"What we’d better tell them, so that our stories will fit—" "Stories?" "Listen," said Romney, straining for the non-idiomatic. "They will ask questions at the station. We must answer. If we answer differently, it would be better if we had not spoken—" "Yes. I am your servant. We had a disagreement. You started to beat me and I ran—" "Just a little domestic difference," Romney remarked. "Yes." "Where do we live?" "I came with you from Shanghai four days ago. We have been in the country since arrival—" Romney was further amused. Minglapo had been studiously avoided in the arrangement. The spy had a fertile mind. These things were a part of his work. He was aware even of Romney’s coming from Shanghai. "You are not to remember the place we have been since Shanghai and Tongu," the Japanese added. "I have been showing you our country. You are rich. You just play and pay.... You must speak sharp to me now, as if you did not like my talk—" Romney noisily rebuked his servant. The hands of the little policeman tightened on his arm. "Good," said the Japanese in frightened, cringing tones. "Now I will explain to them that I am your servant and that you were displeased with me." There were suspended explanations to the policeman; long, voluble breaths and fresh beginnings, as if the spy were releasing a memorized address; after that a moment of silence, and a low wailing sentence in English: "It does not please them altogether." They were locked presently in the same cell. Voices of the drugged and drunken beat through the corridors, and screams of madness from lower passages. And still Romney had his chance to think. The Big Three wouldn’t be pleased to learn that he had permitted the spy to fall into the hands of the law. Even the Japanese didn’t understand a white man’s mercy. These nationalists were an interesting sort. They didn’t ask from others what they were unwilling to give themselves. Failure meant forfeiture of life in their work. But the West didn’t breed this sort of thing in a man. Romney found himself not as intrinsically of the East as he imagined. He could conceive a big system doing away with a host of lives, but still he didn’t care to be the direct instrument of taking the life of one man. Presently he found himself in the midst of conjecture as to how the Big Three meant to strangle Japan. For many moments this matter wavered back and forth through his mind, and did not take real form until he happened to recall the laboratory in Minglapo’s cellar. There might be a connection here. He had heard of a ghastly, almost incommunicable horror having to do with the slaying of multitudes without any formal arrangement of platoon, brigade or corps....