness of mind you can catch me if I’ve been lying.”
“No, no, nothing more now,” returned Topoff with a doggedness of manner and a glitter of hate in his eyes. “I haven’t begun to ‘sweat’you yet. You see, I didn’t bring any ‘sweating’ machinery along.”
His eyes fairly bulged with bestial cruelty as he made this announcement with an implied promise of torture that caused a succession of shudders to shake the boy’s frame in spite of his efforts to resist and control the panic attack that he felt coming.