Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/208

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answer to the riddle came to him. He looked at the old servant.

"You love me, Kaguchi?" he asked.

"My heart is between your hands!"

"You trust me?"

Kaguchi drew himself up.

"You are a samurai, O Takamori-san. The sword of Kiushu is unsullied."

"And unsullied it shall remain! And so," he added incongruously, "you will speak after me the foreign words which I shall now teach you, syllable for syllable, intonation for intonation"; and, step by step, formula by formula, he taught Kaguchi the meaningless German words.

For hours he worked with him until the old man reeled off the strange sounds without hitch or error.

"You know now?" he asked him finally, even as the professor had asked him earlier in the afternoon.

"Yes."

"You'll never forget it?"

"No."

Takamori Takagawa smiled.

"Kaguchi," he said, "you will go from here to London, using this passport." He gave him the official paper which Herr von Wilmowitz had viséed. "In London you will seek out the ambassador of Nippon, who is my cousin. You will tell him word for word what I have just taught you, adding that it is the formula of a poison gas and that this gas is mightier than the two-handed sword and will, perhaps, win the war for Nippon and her allies. You will furthermore tell him—and let this message be transmitted by him to my respected grandfather—that I learned this formula honorably, but that I could not

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