"I'll have a shot at it," volunteered Captain Cumberleigh. "I was in Germany. ...Long before the war," he added apologetically, speaking with the weight of experience of twenty-two years.
He opened the log-book at the last-written page.
"'Fraid it won't help us much," he announced. "Apparently it doesn't go beyond 8 A.M. of the 15th—that is the morning of the day they collared us. By Jove! Morpeth, you've caught a much-wanted specimen. Von Preugfeld's the fellow who torpedoed the hospital ship Columbine and the Camperdown Castle."
"The Lord have mercy on his soul, then!" said Morpeth solemnly.
CHAPTER XXI
BLUFFED
"However," remarked Cumberleigh briskly, "the Columbine business hasn't anything to do with friend Fennelburt. We get no forrarder."
"I don't know so much about that," demurred Morpeth. "I'll use it as a lever to prize a secret out of this von Preugfeld. We'll have him up here and give him the shock of his life."
The R.N.R. officer touched a bell.