nse. You are in our
power, my friend, to do precisely what we like with you.'

He was silent for a second, and then he said, meditatively:

'But I don't think you are a fool. You may be a scoundrel. Some kinds
of scoundrel are useful enough. Other kinds are strung up with a rope.
Of that we shall know more soon.'

'And if I am a good man?'

'You will be given a chance to serve Germany, the proudest privilege a
mortal man can have.' The strange man said this with a ringing
sincerity in his voice that impressed me.

The car swung out from the trees into a park lined with saplings, and
in the twilight I saw before me a biggish house like an overgrown Swiss
chalet. There was a kind of archway, with a sham portcullis, and a
terrace with battlements which looked as if they were made of stucco.
We drew up at a Gothic front door, where a thin middle-aged man in a
shooting-jacket was waiting.

As we moved into the lighted hall I got a good look at our host. He was
very lean and brown, with the stoop in the shoulder that one gets from
being constantly on horseback. He had untidy grizzled hair and a
ragged beard, and a pair of pleasant, short-sighted brown eyes.

'Welcome, my Colonel,' he said. 'Is this the friend you spoke of?'

'This is the Dutchman,' said Stumm. 'His name is Brandt. Brandt, you
see before you Herr Gaudian.'

I knew the name, of course; there weren't many in my profession that
didn't. He was one of the biggest railway engineers in the world, the
man who had built the Baghdad and Syrian railways, and the new lines in
German East. I suppose he was about the greatest living authority on
tropical construction. He knew the East and he knew Africa; clearly I
had been brought down for him to put me through my paces.

A blonde maidservant took me to my room, which had a bare polished
floor, a stove, and windows that, unlike most of the German kind I had
sampled, seemed made to open. When I had washed I descended to the
hall, which was hung round with trophies of travel, like Dervish
jibbahs and Masai shields and one or two good buffalo heads. Presently
a bell was rung. Stumm appeared with his host, and we went in to
supper.

I was jolly hungry and would have made a good meal if I hadn't
constantly had to keep jogging my wits. The other two talked in
German, and when a question was put to me Stumm translated. The first
thing I had to do was to pretend I didn't know German and look
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