She fixed her eyes upon her father’s lowering face. “Father,” she said, “if you’ll give it up—if you’ll promise to stop this sort of thing—and be loyal ... or, if you can’t be loyal, to stop helping Germany....”
“Sure he will,” said Philip, winking at von Essen. “We all will, Miss. Tickled to death to promise. We’re about filled up with the business, anyhow.”
“If you had killed Potter—” she said to her father.
“But we didn’t,” Philip said, quickly.
“No—you didn’t.... And he’s my father. I’ve thought of that ... night after night and day after day.... I can’t expose him.... I despise him, but even my country couldn’t ask me to expose him.”
“Huh!...” snorted von Essen.
She drooped pitifully. His brutality, the stress of the moments she had passed through, left her weak, trembling.
“Your mother used to believe in a God,” said von Essen, and there was the hint of a sneer in his voice. “Do you take it from her?”
“I believe,” she said, simply.
He strode to a bookcase, drew out a Bible, over which himself and fellow German dabblers in materialistic philosophy had wrangled, and thrust it before her. “Put your hand on it,” he ordered. “Put your hand on it and swear that you will never repeat to a human being what you know about this business.... Swear!”