Ernst had helped Singleton! No! no! there were limits. It was, anyway, safe to say, "You must in that case rather deplore his death."
"What makes you think he's dead?" Taylor asked.
"His particular friend, Miss von Schwarzenberg, had the news yesterday."
"She had, had she? Ha! ha! The canny Ernst!" Taylor subdued his mirth to say: "Just so. Wilhelmstrasse doesn't have the news. We're all right; and Master Ernst can go on drawing pay from two governments. Oh, he's a very practical person, is Ernst. The situation is his own invention. A piece of 'war economy,' he called it. 'You English hard up for ammunition. Why waste it shooting a spy when he can give you more valuable information than anybody in the German Secret Service?'"
"You can't seriously mean we were such fools as to trust a man like that?"
"So far from trusting him, we keep him under surveillance every hour of his life. Two of our men specially detailed."
"You aren't telling me he's over here!"
"Been here six weeks."
"Then he's a free man!"
Taylor smiled. "A man who's been doing the sort of business Ernst has, is never a free man. Nobody knows better than Ernst how little his life would be worth if he took any liberties. And why should he? This is his harvest-time. He knows he'll get more out of us than—"