I am placed in the charge of this man, an aviator it seems, by name Lieutenant von ——. He, with an escort, will convey me seventy miles along the main road to Germany.
“And then?” I ask with uplifted brows.
“If your papers are in order you will be free to remain in Germany until the end of the war.”
“But I have no money, or scarcely any.”
A whispered consultation takes place.
The attaché turns to me. “If your papers are right the Lieutenant may be able to arrange that you are immured in his Schloss.”
The magnanimity of the offer is lost upon me.
“I would rather scrub a doorstep,” I say, and bounce out into the street.
It is rather alarming to advance under arrest in the face of a hostile army. The officers at the corner by the Gendarmerie salute me as I pass. I am too angry to bow. Neither have I the courage to look round and settle the thrilling point as to whether the General with the red facings is the Kaiser after all.
I climb with some awkwardness over the high sides of an armoured car which is waiting in readiness with its soldier chauffeur some little distance up the street. My escort get in and take their seats. The infantry halting by the side of the road are almost falling over themselves in their excitement to see a spy, a real spy. We are off at a speed which would set a London policeman’s hair on end, in a wild rush into the unknown.