Vita watched him, fascinated and terrified. The silent moments slipped away with the inevitability which no human power can stay.
Von Berger looked up. The measure of his eyes was coldly calculating.
"You have ten seconds," he said, and returned to his contemplation of the moving hand.
The strain was unendurable. Vita felt that she must scream. Her will was yielding before the moral terror this man inspired. There was no hope of help. No hope anywhere. The fire shook down, and she started, her nerves on edge. She glanced over at Von Salzinger. Instantly his features stirred to that meaning expression of sympathy. Now, however, it only revolted her, and, as though drawn by a magnet, her eyes came back to the bent head of Von Berger.
Simultaneously the man looked up and snapped his watch closed and returned it to his pocket.
"Well?" he demanded, and the whole expression of him had changed.
Vita saw the tigerish light suddenly leap into his eyes. The man was transfigured. She warned herself he was no longer a man. She could only regard him as something in the nature of a human tiger.
"I will go," she said, in a voice rendered thick by her terror-parched throat.
"Ja wohl!"
Von Berger turned and signed to his confederate.