"Not a deserter, Herr?" The Jew cringed at the word.
"Yes," I said. "After all, why not?"
"I daren't do this kind of business any more, my dear sir, I really daren't! They are making it too dangerous."
"Come, come!" I said, "you were boasting just now that you could smooth out any difficulties. You can produce me a very satisfactory passport from somewhere, I am sure!"
"Passport! Out of the question, my dear sir! Let once one of my passports go wrong and I am ruined. Oh, no! no passports where deserters are concerned! I don't like the business ... it's not safe! At the beginning of the war ... ah! that was different! Oi, oi, but they ran from the Yser and from Ypres! Oi, oi, and from Verdun! But now the police are more watchful. No! It is not worth it! It would cost you too much money, besides."
I thought the miserable cur was trying to raise the price on me, but I was mistaken. He was frightened: the business was genuinely distasteful to him.
I tried, as a final attempt to persuade him, an old trick: I showed him my money. He wavered at once, and, after many objections, protesting to the last, he left the room. He returned with a handful of filthy papers.
"I oughtn't to do it; I know I shall rue it; but you have overpersuaded me and I liked Herr Eichenholz, a noble gentleman and free with his money—see here, the papers of a waiter, Julius Zimmermann, called up with the Landwehr but discharged medically unfit, military pay-book and permis de séjour for fifteen days. These papers are only a guarantee in case you come across the police: no questions will be asked where I shall send you."
"But a fifteen days' permit!" I said. "What am I to do at the end of that time?"
"Leave it to me," Kore said craftily. "I will get it renewed for you. It will be all right!"