“I am to see nothing more of you?” asked Edestone.
“My duty finishes when General von Lichtenstein takes you up. You will, of course, be watched and your every movement will be recorded, but that will not be my duty, nor here in Berlin will you be at all annoyed by it. Now that you are in Germany, you will be looked upon as a friend and treated accordingly, unless you are found not to be. I have given you my card, and I will take great pleasure in introducing you at the clubs or helping you in any way so long as it is consistent with my duty.”
“You are extremely kind, and I appreciate it very much, Count von Hemelstein.”
“Now above all things,” warned the Count, and his tone was very impressive, “if by any chance you should be ordered to appear before His Imperial Majesty, please be careful what you say. You have said things to me in the last two days which, understanding you as I do, I could overlook, but I would no more think of repeating them while you are in Germany than I would think of flying. They were not of a nature that would make it my duty to report them, but they might get you into no end of trouble. For instance, you would not be so foolish as to intimate that the Hohenzollern family is not in the middle of the ‘big stream.’” He smiled in spite of himself.
Then as the train rolled into the station he took Edestone’s hand and said: “Auf wiedersehen, my friend. I must now assume my other role of your escort of honour. Speak German,” he suggested quickly as the guards came into the car; “you will be less apt to be annoyed.”
Edestone was conducted hastily through the station, where automobiles waited to whisk him and his entire party off to the hotel. At his request, the trunks containing all his apparatus were sent to the American Embassy. He was not as familiar with Berlin as he was with the other capitals of Europe, but if he had not known that Germany was engaged in a most desperate war, and millions of her sons were being sacrificed, there was nothing that he saw as he rushed through the city that would have suggested it.
He was received at the hotel with extreme politeness, but it was the politeness that was insulting. The proprietor, waiters, and even the bell-boys treated him with poorly concealed contempt, and though he spoke to them in perfect German, would always answer in English, as if to show him that they knew he was of that despised race.
Count von Hemelstein left him with the understanding that he would call for him in the morning and conduct him to General von Lichtenstein.