"Take away his gun!" he ordered.
The fair young man I had seen at the graveside stepped forward. Roughly, vindictively, he ran his hands over me. He found Carstairs' automatic in my side pocket and transferred it to his own.
"You see these men," said Clubfoot, bending his bushy eyebrows at me. "Their orders are to shoot to kill in the event of any attempt on your part to escape. And whatever your private views on suicide may be you will probably bear in mind that Miss Garth—the charming Miss Garth—will, in any case, be left to mourn you...."
This allusion to Marjorie frightened me. There was no suavity about Clubfoot now. He was in his blackest, most menacing mood. His face was positively baleful; and there was a twitching of his black-bristled nostrils which warned me that he was on the verge of a paroxysm of fury.
"Leave me alone with him!" he commanded brusquely—his voice was harsh and snarling—"but remain outside within call!"
I felt the blood rush back into my numbed arms as the men relaxed their grip and withdrew.
Nervously Grundt's great fist beat a little tattoo on his open palm. He appeared to be making an effort to control himself.
"You would play a double game with me, would you?" he said. "No man has ever double-crossed me and got away with it, do you hear? My master may be in exile, my country fallen from greatness; but I am king here. Do you understand that?"
His pale lips trembled and he stuttered as he strove to master his rising passion.
"This cipher message is useless, as well you know. Without the preliminary indication, it is unintelligible. So Itzig, who in his day was the greatest cipher expert the Russian Okhrana ever had, has reported to me. And you knew it, you.... you...."