"Ah, ha!" exclaimed the colonel, placing one finger to the side of his hawk-like beak and looking cunning. "So that is it. A wireless operator with Belgian passes in his possession. It looks bad."
Radwig bent over and whispered something in the colonel's ear.
"Herr Radwig tells me that you are a hater of Germans. That you had him placed in custody in England and that he only escaped to join our army after surmounting great difficulties. What have you to say to that?"
"As to being a hater of Germans, no American is that," said Jack. "We are all neutral in this struggle. So far as Herr Radwig being imprisoned in England, he was already in irons on the ship before she docked."
"Is that true?" demanded the colonel of Radwig, who smiled and waved his hand with a gesture that signified "absurd."
"You see Herr Radwig denies that you tell the truth," remarked the colonel.
"Surely my word is as good as his," protested Jack, trying to keep cool, although he saw that things looked black indeed for him before such a prejudiced tribunal.
"Herr Radwig is a German we all know and honor," retorted the colonel. "Who you are we do not know. Therefore, between you, we must believe him."
"You don't mean that you believe I am a spy?" blurted out Jack.
"The evidence shows it," rejoined the colonel coldly. "You are aware of the rules of war?"
The whole room suddenly swam before Jack's eyes. A deadly chill passed through him. For an instant he could not assure himself that it was not a hideous dream from which he must soon awaken. But the next instant, the reality, the horrible fact that he was about to be sentenced to death as a spy, rushed back upon him. He tried to speak but his dry lips refused to deliver a word.
The colonel and Radwig whispered, and then the former announced in his harsh grating voice:
"It will be at reveille to-morrow. Remove the prisoner."
"But you don't understand," he choked out, "surely you don't mean to execute me, an American citizen, without a chance to explain. I----"
"I will assume full responsibility," was the cold reply.
Jack struggled with his captors, but a cruel blow in the small of the back with the butt of a rifle so dizzied him, that by the time he recovered his senses, he was back in the dark, foul-smelling smoke house once more.