You've seen bubbles of air under water, shining like quicksilver. Well, it was like that. It was flawless, without texture, intangible and shimmering. It was not the thing itself we saw, but the things reflected in it—a little, twisted, shining world swimming in the heart of that ball of distorted space. Peering closer, I saw that the coils which shaped it were glowing with an eerie, frosty white light. I stared, fascinated, and by what? By a half-invisible bubble, like an indoor baseball, conjured up by some legerdemain to make fools of us! It was nonsense! I jerked my eyes away—and saw them.
Three men with guns stood on the little stair, watching us. They were gentlemen, polished, clever gentlemen adroit at the art of death. Their guns were of the kind which Middle-Europe gives to its officers, and their faces were Middle-European faces. They were in formal dress, and one of them held his gloves in his left hand.
Dampier had seen them before I, reflected in the shining sphere. He turned, his back against the control-panel, his white teeth gnawing like a rat's at his black beard. The madness was back in his glittering eyes; madness of a trapped beast.
"So!" he whispered. "Now we shall meet."
They came down the stairs, one after the other. How they had cut their way into that Gibraltar of a house I will never know. They may have been working for days and weeks to break through Dampier's defenses. But they were there.
Resistance was futile. Even Dampier realized that. The three guns urged us back against the wall. Deft fingers searched us but found nothing. The three men stepped back to the foot of the little stair, their guns raised, like a firing squad waiting for the signal. And then, above them, I saw the smiling face of Wilhelm Friedrich Nebel, Ambassador from Middle-Europe.
I hadn't believed Dampier's story until then. It was fantastic, this spy business, with a man like Nebel in the villain's role. Things like that don't happen any more. Yet Wilhelm Nebel stood there with a smile on his heavy lips and no smile at all in his pale little eyes. He came down the stairs, treading silently like a cat. He was like a cat in his black and white evening attire, white-bosomed and sleek. He had in his slender fingers a thick golden chain, with a heavy seal of gold made from an ancient coin. A crimson ribbon stretched across his breast like a line of blood.
Satan at the sacrifice! And then the illusion broke.
Those devil fingers went into the pocket of his vest, brought out thick, steel-rimmed spectacles, perched them precariously on the thin-bridged nose. The massive shoulders slouched over, trousers drew tight across his heavy buttocks as he bent and stared into the shining globe. I had never thought of Nebel as fat or gross, in spite of his size, but that single act showed him to me as a Teuton peddler, stooping to finger the weave of some shoddy cloth, to decide how high a price would be safe and how low a one profitable. Satan from his throne! He stood erect again, but his massive face was red with the effort.
Me he ignored. I was nobody. He bowed to Dampier and again I heard the cloth of his breeches creak.