THE YELLOW DOVE
will be sent. The prisoner is to be allowed no privileges. Under no circumstances are his hands to be untied. If he wants water, you will give it to him with your own hands. Verstehen sie?”
The man stood erect and saluted. “Zu befehl, Herr Hauptmann,” he said.
Hammersley saw the door close and heard the key turn in the lock while Senf came forward into the room and stood by the foot of the bed. Hammersley studied him closely: a tall, loosely jointed man in his early thirties with the heavy brows and high cheekbones of the East Prussian, the face of a Slav, almost, with something of the thoughtful intensity of the South German mystic. His eyes were large, his nose thin and his face was bearded, but the lines of his mouth had a sensitive curve, belied by the big bony hands and broad shoulders. A sentimentalist, perhaps!
Hammersley determined to try him, for a plan had been forming in his mind. He had noticed with a glance which had included everything in the room when he entered, a Bible upon the mantelshelf, and in a tone which had in it a solemn sense of the doom which awaited him in the morning, he addressed his guardian quietly:
“Senf, you have a kind face. There is a small favor that you may do me.”
“If it does not conflict with my orders.”
“Not at all. Tomorrow morning I am to be shot. All I ask is that you will allow me to read for a while the Bible upon the chimneypiece.”
“Ach! I see no harm in that.”
He went over and got the book, opening the pages and looking through them.
“It is little enough for a dying man to ask,” he said.
234
