I gave in, reluctantly; and at Dunaberg, the next stop, feeling something like a coward I left the carriage to find a seat elsewhere.
“Courage, my friend,” said Helga, giving me her hand with a smile. “Courage, and we shall make the rest of the journey to Berlin safely and together.”
“Pray God it will be so,” I answered.
“This is just bully,” cried Siegel in the highest spirits. “See me do the conspirator when you two are through. I hope to glory they won’t let me pass.”
During the remaining run to the frontier I was profoundly anxious and miserable. I knew Helga would not have taken such a step as to bring Siegel into the matter if she had not felt there was real danger for us both; and that she gave into my care the papers which were of such vital import, showed that she regarded her own chances as very doubtful.
I had unbounded confidence in her wit and ready resource. She would get through if any one could; but the gate was a very narrow one. If the new development came from Kalkov, as I could not doubt, she was so well known that a personal description of her would be sent in full.
And then I perceived the shrewdness of her present manœuvre. Siegel and I were sufficiently alike for a written description of one to pass for that of the other. We were both clean shaven, somewhere about the same build and height and colour; and when I read his description in his identity paper—drawn up for the purpose of his long journey through Russian territory—I saw it was quite possible to apply it to me.
When we reached Vilna the official preparations began. A number of men were at the depot and made a careful scrutiny of the passengers, and eventually all of them boarded the train. One got into the compartment where I sat with Siegel’s writing case open on my knee.
He watched me write for a time and then asked me for a light.
I handed him Siegel’s matchbox—a curio he had picked up in China—and made a commonplace remark in execrable Russian. I had heard Siegel’s Russian.