They went with me for a short distance and then we parted. I walked across the town, for I wanted to be alone and think: I had to make plans and arrange my affairs for all eventualities. A thousand questions crowded into my mind, and yet I found no time to take any decision, because I was thinking all the while of my mother, and of her only.
When I told my hosts, over the coffee, the news I had just received, their faces seemed to reflect the danger that stood behind me.
Evening was drawing in when I reached home. As I stepped into the ante-room the telephone bell rang, and when I answered it a friend spoke to me in the secretive way that has now become habitual.
“The dressmaker has come with the new fashion papers. She is going straight to you, please don’t leave home until you have seen her.”
A few minutes later her husband arrived. He had heard it at his club....
“You will probably be arrested to-night. What are your plans? Your friends, I understand, don’t want to escape.”
“I shall stay too,” I said, and thanked him for his kindness. Meanwhile, my brother Géza had arrived, then a friend and his wife, and finally Gömbös.
It was now nearly ten o’clock. My mother called me: supper had been waiting on the table for a long while. The others had already supped, so I left them and joined my mother. I ate rapidly, and she watched me closely.
“What is going on here? Why have they come? Is anything wrong? Don’t hide things from me.”
I tried to reassure her, though I saw clearly she did not believe me. She sighed. “Well, go along to your friends, but don’t keep them too late.”