"Good. We speak together like good friends, yes?"
"Naturally," said Lanyard. "It is so conducive to chumminess to be caressed with an automatic pistol—you've no idea!"
"Oblige by speaking German. Our ears are sick with all this bastard English. Also, more quietly speak. Do not put me to the regrettable necessity of shooting you."
"How regrettable? You didn't stick at braining those others—"
"Hardly the same thing. You are not like those English swine. You are French; and Germany has no hatred for France, but only pity that it so fatuously opposes manifest destiny. In truth, you are not even French, but a great thief; and criminals have no patriotism, nor loyalty to any State but their own, the state of moral turpitude."
The speaker interrupted himself to relish his wit with a thick chuckle. And Lanyard's jaws ached with the strain of self-control. He continued to pluck at the folds of silk while concentrating in effort to memorise the voice, which he failed utterly to place. Undoubtedly this animal was a shipboard acquaintance, one who knew him well; but those detestable German gutturals disguised his accents quite beyond identification.
"For all that, you are not wise so to try my patience. I permit you five minutes by my watch in which to make up your mind to surrender that document."
"How often must I tell you," Lanyard enquired, "all this talk of documents is Greek to me?"
"Then you have five minutes to brush up your classical education, and translate into terms suited to your intelligence. I will have that document from you or—in four more minutes—shoot you dead."
To this Lanyard said nothing. But his patient attentions to the handkerchief round his wrists were beginning perceptibly to be rewarded.