We saw him smile and shake his head. I hesitatingly let fall the curtain and looked at the courier.
"Let him in," he said. "He's got the brand of an English university boy all over him. We'll have a chat with him. You don't mind, do you?"
"Mind!" In my eagerness I banged back the compartment doors with a crash that brought down the conductor. I saw my companion hastily corrupt that official whose murmured "Bitte schon" implied an un-Teutonic disregard for the fact that he had done something verboten by admitting a second-class passenger into a first-class coupé; and the stranger entered.
We were gazing upon a strikingly handsome, fair-haired man not yet thirty. His eyes twinkled when he said that he supposed we were Americans. His manner and intonation made me stare at him.
"And you?" we finally asked.
"I'm going first to Berlin, then to Petrograd," he said, perhaps avoiding our question. "Business trip."
We chatted on, the obvious thought obsessing me. Of course the man was an English spy. But how absurd! If his face did not give him away to any one who knew—and my word for it, those police spies do know!—he would be betrayed by his mannerisms. His accent would instantly cry out the English in him. Of what could Downing Street be thinking? It was sending this man to certain death. One began to feel sorry for him.
Feeling the intimacy brought by the common experience at Warnemunde, I presently said:
"You certainly have your nerve with you, traveling in Germany with your accent."
"Why?" he laughed. "A neutral is safe."