"What's that!" said the lieutenant sharply.
But young Guild shrugged his shoulders. "You wouldn't understand either. Besides you are too talkative for an underling. Do your duty--if you know how."
"Swine of a Yankee," said the lieutenant, speaking slowly and with painful precision, "do you suppose you are in your own sty of a Republic? Silence! A Prussian officer commands you! March!"
Guild dropped his hands into the pockets of his belted jacket. "You little shrimp," he said good humouredly, and followed the officer, who had now drawn his sword.
Out into the hall they filed, across it to the closed door. The sentry on duty there opened it; the lieutenant, very red in the face, delivered his prisoner, then, at a nod from the grey-clad officer who was sitting behind a writing desk, saluted, faced about, and marched out. The door closed sharply behind him.
Young Guild looked steadily at the man in grey, and the man in grey gazed as steadily back from behind his desk.
He was a man of forty-five, lean, well built, blond, and of regular features save that his cheek-bones were a trifle high, which seemed to crowd his light blue eyes, make them narrower, and push them into a very slight slant. He had the well-groomed aspect of a Prussian officer, dry of skin, clean-shaven save for the mustache _en croc_, which his bony but powerful and well-kept hands absently caressed at intervals.
His forehead was broad and benevolent, but his eyes modified the humanity and his mouth almost denied it--a mouth firm without shrewdness, not bad, not cruel for the sake of cruelty, yet moulded in lines which promised no hope other than that iron justice which knows no mercy.
General von Reiter folded his bony hands and rested them on the blotter.
"How came you to be among the Yslemont hostages?"
"I was stopping at the Hotel Poste when the Uhlans and cyclists suddenly appeared. The captain of Uhlans took the Burgomaster with whom I had been playing chess, myself, the notary, and other leading citizens."
"Other papers to establish your identity?"
"A few business letters from New York. They read them, but told me they were of no use to me."
"Why did you not communicate with your nearest Consul or with the American Minister in Brussels?"