The doctor stopped abruptly. A hidden electric buzzer somewhere in the shadowed room was clucking an alarm. Koch pressed a button at the side of the operating chair. There was a sound beyond closed doors of some one passing through a hallway; the front door opened and closed.
"Some one at the gate," Doctor Koch explained. "Cæsar, my playful little Numidian--and an artist with the Bedouin dagger is Cæsar--he goes to answer."
Their talk was desultory during the next minutes. The doctor seemed restless under the suspense of a pending announcement as to the late visitor. Finally came a soft tapping on the hidden door behind Woodhouse. The latter heard the doctor exchange whispers with the Numidian in the hallway. Finally, "Show him into the waiting-room," Koch ordered. He came back to where the captain was sitting, a puzzled frown between his eyes.
"An Englishman, Cæsar says--an Englishman, who insists on seeing me--very important." Koch bit the end of one stubby thumb in hurried thought. He suddenly whipped open the door of one of the instrument cases, pulled out a stethoscope, and hooked the two little black receivers into his ears. Then he turned to Woodhouse.
"Quick! Off with your coat and open your shirt. You are a patient; I am just examining you when interrupted. This may be one of these clumsy English secret-service men, and I might need your alibi." The sound of an opening door beyond the folding doors and of footsteps in the adjoining room.
"You say you are sleepless at night?" Doctor Koch was talking English. "And you have a temperature on arising? Hm'm! This under your tongue, if you please"--he thrust a clinical thermometer between Woodhouse's lips; the latter already had his coat off, and was unbuttoning his shirt. Koch gave him a meaning glance, and disappeared between the folding doors, closing them behind him.
The captain, feeling much like a fool with the tiny glass tube sprouting from his lips, yet with all his faculties strained to alertness, awaited developments. If Doctor Koch's hazard should prove correct and this was an English secret-service man come to arrest him, wouldn't suspicion also fall on whomever was found a visitor in the German spy's house? Arrest and search; examination of his scarab pin--that would not be pleasant.