"Hm-m!" grumbled Partow. "That is not necessary to start with. We can give that to her later over the telephone, can't we, eh?"
"She asked for it now."
"Why?" demanded Partow with one of his shrewd, piercing looks.
"She did not say, but I can guess," explained Lanstron. "She must put all her cards on the table; she must tell Westerling all she knows at once. If she tells him piecemeal it might lead to the supposition that she still had some means of communication with the Browns."
"Of course, of course!" Partow spatted the flat of his hand resoundingly on the map. "As I decided the first time I met her, she has a head, and when a woman has a head for that sort of thing there is no beating her. Well—" he was looking straight into Lanstron's eyes, "well, I think we know the point where we could draw them in on the main line, eh?"
"Up the apron of the approach from the Engadir valley. We yield the advance redoubts on either side."
"Meanwhile, we have massed heavily behind the redoubt. We retake the advance redoubts in a counter-attack and—" Partow brought his fist into his palm with a smack.
"Yes, if we could do that! If we could get them to expend their attack there!" put in Lanstron very excitedly for him.
"We must! She shall help!" Partow was on his feet. He had reached across the table and seized Lanstron's shoulders in a powerful if flesh-padded grip. Then he turned Lanstron around toward the door of his bedroom and gave him a mighty slap of affection. "My boy, the brightest hope of victory we have is holding the wire for you. Tell her that a bearded old behemoth, who can kneel as gracefully as a rheumatic rhinoceros, is on both knees at her feet, kissing her hands and trying his best, in the name of mercy, to keep from breaking into verse of his own composition."
Back at the telephone, Lanstron, in the fervor of the cheer and the enthusiasm that had transported his chief, gave Marta Partow's message.