"C'est ça!" agree the others thoughtfully.
And at that all the terror of last night returns to me. It returns like a memory, but it is troublous all the same.
And then, opening my bag to inspect its contents, I suddenly see a big strange key.
What is this?
And then remembrance rushes over me.
It is the key that Mr. Lucien Arthur Jones gave me, the key of the furnished house in Antwerp.
A house! Fully furnished, and fully stored with food! And no occupants! And no Germans! In a flash I decided to get into that house as quickly as possible. It was the best possible place of hiding. It was so good, indeed, that it seemed like a fairy tale that I should have the key in my possession. And then, with another flash, I decided that I could never face going into that house alone. My nerves would refuse me. I had asked a good deal of them lately, and they had responded magnificently. But they turned against living alone in an empty house in Antwerp, quite definitely and positively, they turned against that.
Casting a swift glance about me, I took in that group of faces round the kitchen fire. Who were they, these people? François, and Lenore, Henri, Ada, and the little old grey-moustached man whistling like a bird, who were they? Why were they here among the Germans? Why had they not fled with the million fugitives. Was it possible they were spies? For I knew now, beyond all doubting, that there were indeed such things as spies, though the English mind finds it almost impossible to believe in the reality of something so dedicated to the gentle art of making melodrama. Until three days ago I had never seen these people in my life. I knew absolutely nothing about them. Perhaps they were even now carefully drawing the net around me. Perhaps I was already a prisoner in the Germans' hands.
And yet they were all I had in the way of acquaintances, they were all I had to trust in.
Could I trust them?