"I didn't get anything to eat that night but next morning I got a bit of black bread and a tin cup full of barley coffee. I was crazy for water, but nothing doing. I got a little in the afternoon and a piece of bread and some sausage at night. That's a sample of what happened every day for the next three days. I used to take a trip to the captain's dugout once a day and he'd try to make me talk to him in German. The third time I went I slammed the Boches so hard to the interpreter that when he told the captain what I said the brute got crazy and flew at me like a wild beast. He gave me a terrible walloping with a gun-barrel. I went to sleep and had to be dragged back to the trench. It was one of the reserve trenches I was in. I had to make a long hike through a com. trench every time I went to visit the captain.
"It went on like that until last night. Early in the evening I took my usual trip to the dugout. When I got there I saw a new face in the officer crowd. It belonged to that beast you croaked, Blazes. He had the wickedest pair of eyes I ever saw in a man's head. I didn't know him from Adam, but he thought he knew me, it seemed. He kept staring at me for a while, then he started to talk a blue streak to the captain. I caught most of it. Maybe I wasn't dazed to hear him telling all about the bridge racket back at Marvin and the Columbia, and that I was one of the friends of the American swine—that was you, Blazes—who had done for him on the Columbia."
"How did he know that you were?" Jimmy cried out in excitement.
"He'd been hanging around the French training camp for a week, shadowing you. He knew every one of the five Brothers by sight. He followed us to Paris and back and tried to shoot us up that night."
"I knew it was he!" exploded Jimmy. "What did I tell you?" He turned triumphantly to Voissard.
"You were indeed correct." With this smiling assurance, Cousin Emile motioned to Schnitzel to continue.
"He went on about you, Blazes, to beat the band. He certainly called you some names. That wireless fellow on the Columbia was his son. That came out in the talk. The fellow told about signaling a U-Boat the night you got him. He had it all planned to jump overboard and be picked up by a Boche boat. Then you queered his game. He didn't know a thing about the real smash. His son put that over by himself, I guess. The father was picked up by a trawler and landed in L——. You saw him on the station platform. He told about that, too.
"That's about all of his history, except that he asked the captain to turn me over to him to deal with. You ought to have seen his eyes when he said it. Some healthy little hate they registered. I was turned over to him next morning. Before daylight he headed a gang that came for me and marched me off to that barn. It was a long walk. You know the rest. Your coming was a miracle. I'd made up my mind not to peep when they bayoneted me to that door. I was going to die game for the U. S."
"Oh, Glory, but I'm glad I croaked him!" Jimmy's exclamation rang with an intensity of hatred. "He was some spy, Schnitz. Mon Captaine," he glanced mischievously at Cousin Emile, "found out all about him. His name was von Kreitzen. He was an Austrian spy; one of the biggest villains going."