"I mean that I foresee your evil intention against myself, because of my
success in the Brest affair," was my quick reply. "You will denounce me
here in Germany as a British agent, eh?"

"You are perfectly correct in your surmise, m'sieur. Here they have an
unpleasant habit in their treatment of foreign spies."

"And does it not usually take two persons to play a game?" I asked,
perfectly cool. "Are you not a spy also?"

"Go to the police, _mon cher ami_, and tell them what you will," he
laughed defiantly. "Straus, the chief of police here, is my friend. You
would not be the first person who has tried to secure my arrest and
failed."

His words confounded me. I saw that I alone was in peril, and that he,
by reason of his personal friendship with the chief of police, was
immune from arrest.

I had walked deliberately, and with eyes wide open, into the trap!

"You see," he laughed, pointing to the telephone instrument on the
little writing-table, "I have only to take that and call up the police
office, and your British Government will lose the services of one of its
shrewdest agents."

"So that is your revenge, eh?" I asked, realising how utterly helpless I
now was in the hands of my bitterest enemy--the man who had turned a
traitor. I could see no way out.

"Bah!" he laughed in my face. "The power of your wonderful old
country--so old that it has become worm-eaten--is already at an end. In
a month you will have German soldiers swarming upon your shores, while
America will seize Canada and Australia, and Russia will advance into
India. You will be crushed, beaten, humiliated--and the German eagle
will fly over your proud London. The John Bull bladder is to be
pricked!" he laughed.

"That is not exactly news to me, M'sieur Pierron," I answered quite
coolly. "The danger of my country is equally a danger to yours. With
England crushed, France, too, must fall."

"We have an army--a brave army--while you have only the skeleton that
your great Haldane has left to you," he sneered. "But enough! I have
long desired this interview, and am pleased that it has taken place here
in Berlin," and he deliberately walked across to the telephone.

I tried to snatch the transmitter from his hand, but though we
struggled, he succeeded in inquiring for a number--the number of the
police head-quarters.

I was caught like a rat in a trap, fool that I was to have come there at
risk of my liberty--I who was always so wary and s