"_Bien!_ to-morrow, then--at whatever hour m'sieur may name."
To-morrow. It would then be too late. In an hour he might inform the police, and I would find myself under arrest. The German police would be only too pleased to have an opportunity of retaliating.
"No," I exclaimed. "To-night. Now. Our business will only take a few moments. Come to my sitting-room. The matter I want to explain brooks no delay. Every moment is of consequence."
"Very well," laughed the Frenchman, with a distinct air of bravado. "You believe yourself extremely clever, no doubt, M'sieur Jacox. Let me hear what you have to say."
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."
"So that is your revenge, eh?" I asked, realising how utterly helpless I now was in the hands of my bitterest enemy--the man who had turned a traitor. I could see no way out.
"Bah!" he laughed in my face. "The power of your wonderful old country--so old that it has become worm-eaten--is already at an end. In a month you will have German soldiers swarming upon your shores, while America will seize Canada and Australia, and Russia will advance into India. You will be crushed, beaten, humiliated--and the German eagle will fly over your proud London. The John Bull bladder is to be pricked!" he laughed.