"I have made you my proposal, Herr Doktor: you have made yours. Yours is quite unacceptable. I have told you with great frankness why it is necessary that I should have your portion of the document and the sum I am prepared to pay for it. I set its value at five thousand dollars. I will pay you the money over in cash, here and now, in good German bank-notes, in exchange for those slips of paper."
The man's suavity had all but vanished: his voice was harsh and stern. His eyes glittered under his shaggy brows as he looked at me. Had I been less agitated, I should have noted this, as a portent of the coming storm, also his great ape's hands picking nervously at the telegram in his lap.
"I have already told you," I said firmly, "that I don't want your money. You know my terms!"
He rose up from his seat and his figure seemed to tower.
"Terms?" he cried in a voice that quivered with suppressed passion, "terms? Understand that I give orders. I accept terms from no man. We waste time here talking. Come, take the money and give me the paper."
I shook my head. My brain was clear, but I felt the crisis was coming. I took a good grip with my hands of the marble slab covering the radiator behind me to give me confidence. The slab yielded: mechanically I noted that it was loose.
The man in front of me was shaking with rage.
"Listen!" he said. "I'll give you one more chance. But mark my words well. Do you know what happened to the man that stole that document? The English took him out and shot him on account of what was found in his house when they raided it. Do you know what happened to the interpreter at the internment camp, who was our go-between, who played us false by cutting the document in half? The English shot him too, on account of what was found in letters that came to him openly through the post? And who settled Schulte? And who settled the other man? Who contrived the traps that sent them to their doom? It was I, Grundt, I, the cripple, I, the Clubfoot, that had these traitors despatched as an example to the six thousand of us who serve our Emperor and empire in darkness! You dog, I'll smash you!"
He was gibbering like an angry ape: his frame was shaking with fury: every hair in the tangle on his face and hands seemed to bristle with his Berserker frenzy.
But he kept away from me, and I saw that he was still fighting to preserve his self-control.