They pushed me into the cool dimness of the cave. An odour of unwashed humanity, which blended gratefully with a searching smell of garlic, hung about my unseen captors.
"Herrgott!" cried Grundt, "it's as dark as pitch in this hole. Cut away this cursed plant, some of you, and let's have some light!"
The creeper fell away. The golden sunlight that flooded the cave showed me Clubfoot, his black-tufted hands folded across the crutch handle of his heavy stick, grim and lowering.
Black Pablo and a regular Hercules of a man, a broad-chested, yellow-bearded giant, a good type of the German bluejacket from the Frisian seaboard, were holding me. Grundt made a quick gesture of the hand.
"Take away his gun!" he ordered.
The fair young man I had seen at the graveside stepped forward. Roughly, vindictively, he ran his hands over me. He found Carstairs' automatic in my side pocket and transferred it to his own.
"You see these men," said Clubfoot, bending his bushy eyebrows at me. "Their orders are to shoot to kill in the event of any attempt on your part to escape. And whatever your private views on suicide may be you will probably bear in mind that Miss Garth—the charming Miss Garth—will, in any case, be left to mourn you...."
This allusion to Marjorie frightened me. There was no suavity about Clubfoot now. He was in his blackest, most menacing mood. His face was positively baleful; and there was a twitching of his black-bristled nostrils which warned me that he was on the verge of a paroxysm of fury.
"Leave me alone with him!" he commanded brusquely—his voice was harsh and snarling—"but remain outside within call!"
I felt the blood rush back into my numbed arms as the men relaxed their grip and withdrew.
Nervously Grundt's great fist beat a little tattoo on his open palm. He appeared to be making an effort to control himself.
"You would play a double game with me, would you?" he said. "No man has ever double-crossed me and got away with it, do you hear? My master may be in exile, my country fallen from greatness; but I am king here. Do you understand that?"
His pale lips trembled and he stuttered as he strove to master his rising passion.
"This cipher message is useless, as well you know. Without the preliminary indication, it is unintelligible. So Itzig, who in his day was the greatest cipher expert the Russian Okhrana ever had, has reported to me. And you knew it, you.... you...."
He pawed the air with his huge hand, the fingers outstretched.
"They have examined his grave again. There are signs that something was attached to the timber-work. What that was the drunken Englishman who first visited the grave must have known. And he confided it to you. 'I know when I'm beaten, Herr Doktor'; and 'I'll give you the cipher,' say you! You thought you were too clever for old Clubfoot, the cripple, the beaten Hun. But I'm master here, Herr Major, and you shall do my bidding!...."
"You are misinformed, Herr Doktor!" I said, trying to speak calmly. My lips were dry and my heart-beats thumped in my ears. But I was not thinking of myself. I was tormented with anxiety for Marjorie—Marjorie in the hands of those men.
"Don't answer hastily!" counselled Grundt changing to a tone of deadly calm that struck chill on my heart. "Ulrich von Hagel, who wrote that message, left it for one who should come after him, who would be a naval officer like himself. He wrote it so that it should be unintelligible to the casual person into whose hands it might fall, yet as clear as day to one of his own caste. And you would tell me that the message as it stands is all he left behind! Nein, nein, Herr Major, es geht nicht! I know that you have this information"—he crashed his fist into his open hand—"and you are going to give it to me!"
I shrugged my shoulders. I would not speak yet. Sooner or later, I knew, they would use Marjorie to break my silence. Then it would be time to speak. Till then I must await developments. After all, time was on my side.
My gesture seemed to rekindle all Grundt's rage. Slowly the colour faded out of his face, leaving it livid save where that hideous scar beneath the cheek-bone made an angry patch of red. His bushy eyebrows drew together and his mouth trembled.
"So you'd still play with me, would you, you scum?" he shouted, his voice rising to a roar. "You'd pit your wits against mine, would you? Herrgott, I have an account to settle with you and that brother of yours, and, by God! I'm going to settle it! And you shall pay double for the pair of you! Do you know...."—his voice dropped to a savage whisper—"that these German seamen of mine would cheerfully abandon all claim to the treasure for the pleasure of taking vengeance on you for all your country has made them suffer in these long years, hunted, degraded, outcast?
"Do you realise that I have but to raise my hand and you're a doomed man, and not the whole might of the British Empire could save you? But we shall take our time. You will not die too soon, my friend. First you shall speak! And if you remain obstinate, there is always the charming English girl...."
He clapped his hands. On a sudden the cave seemed filled with angry, shouting men. My head swam for I was worn out with want of sleep and faint with hunger. Something struck me on the back of the neck a violent blow. I felt myself falling, falling....
*****
How long I remained unconscious I don't know. When I regained my senses it was to find myself in semi-darkness in a long, low-roofed shed. It was dimly lit by a ruddy light which fell through some kind of grating in the roof. I could see no windows. The atmosphere was stifling and the floor and walls fairly swarmed with enormous cockroaches.
They had laid me down on a pile of sail-cloth in a corner. My head was splitting and I had a raging............