And without a word to Lawrence he turned and left the bridge. On his face was a look that showed that the demon within him was under perfect control, but he had no desire to hide the fact that it was still with him. Lawrence would no more have thought of following him than he would have thought of following a wounded Manchurian tiger into its cave.
“I would have hated to hear that any one of our fine fellows had been killed,” he said with a nervous laugh, “but my, what a swell little afternoon hanging that would have been! Nathan Hale with the original cast wouldn’t have had a speculator in front of his doors. His front-row seats would be selling at box-office prices, while we would have sold out the house at ten thousand times the cost of the production before the first-nighters had even seen a press notice. There would not have been a piece of paper in the house except the Press and the Princes. By the sacred substance of John D. Rockefeller’s hair-tonic, I hate to think of the money we would have made with the movies! The Crown Prince giving the Papa Wilhelm kiss, while the trap man plays on the melodeon ‘It’s the Wrong Way to Tickle Mary,’ and the Ghost of the Hohenzollern, who ate up her two babies when she found they disturbed her gentleman friend, hovering over the scene like Schumann-Heink in the Rheingold,—I would not release that reel for less than a billion dollars down!
“But why talk about pleasant things when we have such serious matters on our hands.”
“Mr. Edestone looked as if he meant serious business all right,” said one of the officers. “Listen! I hear the wireless sending a message now.”
Lawrence listened, and repeated as he heard: “The Little Peace Maker is now running for Kiel, where she will arrive at 8:30. At 8:45 I will begin to drop tons of lyddite and dynamite on the decks of all German ships of war, and in order that there may be no unnecessary loss of life I give this notice.”
The instrument stopped, but Lawrence continued, as if still catching and translating the message:
“And realizing the extreme supersensitiveness of the German sailors, we are sending ahead by Parcel Post baskets for the cats and cages for the canaries. The women and babies, being contraband, must go down with the ships.”
They were now slowly swinging around the Palace, and as the people of Berlin knew nothing, they took the accepted German position, which was that Edestone was afraid of the Kaiser’s wrath, and they therefore came flocking out into the streets to see him dip his flag to that of the all-powerful German Empire.
Lawrence noted that the Imperial standard was no longer flying over the Palace. “It looks,” said he, “as if we would have to put in an under-study for the leading man.”
And then as if some sudden idea had struck him, he rushed from the bridge, and while the Little Peace Maker was slowly passing over the plaza in front of the Palace, the men on the bridge saw with a mingled feeling of horror and delight a large black object, which resembled a submarine mine, dropping from the port side of the ship, and they stood in breathless expectation of seeing the hideous Renaissance monument, erected by Schluter, blown to atoms. When the sinister-looking cylinder struck the pavement it exploded, but instead of death and destruction the flaggings were strewn with egg-shells, coffee-grounds, and garbage.