“What do you mean?” I asked him.
“Yes, at what hour do the steamers leave? I forget if it is this afternoon or to-night,” he replied.
“I do not know to what steamers you refer,” I said.
“I refer to the steamers on which ‘we’ are to cross to England,” he answered.
Holland during the war was literally overrun with German spies.
We knew this, because at the hotel in Rotterdam, where I stayed for a few weeks, “congenial” persons took advantage of any and every pretext to engage in conversation with me. I had been warned on my first visit to the Consulate against these “friends.”
When my interlocutor asked the first question I nearly fell into the trap. I was about to give him the information he sought when a suspicion flashed through my mind and put me on my guard.
To his last question, therefore, I answered, in a confidential manner:
“Exactly one week from to-day, at six o’clock a.m.”