Together we ascended the broad marble steps to the first floor, and I held open the door of my sitting-room. When he had entered, I closed it, and offering him a chair, commenced in a resolute tone:
"Now, M'sieur Pierron, I am here to offer terms to you."
"Terms!" he laughed. "Diable! What do you mean?"
"I mean that I foresee your evil intention against myself, because of my success in the Brest affair," was my quick reply. "You will denounce me here in Germany as a British agent, eh?"
"You are perfectly correct in your surmise, m'sieur. Here they have an unpleasant habit in their treatment of foreign spies."
"And does it not usually take two persons to play a game?" I asked, perfectly cool. "Are you not a spy also?"
"Go to the police, mon cher ami, and tell them what you will," he laughed defiantly. "Straus, the chief of police here, is my friend. You would not be the first person who has tried to secure my arrest and failed."
His words confounded me. I saw that I alone was in peril, and that he, by reason of his personal friendship with the chief of police, was immune from arrest.
I had walked deliberately, and with eyes wide open, into the trap!
"You see," he laughed, pointing to the telephone instrument on the little writing-table, "I have only to take that and call up the police office, and your British Government will lose the services of one of its shrewdest agents."