Page:Biggers and Ritchie - Inside the Lines.djvu/207

  a number from the Wilhelmstrasse! He's on the Rock to do a spy's work!"

"Pshaw! Why did Brussels let you go?" General Crandall tipped back in his seat and cast an amused glance at the flushed face before him.

Capper shook his head doggedly. "I'm not drunk, General Crandall. I'm so broke I couldn't get drunk if I would. So help me, I'm telling God's truth. I got it straight" Capper checked his tumult of words, and did some rapid thinking. How much did he dare reveal! "In Alexandria, General—got it there—from the inside, sir. Koch is the head of the Wilhelmstrasse crowd there—the same Cook you knew in Rangoon; he engineered the trick. The wildest dreams of the Wilhelmstrasse have come true. They've got a man in your signal tower, General—in your signal tower!"

General Crandall, in whom incredulity was beginning to give way to the first faint glimmerings of conviction as to the possibility of truth in the informer's tale, rallied himself nevertheless to combat an aspersion cast on a British officer.

"Suppose the Germans have a spy in my