“Because these people will know that, in the position you seek, you will see too many things and get to know too much.”
Williamson’s prediction was right. My request, made a few days later, was refused. In the meantime Williamson had another fit of epilepsy. He was at that time in the cell of a Mr. Hall, another Englishman. It was between five and six o’clock in the afternoon. Non-commissioned officers hastened to the cell, and, frightened by the serious turn Williamson’s illness had taken, they made a joint report to the officer in charge, who at once interviewed Dr. Becker on the subject. The outcome was that Williamson was released from the jail. I never was able to ascertain where he was taken. I believe he was sent to an asylum for the insane, and from there he would be exchanged.
One night we were awakened by a series of detonations coming from outside the jail. What could it be, we wondered. There we were right in the heart of Berlin, and there was unmistakably a serious disturbance of some kind. Was it a riot? Was it the noise of an encounter between the gendarmes and a band of workmen on strike? We could obtain no answer to these questions at the time, but soon afterwards I was informed of what had taken place. Shortly after hearing the noise of the first shots I was called from my cell to ascertain the cause of the death of a soldier who had been brought from the battle-front to Berlin to be locked up at Stadtvogtei pending trial before a court-martial. This refractory soldier, the guards reported, had behaved himself well all the way from Flanders to Berlin, but directly he reached the front of the jail he became unruly, broke from his guards, and escaped. The guards went in pursuit. There was an exciting chase around the walls of the jail, which are seventy-five feet high. The fugitive soldier was gaining on his pursuers when one of the latter fired on him. Thus it was a dead soldier, and not a live prisoner, that the guards brought into the jail. He had been struck by five bullets, and the only duty I was called to perform was to declare the man dead. I did this in the presence of the doorkeeper, the night watchman, and the two guards. Early the next morning, aroused by some commotion, we all stood on our chairs and stretched our necks in order to get a glimpse from the windows of what was going on below. The men had come to remove to the morgue the body of the soldier who had been killed by one of his former companions-in-arms.
CHAPTER XIX
INTERESTING PRISONERS
Among the interesting prisoners I knew in the Stadtvogtei during my long captivity there are several who deserve special mention. Early in 1916 there were frequently heard proceeding from a section of the jail near the division where I was confined the tones of soft music. For a time we did not know whether the music came from the outside or the inside of the building. Conjectures were in order. Some of my companions believed the music was played by a talented violinist who was held prisoner as we were. Others ventured the opinion that the sweet strains emanated from a house in the immediate neighborhood of the prison. One day the Sergeant-Major informed me during his tour of inspection that I was to be permitted to visit a French prisoner confined in an adjoining division of the jail. He said the prisoner was known as Professor Henri Marteau. The name, I at once recalled, was that of a celebrated French musician whom I heard during his visit to Canada some twenty years ago.
“Whenever you feel inclined to call on the Professor,” the Sergeant-Major said, “I will accompany you to his cell; but I have to inform you that while you are making your call the door of the cell will be locked upon you, as the Professor is condemned to solitary confinement. It is to be permitted him to return your call, and if he chooses to do so, your door will likewise be locked while you are together.”
Not unnaturally, I was very anxious to meet this distinguished Frenchman and on the following day I asked the Sergeant-Major if he would be kind enough to conduct me to his cell. I found the Professor one of the most charming and interesting men one could wish to meet. He was then about forty-five years of age, and manifestly an artist to his finger-tips. This is the story he told to me:
At the outbreak of the war he was practising as a professor of the violin at the Berlin Conservatory of Music, and as a French subject, he was ordered interned at Holzminden, in the internment camp designated for civilians of French nationality. A few months later, by the express order of the Emperor, he was granted his liberty in Berlin. Mr. Marteau had married an Alsatian lady, whose sympathies, like those of so many of the people of her Province, were known to be entirely with France. The professor and his wife were admitted to the best society of Berlin, and shortly after Bulgaria had entered the war, Madame Marteau, at a society gathering, expressed the sense of her displeasure at Bulgaria’s stand. Her words were reported to the military authorities, and a few days afterwards two detectives called at the professor’s residence with an order that he and his wife were to be interned. Madame Marteau was taken to an internment camp reserved for women, and the professor was removed to the Stadtvogtei.