I gave my limp and perspiring hand to the smiling major. I suspected that his pleasantry meant that I had been selected to pay for the dinner that night of our own particular little group of plotters against the Imperial German Government and its agents in the United States.
“You are going to take a long journey,” said the major, as he examined the corns on my fingers, which were the result of soldiering with a pencil. For having been a cavalryman, the powers that be in Washington had given me a flat-top desk covered with a blue sheet of blotting paper, and a swivel chair as a buffer for my spurs. What I wanted to do was to cross sabers with the Death Head Hussars, and maybe get a thrust at the Crown Prince himself. But when I looked at that blue blotter every morning, I realized what a terrible war it was, after all—for old cavalrymen.
My smiling major sobered suddenly.
“You are going to take a long journey,” he said.
I caught a serious glint in his eyes, and holding my breath for an instant before I dared speak, I asked as casually as I could: “Will it be a sea trip?”
Another serious examination of the lines in my palm.
“Yes.”
“Do you,” I asked, “see in the delicate hand you hold any indication that I am to be thrown among rude and rough soldiers, where a man may swear with a gentle forbearance without being overheard by a stenographer who chews gum?”
“I do,” said the amateur seer, more serious than ever.
“Glory be!” I breathed. “I have been in your beautiful city just eight days, and the chef at the hotel cooks well, but he does not know how to growl, not being an army cook. Also, this blue blotter is making me color blind. Have I been ordered to where bombs are bursting in air?”