How Hoffnung's people could have got on the track of my not being Jimmy, baffled me utterly. But they clearly had; so there was no use in wasting time worrying over it. I did worry over it, however, as well as over every other detail of the job, and continued to ask myself all sorts of unanswerable questions for the rest of the journey.
Hoffnung looked at his watch, shovelled his papers back into their case, and looked across at me. "About ten minutes now only," he said. "Have you slept?"
I all but gave myself away by blurting out the fact that I never slept in trains, but checked the words in time. "Dozed a bit," I said.
"You look fresh and fit enough," he replied, as if the fact rather justified his suspicions of me, "Wonderful after what you've gone through. You must be as hard as nails. Military training, I suppose."
Neat; but I didn't tumble in. "Have I had any?" I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders and squinted at me with a suggestive smile. Then he grew earnest. "We won't have a scene at the station. We'd better wait till most of the people have got away, and you'll give me your word of honour not to attempt to get away or anything of the sort?"
"What the deuce good would that be? Of course I shan't make a fool of myself in any such fashion. If I'm the man you call the Englishman, well, I am, that's all."
"You have all an Englishman's coolness."
"Then perhaps I am English," I said with a shrug.
"We'll hope not, at any rate;" but it was clear he was fast making up his mind that I was. After a pause he added: "When the crowd has cleared off, we'll walk together to the barrier, and my men will be behind us. We shall find the von Reblings there."