CHAPTER V

A GLIMPSE OF FREEDOM

Contrary to my expectations, I hardly felt any excitement during my last day at the “Linden Allee.” My mental attitude was rather a disinterested one, as if I were watching somebody else’s escape.

When I got into bed at the usual time, I immediately fell asleep, having first made up my mind to wake at 3:30 A.M. I awoke an hour sooner, and went to sleep again. It was close on four o’clock when I opened my eyes for the second time. Getting up noiselessly, I carried the Gladstone and a big hand-bag containing my clothes, boots, etc., into the bath-room on the first floor. There I lathered my shaving brush and shaved a few hairs off my left forearm, leaving the safety-razor on the washstand, uncleaned, to create the impression that I had shaved off my beard. I dressed as rapidly as I could, throwing my pajamas on the floor and leaving generally a fair amount of disorder behind me. A breathless trip to the loft of the house to conceal my cord suit behind some beams was executed with as much speed and caution as I could manage. With my bag in one hand and my boots round my neck, I descended again by the light of the electric torch, slipped into my overcoat in the hall, and, snatching my hat from the rack, entered the dining-room. From there a French window gave upon a porch to which a few steps led up from the garden. The window offered no resistance and, fortunately, the protecting roller-blind was not down. A few women, probably ammunition workers, passed the house, and when they were out of hearing I stepped out.

It was still dark, though the dawn was heralded in the east. In a spot previously selected for the reason that it was screened by bushes, and from which I could survey the street without being seen, I got over the fence. I had barely done so when a cough sounded some distance behind me. With a chill racing up and down my spine, I walked on. Turning the near corner, I threw a hasty glance over my shoulder, but could see no one. Nevertheless, I thought it wise to walk back on my tracks around several blocks, before I made for the big thoroughfare which led toward Berlin.

A number of people were about, men and women, going to work. Keeping on, I came after a lapse of about fifteen minutes to a station of the Elevated. It was now five o’clock.

When I went up the steps to the booking-hall, night was slowly withdrawing before the vanguard of the approaching day. The electric lights in the streets flashed once and were dead. In the station they were beginning to show pale and ineffective.

To my relief, people were entering the station with me. Obviously, there was a service of trains this early, though I had been in doubt about it till then. The taking of a ticket to Friedrich Strasse Station, one of the chief stations in Berlin, cost me some agitation. It meant the first test of my ability to “carry on.”

“Friedrich Strasse! Ten minutes to six! I must find the restaurant and have breakfast.” There is no sense in neglecting the inner man; no experienced campaigner will voluntarily risk it.

Friedrich Strasse was a most uncomfortable place to be in. It swarmed with soldiers, and its intricate passages and stairs were plastered with placards: “Station Provost Marshal,” “Military Passport Office,” “Passports to be shown here,” “For Military only.”

At last I found a snug little waiting-room and restaurant, where I got a fairly decent meal, including eggs, which at the time were still obtainable without ration-cards, and rolls, for which I ought to have delivered up some bread-tickets, but didn’t. As soon as I had a chance, I bought a newspaper and some cigarettes. Either might help one over an awkward moment.

The train for Leipzig left from a station I knew nothing about except the name. The easiest way for me to get there was by cab. A number of these were standing in front of Bahnhof Friedrich Strasse.

“Anhalter Bahnhof,” I said curtly to the driver of the first four-wheeler on the rank. Cabby mumbled something about _Marke_ through a beard of truly amazing wildness. Then only did I recollect that it is necessary before taking a cab from a station rank in Berlin to obtain a brass shield, with its number, from a policeman stationed inside the booking-hall. Back I went, overcoming as best I might the terrifying aspect of the blue uniform close to me. Fortunately, the man was extraordinarily polite for a Prussian officer of the law, and inquired solicitously what particular kind of cab I should like, and whether it was to be closed or open. It was to be closed.

I had twenty minutes to spare after I alighted from the cab in front of my destination. This station appeared less crowded than the former one, although a considerable number of soldiers were in, or passing through, the big hall. The moment had come when one of the main points of my plan was to be put to the test. Could I obtain a long-distance ticket without a passport? I waited until several people approached the booking-office, then lined up behind them. One of them asked for a second-class ticket to Leipzig, and got it without any formality. I considered myself quite safe when I repeated his demand.

The train, a corridor-express, was crowded. The hour was early for ordinary people, and nobody seemed in the least talkative. To guard against being addressed, I had bought enough German literature of the bloodthirsty type to convince anybody of my patriotic feelings, but I hardly looked at it. I was too much interested in watching the country flashing past the window and in speculating upon what it would be like near the Dutch frontier.

At Leipzig, where we arrived at 9:30 A.M., I had my little Gladstone taken to the cloak-room by a porter, to give more verisimilitude to my limp. For the same reason I made it my first business to buy a stout walking-stick at the nearest shop. After that I got a good luminous compass, whose purchase was another test case. When it was treated as an everyday transaction by the man behind the counter my spirits rose, and the acquisition of maps appeared a less formidable undertaking. Nevertheless, I resolved to leave their purchase to the afternoon. Should I find that suspicion was aroused by my request for “a good map of the province of Westphalia,” I intended to nip away on the earliest train, if I could reach the station unarrested.

The rest of the morning I spent limping through the town, keeping very much on the alert all the time. The tortuous, narrow streets of the inner town, with their old high-gabled houses in curious contrast with the modern buildings and clanging tram-cars, were a delight to me as well as a difficulty; the latter in so far as I had to keep account of my whereabouts, the better to be able to act swiftly in an emergency. Gradually I got into more modern streets, wide and straight. In passing I had made a mental note of a likely-looking restaurant to have lunch in later on.

At last I found myself in a public park, where I rested on a seat for some time. A shrewd wind, which whistled through the bare branches of the trees, made me wrap myself tighter in my greatcoat.

I started to walk back to the restaurant at midday, following for the greater part of the way in the wake of three fat and comfortable-looking burghers, who were deciding the war and the fate of nations in voices loud enough for me to follow their conversation, although thirty paces behind. In the restaurant I had a meal, somewhat reduced in quality and quantity, for a little more than I should have paid in peace times. Over a cigarette I then started to look up my evening train in the time-table I had bought at the station. Unable to find what I wanted, I grew hot and cold all over. I had by no means speculated upon having to stay in any town overnight, and should not have known how to act had I been forced to do so. This question had to be settled there and then, so I went to the station and the inquiry office. I was told that I could get a train at 7:50 or 8 P.M.--I forget which--to Magdeburg, and from there catch the express for the west to Dortmund.

The first part of the afternoon I spent in several cafés, unhappy to be within four walls, yet wanting to rest as much as possible. Toward five o’clock I nervously set forth to buy the maps and some other less important things. I passed several booksellers’ shops with huge war-maps displayed in the windows, but my feet, seemingly of their own volition, carried me past them. When I finally plucked up enough courage to enter a shop, my apprehension proved quite unnecessary. I came away with a fine motor-map and another one, less useful generally but giving some additional information. After that the rest of my equipment was rapidly acquired: a pair of night binoculars, wire-clippers, a knapsack, a very light oilskin, and a cheap portmanteau to carry these things in. By a fortunate chance I saw some military water-bottles in a shop window, which reminded me that I had nearly overlooked this very important part of a fugitive’s rig-out. I got a fine aluminum one.

By this time it was getting dark. The best way of spending what remained of my time in Leipzig was to have a leisurely meal in the station restaurant.

While I was waiting to be served, a well-dressed man at a table opposite attracted my attention. He came into the room soon after me, and seemed to take a suspicious interest in my person. He stared at me, openly and otherwise. When he did the former, I tried to outstare him. After he had twice been worsted in this contest he kept a careful but unobtrusive watch over the rest of the people in the restaurant, but took no further notice of me, not even when I crossed the room later on to buy at the counter as many sweet biscuits and as much chocolate as I dared. After that I sat reading a book with a lurid cover whereon a German submarine was torpedoing a British man-of-war among hectic waves. Taking advantage of the short-sightedness implied by my glasses, I held it close to my eyes, so that onlookers might have the benefit of the soul-inspiring cover, and look at that instead of my face.

A porter, whom I had tipped sufficiently to make it worth his while, came to fetch my luggage and see me into the train, where I had a compartment to myself. As soon as we were moving, I executed a wild but noiseless war-dance to relieve my overcharged feelings, and then had my first good look at the maps.

At Magdeburg I had only a few minutes to wait for the express to Belgium, which was to arrive at midnight. It turned out to be split into three sections, following each other at ten-minute intervals. I took the first of the trains. The second-class compartment I entered was occupied by an officer of the A. M. C. and two non-commissioned officers. The latter soon left us, having bribed the guard, so it seemed, to let them go into the first-class. In this way the medical officer and I had the whole compartment to ourselves. We lay down at full length, and I slept with hardly an interruption until 4:30, half an hour before the train was due at Dortmund.

At Dortmund the waiting-room I went to was almost empty. I left my luggage in the care of a waiter, and went out to have a wash and brush-up. This expedition gave me an opportunity to learn something about the station before I got a fresh ticket. I saw that to do this I should have to pass ticket-gates which were in charge of an extraordinarily strong guard with fixed bayonets. The importance of Dortmund as a manufacturing town, coupled with its situation in the industrial district of the West, the vulnerable point of Germany, explained these precautions.

Back in the waiting-room, a liquid called coffee and a most unsatisfactory kind of war bread had to take the place of a Christian breakfast. From the time-table I learned that there was a local train to Wanne at about 6:30. It just missed connection with another one from Wanne to Haltern, if I recollect rightly. The prospect of having to wait over two hours in a small town on the edge of the industrial district, before I could get a train, was not particularly inviting, but there was no alternative. My ticket was taken only at the last minute; then Dortmund was left behind.

For most of the way to Wanne I traveled in the company of two young civilians, massively built and pictures of health. When they had left I hastily packed my impedimenta in the new portmanteau, leaving the Gladstone empty, with the intention of depositing it in a cloak-room as the best means of getting rid of it without leaving a clue.

Having arrived at Wanne at eight o’clock, I handed my two pieces of luggage in at the cloak-room window, asking for a separate ticket for each.

The man behind the counter, to whom I took a great dislike from that moment, stared at me in silence for some seconds, until I could no longer stand it, and started a lame explanation: I wanted to leave the small bag for a friend of mine to fetch later on from whom I had borrowed it in the town about a week ago, name of Hugo Schmidt. The other I would take away with me as soon as my business in Wanne was finished. The fib sounded unconvincing enough to my own ears. The wooden face of my antagonist on the other side of the window gave no indication of thoughts or emotions. All that mattered really was that he gave me two tickets, and that I found myself in the street still unarrested but feeling unaccountably hot.

Walking as briskly as my limp would permit, I wandered about the streets, diving into a factory yard here and the hall of an office building there, as if I were a commercial traveler, taking good care not to linger long enough for other people to become interested in me.

All the time I felt uncomfortable and dissatisfied with my performance at the station and the pretense I was putting up, and thus it came about that the photograph of a friend of mine in Ruhleben disintegrated under my fingers in my pocket, to be dropped bit by bit into the road, lest, if I were arrested, the original should get into trouble.

It was a relief when ten o’clock was past and train-time approached. I got my portmanteau from my friend in the cloak-room, who was fortunately busy with other people, and got into an empty compartment. Between stations, during the twenty-minute run, I looked at my maps, to form an idea of how best to get out of Haltern in the right direction.

This small town is about half a mile from the station, which is an important railway junction. I was quite unacquainted with this part of the province of Westphalia. The maps showed it as not too thickly populated, with plenty of woods dotted all over it, and plenty of water.

The train thundered over the big railway bridge crossing the river Lippe and drew into the station, and I, feeling pretty good, landed on the platform with something like a skip and a jump, until I recollected my leg. Then slowly I limped after the other people the train had disgorged. In front of me I could see the church steeple rising above the roofs of the compact little town in the middle distance. Half-way toward it I passed a detachment of English Tommies sitting on top of a fence, smoking pipes and cigarettes. About an equal number of Poilus were standing close to them, laughing and criticizing the appearance of the passing women. The only guard I could discover was leaning sleepily against a tree on the opposite side of the road. I suppressed an almost overwhelming desire to exchange greetings, and passed them instead with a stony stare.