“I’ve got to go the limit now in flattering this man’s vanity,” was the conclusion that flashed through Phil’s mind as he listened to his captor’s coldly worded spy-suspicion. “And I’ve got to work fast, too.”
Then he addressed the occupant of more than two-thirds of the seat as follows:
“Let me subject myself to a test under your detective microscope, if you please. I must tell my story rapidly, so that you cannot accuse me of taking time to think it up. If I tell the truth so that you can’t puncture it with any reasonable doubt, will you assume that I am not a spy until there is some evidence tending to prove that I am one?”
“Of course,” replied Topoff with high-pitched, cutting tone peculiar to him. Every time it rasped into Phil’s ear it gave him “apprehensive creeps,” but the situation was desperate now, and the boy decided to disregard it.
“You have recognized me, I take it, as the American soldier who engaged in a rather spectacular contest with a squad under your command in Belleau Wood a few weeks ago,” Phil continued.
Topoff nodded with another affirmative squeak.
“Did you know that I was in that bunch of prisoners that you started to take back to your nearest railroad communication?—I presume that was where you were taking us?”
“You bet I knew it,” “the count” answered with a nod of significance, which indicated that the author of the “novel disarmament” of the boches in the wooded ravine had not been forgotten.
“Well, I was one of the fellows that engineered our escape,” Phil continued. “But I didn’t get the information myself about your identity. One of the other fellows who understood German overheard your conversation with Hertz down in the sandpit and told us all about it. Naturally we didn’t want to be blown to atoms with bombs dropped from Hertz’s aeroplane; so we decided to seek more healthful quarters. That’s all there is to it. Now, have I proved to your satisfaction that I’m not a spy?”
“No, you haven’t proved anything,” Topoff answered with a sneering look at his prisoner, “until you explain how you managed to hide a company of soldiers right in our midst ready to spring out and attack us in a manner that nobody in the wide world would ever think possible. If it hadn’t been for your little handful of men, we’d ’ave held the American army and would now be driving them back. Can you guess now what I’m going to do with you?”