A great light dawned upon them.
“Oh!” said one, smiling. “He means he was behind our lines, not theirs.”
“I should hope so,” said I.
“We’re sorry to have misunderstood, sir,” said the other, and I was escorted into the baggage-room. There my sordid belongings were perfunctorily examined, the official not even troubling to open my typewriter case nor a large ungainly package containing a toy for certain parties back home.
It was eleven o’clock when the examinations were all over and we entrained for this town. I got off at Waterloo and asked a taxi to take me to the Savoy. It did and it drove on the left side of all the streets en route. I’m still quaking.
Tuesday, September 18. London.
This morning I had my first experience with an English telephone. I asked the hotel’s operator to get me the office of Mr. O’Flaherty, the American correspondent I had met at the British front. In a few moments she rang back.
“Are you there?” she said, that being London for “Hello.”
“Here’s your number, then. Carry on,” she said.
But carrying on was not so easy. There is a steel spring on the combination transmitter-receiver which you must hold down while you talk. I kept forgetting it. Also I kept being electrically shocked. But in the course of half an hour, with the operator’s assistance, I managed to convey to the gentleman an invitation to call.