Something told me the man was lying.
"See here, Huyliger!" I threatened, advancing toward him, putting my hand on his shoulder and looking him straight in the eye, "I want those papers and I want them here before midnight to-night. If I don't get them, I shall sleep in this place just once more, and then, at eight o'clock to-morrow morning, I shall go to the German authorities, give myself up, show them the passport that you fixed up for me, tell them how I got it, and explain everything!"
Huyliger paled. We had no lights in the house, but we were standing near a landing at the time and the moonlight was streaming through a stained-glass window.
The Belgian turned on his heel and started to go down the stairs.
"Mind you," I called after him, "I shall wait for you till the city clock strikes twelve, and if you don't show up with those papers by that time, the next time you will see me is when you confront me before the German authorities! I am a desperate man, Huyliger, and I mean every word I say!"
He let himself out of the door and I sat on the top stair and wondered just what he would do. Would he try to steal a march on me and get in a first word to the authorities, so that my story would be discredited when I put it to them?
Of course my threat to give myself up to the Huns was a pure bluff. While I had no desire to lose the papers which Huyliger had, and which included the map of the last resting-place of my poor chum Raney, I certainly had no intention of cutting off my nose to spite my chin by surrendering to the Germans. I would have been shot, as sure as fate, for, after all I had been able to observe behind the German lines, I would be regarded as a spy and treated as such.
At the same time I thought I had detected a yellow streak in Huyliger, and I figured that he would not want to take the risk of my carrying out my threat, even though he believed there was but a small chance of my doing so. If I did, he would undoubtedly share my fate, and the pictures and papers he had of mine were really of no use to him, and I have never been able to ascertain why it was he wished to retain them unless they contained something—some information about me—which accounted for his complete change of attitude toward me in the first place, and he wanted the papers as evidence to account to his superiors or associates for his conduct toward me.
When he first told me that the plan of placing me in a convent disguised as a priest had been abandoned he explained it by saying that the Cardinal had issued orders to the priests to help no more fugitives, and I have since wondered whether there was anything in my papers which had turned him against me and led him to forsake me after all he had promised to do for me.