CHAPTER VII

FAILURE

My water-bottle wanted filling. A spring bubbling up by the roadside gave me the opportunity. That was a mile or so down the road. I had got again into the swinging stride of the night before, and the few miles to the village of Vehlen were soon covered. A sudden turn of the road near it brought me opposite a building looking like a flour-mill. An electric light was blazing at its corner. On the other side of the road its rays were reflected by the oily ripples on a large pond, the farther side of which was hidden in the darkness.

Perhaps the strain and loneliness of the last few days were telling upon me without my being aware of it. At any rate, I did not realize that the light was a danger-signal flaunted by Providence into my very face. It never occurred to me that on seeing it I ought to get off the road at once and work around the village across-country. Instead, with the experience of last night at the back of my mind, I held on stubbornly and never realized my folly until I was fairly in the main street.

Most of the houses were lighted and a number of street lamps going. Several people were passing between houses. It was too late to turn back when I saw what I had done. Two old men in front of me, whom I had caught up with, caused me to adapt my pace to theirs so as not to pass them. They turned a corner, I after them, when from the opposite direction a bicycle appeared. The rays of its lamp blinded me. I dared not look back when it had passed, but hurried on as fast as I could short of running. After an eternity of a few minutes somebody jumped off a bicycle at my shoulder, having come up noiselessly from behind. He touched me.

“Who are you?” An armed soldier stood before me.

I gave a name.

“Where do you come from?”

“I belong to Düsseldorf.”

“So. Where do you come from now?”

“From Borken.”

“But you are not on the road from Borken!”

I knew that, but no other name had occurred to me. What I ought to have said was “Bocholt,” I think.

“I am not bound to follow what you call the direct road, and, anyway, what do you mean by stopping me and questioning me in this fashion?”

“Where are you bound for?”

For want of anything better, I created the imaginary country house of an imaginary noble.

“Don’t know it,” said the soldier, eyeing me doubtfully and scratching his head.

By this time a crowd had collected around us. Additions to it, mostly children, were shooting full speed round the nearest corners, as I saw out of the corner of my eye, helm hard a-port and leaning sideways to negotiate the turn. But I was already hemmed in by four or five stalwarts. Outside the crowd a small man was dancing excitedly up and down demanding that I be taken before the Amtmann, the head of the village. This man turned out to be the village doctor, the cyclist who had passed me. “What a disagreeable, foxy face the chap has,” flashed through my mind. The soldier was obviously still in doubt about me, but was overruled in spite of all the arguments I could think of.

With the soldier by my side, two stalwarts in front and three behind, and surrounded by the throng, I was marched through the streets. We drew up before a farmlike building, and politely but firmly I was urged to enter. We went into a big room on the ground floor. Two desks, several chairs and tables, and file cabinets made up the furniture. A telephone was attached to the wall next the door.

A young man jumped up from his chair in front of one of the desks, and he, and those who had entered with me, regarded me suspiciously for a moment without speaking. Then the young man--he seemed a clerk--caught sight of the binoculars half concealed under my coat lapels. With the shout, “He is a spy!” he rushed upon me, and with a quick movement of his hand tore open my coat and waistcoat.

“Here, keep your dirty paws off me!” I grunted angrily.

He stepped back. At this moment the Amtmann came in, a young and gentlemanly looking chap. My assailant at once collapsed in a chair, and tried to assume a judicial attitude with pen in hand and paper in front of him. Then they searched me, and the fat was in the fire. There was, of course, no sense in continuing the bluffing game, when maps, compasses, and some letters addressed to me in Ruhleben were on the table. I had carried the latter as additional evidence of my identity for the British consul, should I get through. What they did not find was my British passport. That was cunningly, I think, and successfully concealed.

The business part of the performance being over, they became more genial. The Amtmann asked me whether or not I was hungry. “No.” Should I like a cup of coffee? “I should, and a smoke, please.” With the aid of two cups of coffee and three of my cigarettes, I pulled myself together as best I might.

The soldier who had stopped me was in the highest of spirits about the big catch he thought he had made, and obviously wanted all the credit to himself. Perhaps he expected the usual leave granted for the apprehension of fugitive prisoners of war, and the ten or fifteen marks of monetary recognition. In his anxiety to establish his claim, he forgot all about the indecision and hesitancy he had shown to start with.

“I knew you immediately for an Englander! That nose of yours!”

I have the most ordinary face and nose, and I am of no particular type, but I nodded with deep understanding.

“Where did you intend crossing the frontier?” he rattled on.

I pointed it out to him on the map lying on the table.

“You’d never have got across there,” he vouchsafed triumphantly. “In addition to the ordinary sentries and patrols, there are dogs and cavalry patrols at that point, and to the north of it.”

If only I could have got that information under different circumstances!

“What beautiful maps you’ve got, and what a fine compass! Would it--would it--would you think me cheeky if I asked you for it as a memento?”

Considering that it would be lost to me anyway, I expressed my pleasure at being able to gratify his desire. And then the Amtmann gave me to understand that it was time to be locked up.

The interview at the office had lasted some time, and the noses which had flattened themselves against the outside of the windows had decreased in number. Still, there was a fairly strong guard of adults and children to accompany us to the village lockup.

This was a small building consisting only of one floor. Here I observed for the first time another small man with sharp features who unlocked the door. It was, of course, dark about us, and at this distance it is difficult to determine what I saw then and what I learned in the course of the following day.

We entered through a big door into a place where a fire-engine--a hand-pump--was standing. A door on the left having been unlocked, the Amtmann and the small man preceded me through it. The light of their electric torches revealed a cell, with a sort of bed along one side, consisting of a straw paillasse on some raised boards and two blankets rolled up at the foot of it.

They had left me in possession of my overcoat, oilskins, oilsilk, and sweater, so I should be all right, though the night was very cold. Alone in the cell in pitch darkness, I heard the key turn in the lock, the footfalls recede, the outer door close; then all was silent.

As my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, I could make out a small window at my right, shoulder-high, and traversed by the black streaks of three vertical iron bars. The cell was so dark that I had the impression of being in a vast black hall. I took three steps forward and rapped my nose against the wall. Very miserable and much disappointed, almost in despair, I groped to the window and shook the bars with all my strength. They were firm and unyielding. Feeling my way to the bed, I put on all my things, disdaining the blankets, which felt filthy, then lay down and was soon asleep.