"Trapped!" Scornfully Wenzel derided the suggestion. "Am I so brainless that I cannot hope to blind the eyes of the unintelligent spawn? Are my arms too weak to throttle a few of the accursed swine? No, Arnold, I have no fear on that score." "What of a rifle bullet? Neither brains nor brawn, Geoffrey, can successfully withstand the flight of a cartridge." For the first time that day Wenzel smiled. "Then shall I be glad, Arnold. Don't you realize that death is all I seek? What is life to me now? Hell! Hell, from morning till night. My thoughts torture me when I--I think of--Zita, poor little Zita dying from the shock of seeing her father bayoneted to death by--by the muckrake of the earth, the spewed-out refuse of the lowest type of humanity. God! All I wish is to kill, kill; murder the brutes as they murdered Zita." So redly did his scars throb with the intensity of his passion that it seemed to Arnold they might burst with the pressure. Wenzel may have guessed his thoughts, for he laughed harshly, hideously. "God was still not satisfied with all He had done to me. No, there was more to come, Arnold, more to come. First He took away my Zita, killed my heart, chilled my soul, and then, when I wanted to die that I might join her, when I murdered six bloody Bolsheviks and gave myself up that I might perish by their bullets, what queer prank did He play then? "Let me be put up against the wall, let the Communists fire, let every bullet strike me here and here--here--here--so that I fell, and was left for dead, and yet--what then? Let me live, live that I might gaze in the mirror at myself and hate my own face as I hate the Bolsheviks, detest myself as I would the Devil. "Do you think I am blind that I cannot see the hellish scars which score my face and head from side to side? God! I wish I couldn't. It hurts so, it hurts so." No longer were his eyes expressionless. Once Arnold had looked into the eyes of a dog, his body flattened beneath the tyres of a motor-car, and what he saw then remained with him as a memory for years. Once again he saw the pictured story of unbearable pain, and this time it was in Geoffrey's eyes. If his body were on earth, his soul was in the deepest depths of Hell. If he lived it was only to look for death, the death which was preferable to life. The train rumbled on, and Comrade Grocz impatiently waited for the journey to finish. * * * * * * By the time Grocz reached the castle it was practically pitch dark. Eugene, the ex-coachman, met him at the gate. "Back again, comrade?" "Yes, back again, my friend, with good news." Eugene grunted. "He is to die?" "Ay, my friend, at the end of a rope, over the battlements. Then when it is all over we will cut the rope and he will fall 'plop' into the Danube. What more could you want?" "Nothing more. Your scheme is excellent, yet I would give you advice, comrade." He paused. "Well, say on," urged Grocz impatiently.