“Good-morning, Mr. Edestone,” he said in English with a marked accent. “I am very glad to see you,” and, putting out his hand with an air of simple kindness as if to lead him to a chair, he said: “Won’t you sit down, sir?
“You must not mind if I treat you like a boy,” he went on with a gentle smile; “you are about the age of my own son who was killed at Ypres. I am too old to fight any more, so they keep me here to entertain distinguished strangers like yourself,” and he laughed quietly to himself, looking at Edestone as he might at a little boy whom he had just told that he had on a very pretty suit of clothes.
He picked up from his desk, a box of very large cigars, selected two, and, after looking very carefully at one to see that it was absolutely perfect, handed it without a word to Edestone. After he had watched with great interest to see that Edestone had lighted his cigar properly, he lighted his own.
“I see by the way you smoke that you are a good judge of tobacco. I have always understood that you Americans like very fresh cigars and smoke them immediately after they are made. I like them old myself.”
“You are thinking of Cuba, perhaps,” suggested Edestone.
“Oh, that is true,” admitted the old gentleman. “The Americans live in the United States and you do not allow the other inhabitants of the hemisphere to the north or to the south of you to use that name. You are perfectly right; you are—what do you call it?—the boss,” and again he smiled his gentle smile.
“I get all my cigars from England,” he continued. “The English and I have very similar tastes—in cigars. I have a very old friend, Professor Weibezhal, who lives in England, and he sends them over to me. I just received these a few days ago. He is not having a very good time over there now, he writes me. He can’t get what he wants to eat, and he says he misses his German beer.”
Edestone could scarcely realize that he was sitting in General Headquarters, the very heart of German militarism, talking to General von Lichtenstein, the most powerful and astute man in all Europe. But for the German accent and magnificent uniform it might have been in the Union Club in New York, and he himself talking to a very nice, rather simple-minded old gentleman, who was flattered by the attention of a younger man.
After the General had inquired about a friend of his who lived in America—he said he did not know exactly where, not in New York, but some town near there, Cincinnati or perhaps St. Louis. This struck Edestone as strange when he thought of the springs on his father’s old place which were marked on a German map that he had seen, although he himself did not know of their existence, and he had spent his entire childhood roaming all over it.
Finally, when he had told him one or two stories about an American woman whom he had been quite fond of when he was a young man, the General said in a most apologetic manner: