Soon the saw was drawn back, a finger appeared through the augur hole, closed around the edge of the square and exerted a gentle pressure. With scarcely a sound the wood yielded, and the piece was drawn gently out.
With baited breath the two men waited. Evidently those without were listening. Then an arm came through the hole and a hand began to feel for the key. Instantly Rutile slipped his rope around the wrist, drew it tight, and threw himself back on the rope.
A startled exclamation came from the outside, and then the prisoned man began a desperate though silent struggle for liberty. But he was at a terrible disadvantage. Inch by inch, his arm was drawn until his body was fast against the door; then there was a sudden yielding. “My God,” cried a voice. “Stop! You’re killing me. I surrender. I’ll tell everything. I’ll— Stop! Stop! Don’t strike! I’ll keep faith. I’ll—” The words ended with a thick choking hiccough.
“Hold this, Topham,” ordered Rutile, passing over the rope. “I’ll ring for the police.”
He pressed the burglar alarm on the wall, lighted the gas and was back at the door. “Now we’ll see what we’ve caught,” he declared, turning the key in the lock.
The door swung open and, with the relaxing of the rope, a man’s body pitched down upon the threshold and lay there, his upturned face ghastly in the glare of the gas jets. From his breast projected the handle of a dagger, whose blade had been driven in to the hilt, and, and across the white bosom of his shirt a crimson stain was widening. It needed no second glance to see that he was dead.
Rutile studied the dark face. “Looks like a Spaniard or a Spanish-American,” he decided. “Just about what I would have expected. But I never saw him before!”
Topham said nothing. His brain was whirling. For he, at least, had seen the man’s face before. It was that of the Spanish-American who had given him the drugged cigarette—of the man whom he had seen only a few hours before coming down the steps of the building that housed the Countess Elsa.
CHAPTER XII
The attempted burglary at the American Embassy made quite a stir, not only in Berlin but in America. That it did not make a greater one was due to the fact that no one except Rutile and Topham suspected that it was anything more than the simple attempt at burglary that it seemed; and both Rutile and Topham had their own reasons for concealing their suspicions.