hroat,
for such a time as a man might take to descend those steps to the sea.

Suddenly my prisoner broke from me and flung himself on the wall.
There was a click as if a lever had been pulled. Then came a low
rumbling far, far below the ground, and through the window I saw a
cloud of chalky dust pouring out of the shaft of the stairway.

Someone switched on the light.

The old man was looking at me with blazing eyes.

'He is safe,' he cried. 'You cannot follow in time ... He is gone ...
He has triumphed ... DER SCHWARZE STEIN IST IN DER SIEGESKRONE.'

There was more in those eyes than any common triumph. They had been
hooded like a bird of prey, and now they flamed with a hawk's pride. A
white fanatic heat burned in them, and I realized for the first time
the terrible thing I had been up against. This man was more than a
spy; in his foul way he had been a patriot.

As the handcuffs clinked on his wrists I said my last word to him.

'I hope Franz will bear his triumph well. I ought to tell you that the
ARIADNE for the last hour has been in our hands.'

Three weeks later, as all the world knows, we went to war. I joined
the New Army the first week, and owing to my Matabele experience got a
captain's commission straight off. But I had done my best service, I
think, before I put on khaki.

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