s 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