"You know who it was," he interrupted. "The man who believes that he hears voices from heaven, that by the side of his Divine wisdom his ministers are fools and children, crying for they know not what! I may not see it, but you most surely will see the pricking of the bubble of his reputation. His name may stand for little more than mine, when the book of fate is finally closed."
He was silent for a moment, and glanced towards the sideboard. I could see the perspiration standing out in little white beads upon his forehead; he had the air of a man utterly exhausted. I poured him out a glass of wine, and brought it over. He drank it slowly, and reached out his hand for a cigarette.
"Never mind these things," he said more quietly. "A man in my condition should avoid talking of his enemies. I lived for two years quietly in Berlin. I changed as much of my appearance as illness had left recognizable; and during all that time I lived the ordinary life of a German citizen of moderate means, without my identity being once suspected. I frequented the cafés, I made friends with people in official positions. At the end of that time, I commenced to shape my plans. You can imagine of what nature they were. You can imagine what it was that I desired. I wanted to catch my enemy tripping."
I looked across at him a little incredulously. This was a strange story which he was telling me, and I knew very well, from the growing excitement of his manner, that its culmination was to come.
"But how could you in Berlin, alone, hope to accomplish this?" I asked.
"I knew the ropes," he answered simply, "and I lived for nothing else. I saw him drive amongst his people every day, and I bowed with the rest, I who could have spat in his face, I who carried with me the secret of his miserable perfidy, who knew alone why his ministers regarded him as a spoilt and fretful child. But I waited. Gradually I wormed my way a little into the fringe of the German Secret Service. I took them scraps of information; but such scraps that they were always hungry for more. I posed as a Dutch South African. They even chaffed me about my hatred for England. All the time I progressed, until, by chance, I stumbled across one of the threads which led—to the great Secret!"
There was a discreet knocking at the door. We both turned impatiently around. A servant was just ushering in our village doctor.
"Dr. Rust, sir," he announced.