Roger fingered his cold pipe, swallowed several times, looked out the open door where he could see Charley at the bars, rubbing Peter's head, then went on:
"What you've done to Ernest is obvious. He's the sweetest tempered, most easily influenced chap in the world. You caught him in New York after he'd failed with the Smithsonian—probably after some spy in the Smithsonian had put you wise, and fed him up with the superman idea and he, poor mut, fell for it."
"Roger!" shouted Ernest. "You can't talk about me as if I were feeble-minded."
"But hang it, Ern, you have been!" exclaimed Roger. Then, with a little break in his voice, "I tell you, you've been thinking and speaking treason and I won't have it! I won't have it!"
"Come! Come! Mr. Moore!" said Werner; "supposing what you've surmised should turn out to be true. Might is right in this world."
"You can't draw me into a discussion of ethics, Mr. Werner. Ernest and I'll have that out afterward. I'm just telling you this, that Germany can't have my solar device and it can't have Ernest. There's enough evidence in that tin dispatch box of Von Minden's, Mr. Werner, almost to persuade Congress to declare war on your super-fatherland. There's enough evidence in that box to make headlines in every American paper for a month. What it would do to pro-German sentiment in this country is a caution."
Werner's sunburned face went purple. "Gott im Himmel!" he roared. "Did the fool keep my letters?"
"No, but he copied them into his journal, with all sorts of other data of vital interest to the American public. We had a very pleasant morning reading his journal. My great regret is that I've so neglected that document box."
With surprising quickness for a stout man, Werner pulled a revolver from his hip pocket, and pointed it at Roger.
"I want that box, Moore!" he roared.