“I’ll take my gruelling, sir, if it comes to it.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, boy. Do you think I’ll let ’em touch you? But we must move very warily. Will you apologize to Colonel Bremenhof?”
“I’ll see him hanged first,” I cried.
He grinned and nodded. “You mean to make it as stiff for me as you can. That’s always the way with young folk.”
“Would you have me apologize to him?”
His face stiffened and his eyelids came together till they were mere slits through which his pupils gleamed. “I’m glad you hit him; although that blow is just the toughest nut to crack. But we must get to work. Thank Heaven, he put himself in the wrong as usual.”
He rang the bell and sent for the governor. His manner became suddenly as stern as with me it had been kind.
“There has been a very serious miscarriage of justice here, Major Pruladoff. This is Mr. Robert Anstruther, the son of a man who was the intimate friend of half the Berlin Court and trusted by the Emperor. His imprisonment is nothing short of an outrage, and what makes it really serious is that his demand, made as his right, to see the British Consul and to communicate with me, was refused.”
“I know nothing of that, of course, General. He was brought here on the order of Colonel Bremenhof.”
“Oblige me by calling him up on the telephone, and let me speak with him.”