I didn't sit down, but I stopped. Either he was as arrant a coward as such a brute was likely to be and I had scared him, or some thought had struck him which accounted for the change.
He let his cigar drop; made a to-do in finding it, pitching it away, and lighting another; and it was an easy guess that all this was to gain time. Then he sat thinking, fiddling nervously with a very singular ring he wore on his middle finger. He saw me looking at it and, no doubt to get a little more time to think, he spoke of it.
"You're looking at this," he said, holding up the hand. I nodded, and he drew it off and handed it me. "It's a puzzle ring I picked up in China," he explained, showing how it was really a little chain of rings which fitted very ingeniously to form a single ring.
I examined it and, still to gain time, he told me to try and put it together. I did try and failed, and when he had thought out his problem, he took it back and showed me the fitting.
"I'm sorry I lost my temper just now, Lassen," he said in a very different tone from his former angry one. "It's always a fool's game. But I did really believe you were shamming about your memory. What I told you about the Hanover business is quite true, however, and the fact that you don't remember it, wouldn't make an atom of difference with our people. But now, what about the English girl?"
I hesitated a second and then resumed my seat. "I'm willing to listen to you," I said; and he couldn't keep the satisfaction out of his fat, tell-tale face. He reckoned that he had frightened me, of course.
"What are you going to do about her?" was his next question.
"What you want to do is the point, man."
"She's a spy and ought to be interned."
"And why are you so keen about that? You said a little while back that you wanted her; how's the internment going to help you there?"