The first impression that struck Phil forcibly as “Count Topoff” entered the room was the fact that he had been drinking. This reminded him of the drink-fest that had incapacitated “the count” and his command of guards, in a French inn a few weeks previously, to prevent the prisoners in their charge from turning the tables on them.
“It’s probably lucky for me that he was too much under the influence to remember the trick we played on them when we saw to it that every ‘drunk’ among them was super-drunk,” the boy mused after the strain of his torture had been relieved by the cutting of his thumb-toe bonds.
Topoff wasted no time in the carrying out of the portion of his program now due. Although plainly flushed with the liquor he had drunk recently, there was nothing maudlin in his manner, and he had full command of his usual wits.
“Well, go ahead with your yarn,” he ordered, sitting down in an armchair ancient enough in appearance to have belonged to the days of Charlemagne. “But hold on. Do you realize what is going to happen to you if you lie? You’re going into that pillory, with your bare feet on those sharp steel points. Now go ahead, but you’d better not talk at all if you’re thinking of telling me another string of lies.”
Phil’s resolution was almost shattered at this prospect, and he was on the verge of confessing the untruth of his purpose, when it occurred to him that torture on the puncturing pillory could hardly be worse than the agony he suffered in the unendurable attitude from which he had just been released.
“If I have to die or torture, I don’t see that there’s much choice between these two ways,” he concluded. “So here goes, hoping I’ll be able to pull the wool over his eyes.”
“The truth is this,” he continued aloud with a camouflage of desperation, “and may my native land never know of my traitorous act. There’s really no need of my begging you to have mercy on me after you’ve learned the truth from me, for I shall be so ashamed of my cowardice that I shan’t be satisfied until I find a place where I can hide my face from every other man on earth.”
As he spoke Phil covertly watched the countenance of Topoff and was gratified with the evidence of growing and expectant interest that he saw there.
“You people,” he continued, looking his captor straight in the eye, “perfected the submarine and used it as a most destructive war engine. America has just completed her invention of the subterrene, and will soon be able with it to undermine any battle front you may be able to establish.”
“What is the subterrene?” demanded “the count,” leaning forward eagerly.