“What have I done?” he demanded. “Why am I treated like this?”
“Doctor Schmidt?” Eddy asked pleasantly.
“That is my name, sir,” was the fierce reply. “I have just landed from East Africa. We knew nothing of the war when we started. I came to expose that man. He is an impostor—a murderer! He has killed a German nobleman.”
“He has committed lese majeste!” Seaman gasped. “He has deceived the Kaiser! He has dared to sit in his presence as the Baron Von Ragastein!”
The young man in flannels glanced across at Dominey and smiled.
“I say, you two don't mean to be funny but you are,” he declared. “First of all, there's Doctor Schmidt accuses Sir Everard here of being an impostor because he assumed his own name; accuses him of murdering a man who had planned in cold blood—you were in that, by the by, Schmidt—to kill him; and then there's our friend here, the secretary of the society for propagating better relations between the business men of England and Germany, complaining because Sir Everard carried through in Germany, for England, exactly what he believed the Baron Von Ragastein was carrying out here—for Germany. You're a curious, thick-headed race, you Germans.”
“I demand again,” Schmidt shouted, “to know by what right I am treated as a criminal?”
“Because you are one,” Eddy answered coolly. “You and Von Ragastein together planned the murder of Sir Everard Dominey in East Africa, and I caught you creeping across the floor just now with a knife in your hand. That'll do for you. Any questions to ask, Seaman?”
“None,” was the surly reply.
“You are well-advised,” the young man remarked coolly. “Within the last two days, your house in Forest Hill and your offices in London Wall have been searched.”