Dazedly Borg’s eyes dropped to the steel handcuffs, as if seeing them for the first time. With a harsh cry he leaped to his feet, his lips drawn back in a snarl of fury.
“What does this mean?” he shouted, wrenching at the clanking chain. “You dare to handcuff me like a common criminal? What right have you to confine me?”
“Sit down!” thundered Don Winslow, forcing the man back into his chair. “You are under arrest, Count Borg, in connection with a plot to destroy the United States Navy gunboat Gatoon. Following the orders of your criminal chief, the Scorpion, you picked up two men in life belts—”
“But, Don!” burst in Red Pennington. “The guy knows all that. Why not get down to brass tacks and make him tell something worth while—for instance, where the Scorpion has his headquarters?”
A wild laugh from the prisoner interrupted at this point. Pounding his manacled hands against his knees, the man who called himself Count Borg rocked back and forth in hysterical mirth.
“Mad! Mad!” he choked. “We are all mad and locked up in the crazyhouse! One talks about scorpions and life belts; another raves about brass tacks! But nobody tells me how I got here, and I—I cannot remember....”
With a groan the fellow raised his hands to his temples. Shifting from clear, unaccented English, he began muttering to himself in some harsh, foreign tongue.
The medical officer reached for a hypodermic needle, but Don Winslow seized his arm.
“Get him a glass of cold water, Doc,” the young commander advised. “This man isn’t crazy. He just thinks he’s nuts, because....”
Pulling the doctor over to the sink, Don whispered rapidly in the other’s ear. Their conference lasted two or three minutes, long enough to get the goat of Lieutenant Red Pennington, who was about fed up on being a mystified onlooker.