"Very well," I answered, "You see the time?"
Guest nodded.
"I am going to explain to you exactly," he said, "what you have to do."
"Right," I answered.
"The parcel on the sofa there," he said, "contains a second-hand suit of dress clothes. You will put them on, over them your old black overcoat which we bought at Hamburg, and your bowler hat. At four o'clock precisely you will call at the offices of the German Waiters' Union, at No. 13, Old Compton Street, and ask for Mr. Hirsch. Your name is Paul Schmidt. You were born in Offenbach, but went to America at the age of four. You were back in Germany for two years at the age of nineteen, and you have served your time at Mayence. You have come to England with an uncle, who has taken a small restaurant in Soho, and who proposes to engage you as head-waiter. You will be enrolled as a member of the Waiters' Union, as a matter of course; but when that has been arranged you write on a slip of paper these words, and pass them to Mr. Hirsch—'I, too, have a rifle'!"
I was beginning to get interested.
"'I, too, have a rifle,'" I repeated. "Yes! I can remember that; but I shall be talking like a poll-parrot for I shan't have the least idea what it means."
"You need not know much," Guest answered. "Those words are your passport into the No. 1 Branch of the Waiters' Union, whose committee, by the bye meet at the Café Suisse. If you are asked why you wish to join, you need only say because you are a German!"
"Right," I answered. "I'll get into the clothes."
Guest gave me a few more instructions while I was changing, and by four o'clock punctually I opened the swing door of No. 13, Old Compton Street. The place consisted of a waiting-room, very bare and very dirty; a counter, behind which two or three clerks were very busy writing in ponderous, well-worn ledgers, and an inner door. I made my way towards one of the clerks, and inquired in my best German if I could see Mr. Hirsch.