“Yes, suh,” he said gently. “I come in August.”
“Where have you been, then, in the meantime?” I demanded.
“Well, suh, first I went to Maw-booge.”
“The Germans captured Maubeuge on August 27th; they took the fortress on September 6th.”
“Yes, suh. I know they did. I was there. You don’t quite understand me. I was lookin’ for my sistah.”
The man amazed, angered, and puzzled me. Common-sense told me that the Germans allowed no one—least of all a stray American—to wander into Belgium, inside the German lines, on the flimsy excuse of “looking for his sister,” but here was just such a man. Worst of all, he really seemed simple and candid: the more dangerous as a spy, probably, though what he was to spy upon I had not the ghost of an idea.
“Sprechen Sie Deutsch, Herr Solslog? Warum sind Sie hier in Belgien? Sind Sie Spion? Vous parlez Français, n’est-ce pas? Vous êtes espion, oui? ’ut U Veaamsch klappen?” I shot at him rapidly.
He smiled a smile which disarmed my suspicions, a pathetic, whimsical, puzzled smile. “People are always sayin’ things to me I cain’t understand in these here foreign countries. No, suh, I don’t understand any language but plain You-nited States. I can say ‘uh franc, doo franc’—that’s French, you know, suh—and I know ‘Muhsoor’, that’s French for ‘Mistah’ and ‘my sistah.’ I’ll never forget that word.
“It’s like this, suh: I got up almost to Maw-booge—oh, yes, suh, I had a pass. I got up there with the French. Just walked along with ’em; they couldn’t understand me; I couldn’t understand them, but we walked along. Then we got ’most to Maw-booge where my sistah was—red roofs, like all them pretty towns in France—I could see the town, fightin’ everywhere. I was with a battery, what they call swasuntcans. The officer could speak my language.