ARRESTED!
I hearan imperious voice say, “Come down, Fräulein.” The blue-coated attaché is standing beneath my window, backed by a guard of soldiers, not in their spiked helmets, as usual, but in their soft round caps.
Needless to say, I hasten to go down. The moment I had feared all along has come at last.
“Who are you?” he says, looking straight into my eyes as though trying to read my very soul.
“I am an Englishwoman,” I answer.
“Dasz sieht mann gerade aus” (That is self-evident), he replies sternly.
“Do you speak English?” I ask, just to gain time.
“I know all languages,” he says stiffly, “but now we will talk German.”
“Very well.”
“What are you doing in Manhay?”
“I am here for pleasure.” Such an imbecile reply makes the attaché glance at me even more suspiciously.
“Have you papers?”
“Yes.” I fly up to my room, fetch out a visiting card and a Lloyd’s bank-book and take them down to him.
He turns them over. “This bank, I have never even heard of it,” he says. “You come from London?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know the German bank——”
Here he utters some unpronounceable name.
“I have never heard of it,” I say in my turn.
His suspicions increase. I have to answer every conceivable question until I flatter myself I convince him, by my extremely naïve replies, that I am not even intelligent enough to be a spy.
He dismisses the soldiers, but continues talking to me.
“If only the English had stood in with us,” he says regretfully, “we could have swept the world together.”
I am silent.
He glances at my tweed suit. “I had ordered an Irish frieze just like that,” he says in English. “I was starting for a holiday in the Dolomites when the war came. Do you know who he is?” The attaché points to the cloaked General withthe scarlet facings. The suddenness of the question takes me off my guard.
“Is it the Kaiser?” I ask.
“I shall not tell you,” he answers quietly.
“Then I may consider myself free?” I say presently.
He hesitates.
“Can’t you see I’m no spy?”
“I am not so sure, Fräulein. If you value safety you will keep within doors while the army passes.”
For a time I obey this order. Then some cavalry come by. There is excitement, a horse has bolted, someone is hurt. I put my head out of the window for a moment.
Five minutes later the attaché returns.
“Es thut mir leid, Fräulein. I am sorry, but you are under arrest. My Chief orders it so.”
My knees feel as if they were giving way. I give a horrified gasp.
“You have ten minutes to pack a few things, then you will be sent over to Germany under escort.”
I run into the house and tell the Job-Lepouses. They instantly fear the worst and are dissolved in tears.
It is the affair of a minute to stow a few necessaries in a suit-case. Unfortunately I stupidly pack papers too. I have a mouthful of black bread. Madame la Précepteur cries over me, so do the Job-Lepouses. I shall never forget their kindness. Then the attaché returns with a young officer.
I am placed in the charge of this man, an aviator it seems, by name Lieutenant von ——. He, with an escort, will convey me seventy miles along the main road to Germany.
“And then?” I ask with uplifted brows.
“If your papers are in order you will be free to remain in Germany until the end of the war.”
“But I have no money, or scarcely any.”
A whispered consultation takes place.
The attaché turns to me. “If your papers are right the Lieutenant may be able to arrange that you are immured in his Schloss.”
The magnanimity of the offer is lost upon me.
“I would rather scrub a doorstep,” I say, and bounce out into the street.
It is rather alarming to advance under arrest in the face of a hostile army. The officers at the corner by the Gendarmerie salute me as I pass. I am too angry to bow. Neither have I the courage to look round and settle the thrilling point as towhether the General with the red facings is the Kaiser after all.
I climb with some awkwardness over the high sides of an armoured car which is waiting in readiness with its soldier chauffeur some little distance up the street. My escort get in and take their seats. The infantry halting by the side of the road are almost falling over themselves in their excitement to see a spy, a real spy. We are off at a speed which would set a London policeman’s hair on end, in a wild rush into the unknown.