A USELESS ARGUMENT
“I’ve got to go the limit now in flattering this man’s vanity,” was the
conclusion that flashed through Phil’s mind as he listened to his
captor’s coldly worded spy-suspicion. “And I’ve got to work fast, too.”
Then he addressed the occupant of more than two-thirds of the seat as
follows:
“Let me subject myself to a test under your detective microscope, if you
please. I must tell my story rapidly, so that you cannot accuse me of
taking time to think it up. If I tell the truth so that you can’t
puncture it with any reasonable doubt, will you assume that I am not a
spy until there is some evidence tending to prove that I am one?”
“Of course,” replied Topoff with high-pitched, cutting tone peculiar to
him. Every time it rasped into Phil’s ear it gave him “apprehensive
creeps,” but the situation was desperate now, and the boy decided to
disregard it.
“You have recognized me, I take it, as the American soldier who engaged
in a rather spectacular contest with a squad under your command in
Belleau Wood a few weeks ago,” Phil continued.
Topoff nodded with another affirmative squeak.
“Did you know that I was in that bunch of prisoners that you started to
take back to your nearest railroad communication?—I presume that was
where you were taking us?”
“You bet I knew it,” “the count” answered with a nod of significance,
which indicated that the author of the “novel disarmament” of the boches
in the wooded ravine had not been forgotten.
“Well, I was one of the fellows that engineered our escape,” Phil
continued. “But I didn’t get the information myself about your identity.
One of the other fellows who understood German overheard your
conversation with Hertz down in the sandpit and told us all about it.
Naturally we didn’t want to be blown to atoms with bombs dropped from
Hertz’s aeroplane; so we decided to seek more healthful quarters. That’s
all there is to it. Now, have I proved to your satisfaction that I’m not
a spy?”
“No, you haven’t proved anything,” Topoff answered with a sneering look
at his prisoner, “until you explain how you managed to hide a company of
soldiers right in our midst ready to spring out and attack us in a
manner that nobody in the wide world would ever think possible. If it
hadn’t been for your little handful of men, we’d ’ave held the American
army and would now be driving them back. Can you guess now what I’m
going to do with you?”
“No,” Phil replied eagerly, but not without some apprehension.
“I’m going to put you through a ‘sweating’ process that will make the
worst ‘sweating’ given a suspected criminal in the Tower of London look
like a royal reception to the crown prince,” announced “Count Topoff”
with some more of his villainous sharpness of voice. “You’re going to
have an experience that will make you remember your uninvited visit to
Europe away beyond the River Jordan or the River Styx, wherever you go
after you give up the ghost.”
“But we were invited here,” Phil answered, with a chill of apprehension
that his vanity plot was doomed to failure.
“You invited yourselves here,” piped the big fellow, with an angry
swelling of his form decidedly uncomfortable to the boy beside him. “Any
other statement from you is a lie.”
Phil ached to give the blustering boche a sharp answer about submarines
and the torture of women and children, but he wisely restrained the
impulse.
“I think I can answer right now any questions you may put to me to
settle your suspicion about my being a spy,” he said resolutely. “You’d
better put the question to me now before I have time to think up a
story. If I hesitate, you’ll know you’ve caught me; if I tell a clear,
well-connected and rapid story, you ought to give me credit of telling
the truth.”
“No,” insisted “the count,” whose constitutional brutality seemed to be
showing itself more and more on the surface; “you had an opportunity to
go on with your story without waiting for any more questions. You’ve
been hesitating and talking about other things for several minutes in
order to take time to think up an answer to the last question I put to
you. When I told you you’d have to explain how you managed to hide a
company of soldiers right inside our lines and near the battle front
ready to spring out and throw our forces into confusion, why didn’t you
answer right away?”
“Because you stopped me by putting another question,” Phil replied
without hesitation. “You asked me if I could guess what you were going
to do with me.”
“And you took that as an excuse to delay answering the other question.
You think you’re very sharp, don’t you?”
“I can answer that question in a very reasonable way,” Phil insisted.
“It’s the only explanation any living man could give. You can’t, with
all your experience, conceive of another intelligent explanation. The
so-called company that I was with consisted of only the soldiers who
escaped from the guard under your command a few weeks ago. We hid in the
daytime and traveled at night, creeping nearer and nearer to the front.
At last we got as near as we thought safe and hid ourselves in dark
buildings and basements and waited for the American drive at Chateau
Thierry. When it came and your soldiers were pushed back to the point
where we were hidden, we jumped out and made our attack.”
“Too thin, too thin, my boy,” declared Topoff with a sneer. “I thought
you’d cook up some such story.”
“Keep up your ‘sweating’ process,” Phil insisted. “Don’t give me any
time to think up anything more. Fire your questions at me like a
machine-gun. Surely with your keenness of mind you can catch me if I’ve
been lying.”
“No, no, nothing more now,” returned Topoff with a doggedness of manner
and a glitter of hate in his eyes. “I haven’t begun to ‘sweat’ you yet.
You see, I didn’t bring any ‘sweating’ machinery along.”
His eyes fairly bulged with bestial cruelty as he made this announcement
with an implied promise of torture that caused a succession of shudders
to shake the boy’s frame in spite of his efforts to resist and control
the panic attack that he felt coming.