They had been primed about the case, and all three of them were as deeply interested in me as the others had been in Rotterdam. One of them was a specialist in such cases, and he conducted the first part of the examination—that in regard to my memory. He put numberless questions on all sorts of subjects, endeavouring in every conceivable way to get me to admit that I could remember something; but I had no great difficulty in answering him. He appeared to lay most stress on everything that had occurred immediately before the explosion on the Burgen; and was still on that when the Baron came back to us, listened to his concluding questions and suggestions, and then took him out of the room.
The physical examination followed. I stripped to the buff, and a very few minutes sufficed to satisfy them about my fitness. I was, of course, in the pink of condition and as hard as nails.
"You must have had military training," said one of them.
"That can't be so, so far as I know. I understand I've been travelling about the world for a long time."
"I'm sure of it," was the positive verdict. "Every muscle tells the tale too plainly for any one to be mistaken. Just stand over there; I want to look at your back;" and he placed me close to the wall, and stepped back some distance himself.
"No, perhaps not," he murmured, and just as I was chuckling at his blunder, he suddenly yelled at me in English, "'Shun!" with military abruptness. Instinctively, being for the instant quite off my guard, I brought my heels together and straightened up. He chuckled, and I could have cursed myself for an idiot in having given the show away.
The doctor who had trapped me couldn't contain his delight. "I knew I couldn't be mistaken. You can put your clothes on," he told me, rubbing his hands gleefully, and after another chortle to his colleague, he hurried off to report the result of his experiment.
I was mad at having made such a blithering ass of myself just when things had been going so well. The game was up, of course, and there was nothing for it but to face the music. It was now a toss up whether I should be packed off to the front or popped into prison, and it didn't need a Solomon to see that the odds strongly favoured the latter.
The Baron and the two doctors came back in about five minutes, and the man who had bowled me out was laughingly rubbing it in to the specialist.
"I can't imagine how it escaped you, Gorlitz," he said as they entered; and the specialist looked about as pleased as I felt.