I shook my head hopelessly. "It may when I see them—if I'm really Lassen, that is. Phew! What a kettle of fish!"
We reached the frontier soon afterwards, and I breathed more freely as soon as I was on the right side of it. Whatever happened now, I could play at being a German. I recalled with immense satisfaction his confident assertion that whoever I might be I was certainly one of his countrymen; and I could gamble on it that when the von Reblings met me, my "case" would still continue to be interesting enough to secure my safety.
Hoffnung had begun to study some papers from his grip and presently looked across at me and put a surprising question. "Do you speak English?" he asked in my own tongue.
I had presence of mind enough to be instantly very American. "Gee, don't I, some."
"Then you've been in America?"
"Have I?" My practice with the Rotterdam people was coming in well.
"Oh, yes. You went from there to England," he replied, going back to his own language. "Can't you remember that?"
I shook my head and frowned.
"Nor anything you did in England?" Another mystified shake of the head. "It's a pity. Don't you know that you sent a report from England of what you'd seen there?"
A little duet followed in which he asked me a series of questions, and I replied each time with a shake of the head. The subject matter of them all was the mention of persons, places, dockyards, ships and so on, which had obviously been embodied in the report Lassen had sent to Berlin. He referred to them in a casual tone and in a way which would not give anything away supposing I should turn out not to be Lassen.