I had thought, at the beginning, that eventually I might bargain with them—my life for the information—but now instinct told me that it wouldn’t answer. Sapten would have hanged me on the spot, I’m sure—anyway, it wouldn’t have suited the character I was trying desperately to establish. In that, I saw, lay my only hope—to make them believe that I had been a helpless victim of a dastardly plot. And God help me, wasn’t it true?

So I told them about Jotunberg, and the plans for disposing of Carl Gustaf. Grundvig clasped his temples, Hansen exclaimed in horror, Sapten lit his pipe and puffed in silence.

“Aye,” says he, “and then what? This fellow tried to murder you—you killed him, you say. What did you propose to do next?”

“Why—why—I hardly knew. I was distraught—my wife and child—the fate of the prince—I was half-mad with anxiety.”

“To be sure,” says he, and puffed some more. “And this was all played out, you tell us, so that this Otto Bismarck could start to build a German Empire? Well, well.”

“You’ve heard what I’ve told you, sir,” says I. “I warned you it was incredible, but it’s true—every word of it.”

Grundvig, who had been pacing up and down, spun on his heel.

“I for one cannot believe it! It is impossible! Major, Erik! Would anyone but a madman credit such a story? It is not to be imagined!” He glared at me. “This man—this scoundrel—can you believe anyone as infamous as he has confessed himself to be?”

“Not I, for one,” says Hansen.

Sapten scratched his grizzled head. “Just so,” says he, and my heart sank. “But I suggest, doctor, and you too, Erik, that there’s a question to be asked. Can either of you—” and his bright eye went from one to the other—“looking at this fellow here, a man who we know has successfully imposed himself for two weeks on a whole nation—can either of you, in the face of the fact, suggest a better story than he’s told us?”

They stared at him. He nodded at me.

“There he is. Account for him.” He knocked out his pipe. “If he has lied—then what’s the true explanation?”

They babbled a good deal at this, but of course there was no answering him. My story was enough to defy imagination, Sapten agreed—but any alternative must be equally incredible.

“If we can accept that a doppelgänger of the Prince’s can take his place for two weeks—and we know that has happened—then I for one can accept anything,” says he.

“You mean you believe him?” cries Grundvig.