"L'état, c'est moi," said Vandermeer with a smile.
Roy was looking at him still with the same pensive expression as of a youthful Buddha.
"I suppose he had no difficulty in getting rid of the diamonds," he said.
"Probably not," said Vandermeer. "Perhaps he would keep a few as a reserve—a kind of Landsturm. But he would buy Liberty Bonds, heh?"
"And you mean to say that a man like that is going about in the United States now?" said Mimika.
Vandermeer chuckled again.
"Who knows?" he said. "Perhaps he has come to Southern California. Perhaps he has bought a nice little ranch—a fruit ranch, just like this, heh?—where he shall live a happy and healthy life to the age of a hundred. And now, Mimika, it is getting time for little girls to go to bed."
About two o'clock in the morning Mimika was wakened by a guttural choking cry from her husband. She was so startled that she slipped out of bed and stood staring at him. The moon was flooding the room almost like a searchlight, and Captain Vandermeer lay in the full stream of it. While she watched him he rose slowly to a sitting posture, with his eyes still shut and his hands clenched above his face. He began muttering to himself, in a low voice at first, and then so loudly that it echoed through the house; and the words sounded more like German than Dutch. Then he began fighting for breath, like a man in a nightmare. He tore his pyjama jacket open over the great red hairy chest.
"Otto!" he shouted at the top of his voice. "Otto!" Then with a huge sigh he sank back on the pillows, whispering "I have opened it."
There was a tap on the door. Mimika snatched up a dressing gown, the first garment she could lay her hands on—it happened to be Vandermeer's—wrapped it round her, glided across the room and opened the door. Her brother stood there, also in a dressing gown and bare-footed. Their eyes met without a word. He took her hand, led her outside and closed the door quietly behind them.