Impatiently the others waited. To ask him to translate as the conversation went on they knew would merely result in failure; his English was too limited and his brain too slow for that.
“Might let him talk back,” suggested Rawlins in a whisper. “He could put up a yarn about escaping and find out where they are.”
Mr. Pauling shook his head. “You don’t know the men you’re dealing with,” he said. “They probably know all about his escape and his acts in New York and a word from him would simply forewarn them. I had the sending set cut off the moment I came in—I’m not risking any chance of being heard.”
A moment later, Smernoff slowly swung his big body around and with a savage glint in his eyes took the receivers from his ears and rose.
“They been done,” he announced. “No more talk. Me, I hear heem say he been try keel me, me, Alexis Smernoff. Ha! Heem teenk he get me, eh? Me, I make keel heem mos’ likely. Heem say me, I what you say—geef double cross—Ah! heem Bolsheviki keel mine boy, mine girl, mine wife. Ah! me, I help the gentlemen.”
“Yes, yes, we know all that, Smernoff!” cried Mr. Henderson impatiently, “but what else did they say? Where are they?”
The Russian spread his palms and shrugged his shoulders expressively.
“Heem no say notting more,” he declared. “Me, I no know where heem be. Heem make to talk from boat, heem talk from how you call it—boat same like thees fellow.”
“From a submarine?” cried Mr. Pauling.
“Sure, that eet,” replied Smernoff. “Sutmavine you call heem? Ah, he same like thees only more beeg.”