"I'll make you smart in another sense, I promise you," he snarled.
"You can't do it, Glocken, and you'd better not make a fool of yourself. There's a lot behind all this you don't understand. Here's your money;" and I gave him the balance.
"Where did you get it? In Berlin—Johann Lassen?"
"You don't look pretty when you snarl like that, Glocken; and if you believe I'm Johann Lassen, you're a braver man than I think. We're alone here; and if I were that man, do you think I'd let you live to tell the police when a tap from this spanner of mine would silence you for ever?"
That hadn't occurred to him and he jumped away from me as if dreading an instant attack.
"I'm not going to touch you, man; on the contrary I'm going to make it easy for you. I'll give you a lift into Lingen in Fischer's car and we'll stop at the police station, if you like. I saw your game in a second this morning and it suited me to play up to it. I was told you were a treacherous skunk, but I didn't think you were such a gorgeous fool. Come along and we'll have that chat with the police."
He hung back, either because he was afraid to trust himself in the car with me or because my bluff puzzled him. It turned out to be the latter.
"I don't want to do you any harm, Bulich," he muttered.
"You wooden-headed ass, do you think I'd let you, if you could? Come to the police and tell your story; but I warn you beforehand that if you dare to utter a word against me like that, you're a ruined man, lock, stock, and barrel. Behind me in this affair is one of the most powerful men in the whole Empire, whose arm is long enough to reach even cunning Farmer Glocken, squeeze him to a jelly, and leave the remnants to rot in gaol. And he'll do it, Glocken, as sure as my real name isn't Hans Bulich, the instant I tell him the scurvy tricks you've tried with me to-day." I said this with all the concentrated sternness at my command, and it went right home and frightened him through and through.
"What—what is your name, then?" he stammered.