Nothing will ever efface the memory of the scene that met my eyes. Tiel, Eileen, and Ashington sat there, the two men each with a whisky-and-soda, and all three seemingly in the most extraordinarily high spirits. It was Ashington's face and voice that suddenly rent the veil from before my eyes. Instead of the morose and surly individual I had met before, he sat there the incarnation of the jovial sailor. He was raising his glass to his lips, and as I entered I heard the words—
"Here's to you again, Robin!"
What had happened I did not clearly grasp in that first instant, but I felt I was betrayed. My hand went straight to my revolver pocket, but before I could seize it, Tiel, who sat nearest, leapt up, grasped my wrist, and with the shock of his charge drove me down into a chair. It was done so suddenly that I could not possibly have resisted. Then with a movement like a conjurer he picked the revolver out of my pocket, and said in his infernally cool calm way—
"Please consider yourself a prisoner of war, Mr Belke."
Even then I had not grasped the whole truth.
"A prisoner of war!" I exclaimed. "And what the devil are you, Herr Tiel? A traitor?"
"You have got my name a little wrong," said he, with that icy smile of his. "I am Commander Blacklock of the British Navy, so you can surrender either to me or to Captain Phipps, whichever you choose."
"Phipps!" I gasped, for I remembered that as the name of a member of Jellicoe's staff.
"That's me, old man," said the gross person with insufferable familiarity. "The Honourable Thomas Bainbridge Ashington would have a fit if he looked in the glass and saw this mug!"
"Then I understand I am betrayed?" I asked as calmly as I could.