Swinton said in an even, hard voice: "The British government will have you shot as a German spy."
"Perhaps Captain Herbert vill be shot as an English spy to-morrow; und now"—Boelke raised his arm—"ven I drop my hand you vill be shot for resisting arrest."
"We won't give the hound an excuse for murder," Finnerty said, leading the way through the door. A German followed them in, and ran his hands over their bodies for revolvers; finding Finnerty's hunting knife, he took it away. The door was locked, and a guard placed in front of it.
It was only now that the two noticed that Darna Singh had disappeared; nobody seemed to have seen him; he had simply vanished. Probably the guard, even if they saw him, took him to be one of their own natives—not associated with the sahibs who had dropped into their hands.
Chapter XXI
Captain Foley sat in Doctor Boelke's big chair in the doctor's bungalow, seeing a lovely vision in the smoke which curled upward from his cheroot; he saw himself the possessor of two race horses he would buy when he went back to Europe—perhaps it would have to be in Germany—with the money Boelke had gone to the palace for. The crafty captain had demanded "money down"—the two thousand pounds he was to have for delivering the stolen paper, and that, too, before he showed the paper. To guard against force, he had allowed Marie to keep the document, but Marie should have been in the bungalow; however, she could not be far—she would be in shortly.
From where he sat at Boelke's flat desk, Foley looked upon a wall of the room that was panelled in richly carved teakwood, and from a brass rod hung heavy silk curtains. On the panel that immediately fronted his eyes was Ganesha, a pot-bellied, elephant-headed god; a droll figure that caught the captain's fancy, especially when it reeled groggily to one side to uncover an opening through which a dark, brilliant eye peered at him. The captain's face held placid under this mystic scrutiny, but his right hand gently pulled a drawer of the desk open, disclosing a Mauser pistol.
When the whole panel commenced to slide silently, he lifted the pistol so that its muzzle rested on the desk. Through the opening created in the wall a handsome native stepped into the room, salaamed, and, turning, closed the aperture; then he said: "I am Nawab Darna Singh, the brother of Rajah Ananda's princess. May I close the door, sahib?"
Foley lifted the Mauser into view, drawling: "If you wish; I have a key here to open it, if necessary."