“I demand to communicate with the British Consul,” I said, “and with my friend, General von Eckerstein.”
“Take him away,” he repeated; and I was led off and placed in a cell. If he thought to frighten me, the effort had failed. He had put himself in the wrong, and I knew that my turn would come.
It was a filthy, foul-smelling place they put me in, and they kept me in it all day without food or even water.
In the evening I was taken again before the man, and the scene of the morning was repeated in pretty much the same terms and with the same result. But my back was up, and I vowed I’d rather starve than give in.
I passed a miserable night, famished with hunger, parched with thirst, and half stifled with the reeking foulness of the place.
In the morning an official came to the cell to try a different method. He was less of a ruffian than his superior, and sought to convince me of the uselessness of contumacity.
I let him talk without once replying to his questions until he was in the act of leaving. “I am a British subject,” I said then, “and I have demanded no more than my rights. I have been treated like a dog and shut up in this filthy place to be starved into submission to that ruffianly bully. Go through with it if you dare. I can keep my end up, and be hanged to you all. But if I’m left to rot here, there’ll be questions which somebody will find it difficult to answer. You can’t murder Englishmen with impunity. You know that.”
He shrugged his shoulders, hesitated whether to answer, then decided not to and went away.
A couple of hours later I was taken again to be examined, and the man who had visited me was with the bully.
“Is your name Robert Anstruther?” asked the latter.