The words rushed forth so volubly, so hurriedly, that her utterance was impeded. She became rigid, closing her eyes for a moment. Then, summoning up a great effort of will, she put out her right arm, pushed aside a chair and uncovered a little mahogany slab with a brass switch, for which she felt with her hand while her eyes remained turned on Paul, on the Comte d'Andeville, on his son and on the three officers. And, in a dry, cutting voice, she rapped out:
"What have I to fear from you now? You wish to know if I am the Countess von Hohenzollern? Yes, I am. I don't deny it, I even proclaim the fact. The actions which you, in your stupid way, call murders, yes, I committed them all. It was my duty to the Emperor, to the greater Germany. . . . A spy? Not at all. Simply a German woman. And what a German woman does for her country is rightly done. So let us have no more silly phrases, no more babbling about the past. Nothing matters but the present and the future. And I am once more mistress of the present and the future both. Thanks to you, I am resuming the direction of events; and we shall have some amusement. . . . Shall I tell you something? All that has happened here during the past few days was prepared by myself. The bridges carried away by the river were sapped at their foundations by my orders. Why? For the trivial purpose of making you fall back? No doubt, that was necessary first: we had to announce a victory. Victory or not, it shall be announced; and it will have its effect, that I promise you. But I wanted something better; and I have succeeded."
She stopped and then, leaning her body towards her hearers, continued, in a lower voice:
"The retreat, the disorder among your troops, the need of opposing our advance and bringing up reinforcements must needs compel your commander-in-chief to come here and take counsel with his generals. For months past, I have been lying in wait for him. It was impossible for me to get within reach of him. So what was I to do? Why, of course, as I couldn't go to him, I must make him come to me and lure him to a place, chosen by myself, where I had made all my arrangements. Well, he has come. My arrangements are made. And I have only to act. . . . I have only to act! He is here, in a room at the little villa which he occupies whenever he comes to Soissons. He is there, I know it. I was waiting for the signal which one of my men was to give me. You have heard the signal yourselves. So there is no doubt about it. The man whom I want is at this moment deliberating with his generals in a house which I know and which I have had mined. He has with him a general commanding an army and another general, the commander of an army corps. Both are of the ablest. There are three of them, not to speak of their subordinates. And I have only to make a movement, understand what I say, a single movement, I have only to touch this lever to blow them all up, together with the house in which they are. Am I to make that movement?"
There was a sharp click. Bernard d'Andeville had cocked his revolver:
"We must kill the beast!" he cried.
Paul rushed at him, shouting:
"Hold your tongue! And don't move a finger!"
The countess began laughing again; and her laugh was full of wicked glee:
"You're right, Paul Delroze, my man. You take in the situation, you do. However quickly that young booby may fire his bullet at me, I shall always have time to pull the lever. And that's what you don't want, isn't it? That's what these other gentlemen and you want to avoid at all costs . . . even at the cost of my liberty, eh? For that is how the matter stands, alas! All my fine plan is falling to pieces because I am in your hands. But I alone am worth as much as your three great generals, am I not? And I have every right to spare them in order to save myself. So are we agreed? Their lives against mine! And at once! . . . Paul Delroze, I give you one minute in which to consult your friends. If in one minute, speaking in their name and your own, you do not give me your word of honor that you consider me free and that I shall receive every facility for crossing the Swiss frontier, then . . . then heigh-ho, up we go, as the children say! . . . Oh, how I've got you, all of you! And the humor of it! Hurry up, friend Delroze, your word! Yes, that's all I ask. Hang it, the word of a French officer! Ha, ha, ha, ha!"