"Ah!" exclaimed Clubfoot musingly, "that would be Semlin's half.... I might have known.... Well, never mind, Schmalz can take my car and fetch it. He can be back by to-morrow. Where is he to go?"
"The other half is in Berlin," I said desperately. My voice sounded to me like a third person speaking.
"That's simpler," replied Clubfoot. "Ten minutes to twelve now ... if I wire at once, that half should be here by midnight.... I'll get the message off immediately...."
He looked up at me, pencil in hand.
It was the end. I had kept faith with Francis to the limit of my powers, but now my resistance was broken. He had failed me ... not me, but Monica, rather.... I could not save her now. Like some nightmare film, the crowded hours of the past few weeks flashed past my eyes, a jostling procession of figures—Semlin with his blue lips and livid face, Schratt with her bejewelled hands, the Jew Kore, Haase with his bullet head, Francis, sadly musing on the café verandah ... and Monica, all in white, as I saw her that night at the Esplanade ... my thoughts always came back to her, a white and pitiful figure in some dusty courtyard at lamplight facing a row of levelled rifles....
"I am waiting!"
Clubfoot's voice broke stridently upon the silence.
Should I tell him the truth now?
It was three minutes to the hour.
"Come! The two addresses!"