When a further investigation was made of the losses which the portly manager had sustained, the incriminating fact was discovered that, besides his best suit of clothes and Homberg hat, a woman's dress and a man's had been purloined. That sent the manager flying to the telephone, and in due course of time set the police officials at the nearest police station bustling. Within half an hour a car dashed up to the gates of the sugar factory, and the most important and imposing of individuals commenced an official investigation on the spot. This investigation, sternly carried out, weighed every point so very closely, and went with so much minuteness into every little incident, that it set the unfortunate manager perspiring, and, indeed, after a while, made him begin to wonder whether he himself were a party to the theft which he had suffered, or a party to assisting the fugitives. The important official, if he did not actually accuse the manager of having aided the prisoners supposed to have purloined the articles of clothing, inferred it certainly, glared at the unhappy man, browbeat him in regular Germanic manner, and made him regret deeply that he had ever called for police assistance.
"You'll be ready to report personally at the police station," he was told. "Now I'll return and set a search in progress. Without doubt the three men who broke out of Ruhleben have paid you a visit; for we know already that they went to a farm farther back along the road and obtained supplies of food. Since then we have lost all sight of them, and it may very well be that they have been in hiding; and that may mean," he added severely, as he stood above the unhappy manager and glared down at him, "that someone has been providing a refuge for them, some unpatriotic and treacherous individual, who, if discovered, will certainly be shot in the morning—be shot in the cold, early morning," he added in unpleasant tones which did not fail to have their effect on the man he was addressing. "Yes, Herr Winterborgen, this is an important matter—so important, indeed, that for your own sake you will see that you attend promptly when called for."
It was with a gasp of relief that the manager saw the car driven away at furious speed, while he stood staring out of the window, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief. His thoughts were still in a whirl, and even then he could not shake from his mind the more than half belief that in some unconscious way he had indeed, unwittingly and unwillingly—for he was as good a patriot as anyone—aided the runaways. In such a dilemma, feeling vexed and sore at his own loss, and indignant at the cross-examination he had just suffered, it was but natural that he should work himself up into a terrible passion, and should turn the vials of his wrath upon the police inspector who had treated him so brusquely. Yet in time, when his anger had died down, he, like every other patriot in Germany, put his own personal disadvantage aside for the sake of his beloved Fatherland. He sighed deeply, and resumed his work with the pious wish that, if he had suffered, his suffering might lead to the discovery and capture of the men who had treated him so shamefully.
It is hardly necessary to narrate what followed after that interview with the police inspector. How the car took him swiftly back to the station, how the telephone was jingled, and how every possible official within reasonable distance was informed of what had happened. The station-master at the station where Henri and his friends had boarded the train presently received a call.
"Yes, here, Inspector," he answered, politely enough, over the telephone. "You are there and you want me—well I am here, what then? Prisoners escaped from Ruhleben? Ah, yes, yes! I remember, the rascals escaped perhaps a week ago, and have not been heard of since. Have I seen them here? Pooh! If I had, you know as well as I do that I would have apprehended them. What's that you say? They have been to the station? You ask if I have seen three suspicious people—a man, perhaps an old man, in a dark-blue, well-cut suit, wearing a Homberg hat and goggles, a girl, and a man of whose appearance you have no knowledge? Come now, that's a conundrum! I have seen many such people."
He began to get rather angry at the cross-examination of the police inspector—an examination, let us add, far less severe than that inflicted upon the manager of the sugar factory, but he listened awhile.
"You may have seen many such people," he heard over the telephone, "but all together, Herr Station-master—three all together—an oldish man, not big, perhaps bald, with goggles; a girl, and another man of uncertain appearance. Think now; not a very great number of people travel on the railway nowadays unless they are soldiers; think, have you not had such passengers?"
The station-master did think, think violently one may say, for it was well to be on the best terms possible with the police. A station-master might be a most important individual, very important indeed in his own estimation, but an inspector of the police in Germany was an important individual both in his own estimation, which was undoubted, and also in that of the public.
"Hold on one little moment; three people such as you describe—one an oldish man, a girl, and a third, a man with no description—have I seen such people getting on a train together? Why, wait!"
The scene as the aged and snappy old gentleman clambered aboard the train that morning suddenly occurred to the station-master, only to be put aside in an instant; for it seemed impossible that he could have been an impostor. The girl, too, looked so natural, so feminine, so absolutely genuine, and yet——