“You won that lately?” I began, touching the ribbon.

“Yes,” he said; “only the other day I received it.”

“And for what, might I ask?” said I, pressing my advantage.

“Oh,” he said, “I’ve been out quite a bit in the night air lately.  You know we Germans are desperately afraid of night air.”

Later I learned—­though not from Humplmayer—­that he had for a period of weeks done scout work in an automobile in hostile territory; which meant that he rode in the darkness over the strange roads of an alien country, exposed every minute to the chances of ambuscade and barbed-wire mantraps and the like.  I judge he earned his bauble.

I tried Von Theobald next—­a lynx-faced, square-shouldered young man of the field guns.  To him I put the question:  “What have you done, now, to merit the bestowal of the Cross?”

“Well,” he said—­and his smile was born of embarrassment, I thought—­ “there was shooting once or twice, and I—­well, I did not go away.  I remained.”

So after that I quit asking.  But it was borne in upon me that if these gold-braceletted, monocled, wasp-waisted exquisites could go jauntily forth for flirtations with death as afore-time I had seen them going, then also they could be marvelously modest touching on their own performances in the event of their surviving those most fatal blandishments.

Pretty soon we told the Staff good night, according to the ritualistic Teutonic fashion, and took ourselves off to bed; for the next day was expected to be a full day, which it was indeed and verily.  In the hotels of the town, such as they were, officers were billeted, four to the room and two to the bed; but the commandant enthroned at the Hotel de Ville looked after our comfort.  He sent a soldier to nail a notice on the gate of one of the handsomest houses in Laon—­a house whence the tenants had fled at the coming of the Germans—­which notice gave warning to all whom it might concern that Captain Mannesmann, who carried the Kaiser’s own pass, and four American Herren were, until further orders, domiciled there.  And the soldier tarried to clean our boots while we slept and bring us warm shaving water in the morning.

Being thus provided for we tramped away through the empty winding streets to Number Five, Rue St. Cyr, which was a big, fine three-story mansion with its own garden and courtyard.  Arriving there we drew lots for bedrooms.  It fell to me to occupy one that evidently belonged to the master of the house.  He must have run away in a hurry.  His bathrobe still hung on a peg; his other pair of suspenders dangled over the footboard; and his shaving brush, with dried lather on it, was on the floor.  I stepped on it as I got into bed and hurt my foot.