fter all our
experience of you!--would be that you should put yourself so completely
in our power that we could feel we had your safekeeping. On those
terms I would be willing to do my best to help you out."

"I agree to that like a shot!" said Will; and I nodded.

"You mean--?"

"All or nothing!" Fred insisted.

"You mean that you also, just like these Germans, must have a sword to
hold over me?"

"I thought you wouldn't understand!" Fred answered. "What we demand,
Lady Saffren Walden, is proof that you really do give us your
confidence. Without that we have nothing to say to you, and nothing to
do with you!"

She broke down then and cried a little, tearing herself with sobs she
hated to release. Suddenly she raised her head and glared at us
wildly, dry-eyed; not a tear had accompanied the sobbing.

"If I tell you--if you fail me after that--I shall kill myself in such
way that you shall know--my blood is on your heads!"

Fred laughed. It was no doubt the best thing to do, but I wondered how
he managed it.

"Suppose you begin by telling us," he said. "We can discuss the
blood-stains afterward!"

Then she suddenly burst into her tale, as if she had rehearsed it a
hundred times in readiness to pour into the ears of the first British
official who had power enough to shield her. She told it dramatically,
in few words, wasting no breath on side-issues, and without once
pausing to explain, letting her words smash down the barriers of
unbelief and pave their own way for explanations afterward.

"Germany is planning to conquer the world!--not now, but ten or a dozen
years from now! She is getting ready ceaselessly! Part of the plan is
to undermine British rule in Africa by means of a religious influence
among the natives. That is the special duty of Professor
Schillinschen. As soon as possible a great native army is to be
trained, and thoroughly schooled in the fanatical precepts of Islam.
But the German people are too heavily taxed already, and refuse to vote
money for this miserable colony, where the great beginning must be made
because it is only here that they can work unsuspected. So funds must
be found in some other way!"

She paused for breath. No woman pleading at the bar of justice could
have seemed more in earnest. Of one thing I was quite sure: she had
found it worth her while to convince us if that were possible. She was
playing no half-hearted game.

"Do you begin to see now why t