“You’re a good liar, Hannay,” he said.
I flew into a rage. “Stop fooling, damn you! I tell you my name’s Ainslie, and I never heard of anyone called Hannay in my born days. I’d sooner have the police than you with your Hannays and your monkey-faced pistol tricks.... No, guv’nor, I beg pardon, I don’t mean that. I’m much obliged to you for the grub, and I’ll thank you to let me go now the coast’s clear.”
It was obvious that he was badly puzzled. You see he had never seen me, and my appearance must have altered considerably from my photographs, if he had got one of them. I was pretty smart and well dressed in London, and now I was a regular tramp.
“I do not propose to let you go. If you are what you say you are, you will soon have a chance of clearing yourself. If you are what I believe you are, I do not think you will see the light much longer.”
He rang a bell, and a third servant appeared from the veranda.
“I want the Lanchester in five minutes,” he said. “There will be three to luncheon.”
Then he looked steadily at me, and that was the hardest ordeal of all.
There was something weird and devilish in those eyes, cold, malignant, unearthly, and most hellishly clever. They fascinated me like the bright eyes of a snake. I had a strong impulse to throw myself on his mercy and offer to join his side, and if you consider the way I felt about the whole thing you will see that that impulse must have been purely physical, the weakness of a brain mesmerized and mastered by a stronger spirit. But I managed to stick it out and even to grin.
“You’ll know me next time, guv’nor,” I said.
“Karl,” he spoke in German to one of the men in the doorway, “you will put this fellow in the storeroom till I return, and you will be answerable to me for his keeping.”