I named one at random; I think it was the 54th Hanoverians. My luck was clean out, for it chanced to be the same in which he himself had served.
"That's devilish funny. Let's have a look at you;" and he straightened up a bit and stared hard at me. "I don't remember any one of your name. Bulich. Bulich. There was never a man of that name. I mean to know some more about you, my man. Now that I look closely at you, I believe I've seen you before. You remind me of some one. Just walk across the room."
Smothering a curse at the change of luck, I obeyed and slouched across, overdoing it probably in my eagerness and fluster.
"Stop there," he ordered. "Now face round, and come back in your proper walk. Don't try that game with me again. That's a little better, but a long way from right, as you know well. Now, who are you? Out with it and don't try any fool game with me."
"I've come down a bit in the world, and no one knows me now by any other name than Hans Bulich."
"I mean to know it. Out with it," he shouted.
I was at my wits' end and didn't answer.
"If you don't tell me you'll have to tell the police, mind. I'm going to bottom this. You've lied to me once, remember."
Suddenly a thought occurred to me. I picked up a tumbler and made a peculiar motion with it—the secret sign of a Göttingen students' society, half-masonic, half-drinking club, of which both of us had been members.
He laughed, swore, and held out his hand. It was part of the ritual we had been bound to observe by the pledge of the society. I gripped his hand in the approved manner.