I rallied under the shock sufficiently to say, “Will you take a chair?”

“No,” came the laconic reply, “I will take you—­and this,” he said, reaching for the piece of scribble-paper I had in my hands, “and any baggage you have in your room.”

I assured him that I had none, as I really expected to stay in Brussels but a day.  He pretended not to hear my reply, and said,

“We better take it with us, for we will probably need it.”

He looked under the bed and unlocked the closet door.  Finding nothing, he asked for the key to my room.  I handed it over, Room Number 502.

“You will be so good as to follow me now.”

Now every one knows that the Spy-Season in Europe opened with the beginning of the war.  Spy hunting became at once a veritable mania.

Consequently no self-respecting person returns from the war-zone without at least one hair-raising story of being taken as a spy.  Being just an average species of American, I exhale no particular air of mystery or villainy; yet I suffered a score of times the laying on of hands by German, French, Belgian, and even Dutch authorities.

But this experience is marked off from all my other ordeals in four ways.  In the first place, instead of casually falling into the hands of my captors, they came after me in full force.  In the second place, a specific charge of using money for bribing information was laid against me, and witnesses were at hand.  In the third place, the leader of the party arrested me in civilian dress, but before examination and trial he changed to military uniform.  In the fourth place, the officials were in such a surly mood that my message to the American Ambassador was undelivered, and at the last trial before the American representatives there was no apology, but rather the sullen attitude of those who had been balked in bagging their game.

When my captor bade me follow him I asked: 

“Can I leave word with my friends?” For an answer he smiled satirically.  By accident or design, the time chosen for my taking off was one when both of my two casual acquaintances were out of the hotel.

“Not now, but a little later perhaps, when this is fixed up,” my captor answered me.

We stepped into a carriage.  The two assistants at the little surprise party walked away, and my rising sense of fear was allayed by the friendly offer of a cigarette.  It was a brand-new experience to ride away to prison in royal state like this.  The almost pleasant attitude of my companion reassured me.  “After all,” I mused, “this is a lucky stroke; a little uncertain perhaps, but on the whole an interesting way to while away the tedium of an otherwise eventless birthday.”

We stopped before the Belgian Government building, on the Rue de la Loi, the headquarters of the German staff.  At a word the sentries dropped back and my companion bade me walk down a long, dark corridor.  I opened a door at the end, and found myself in a room with a few officers in chairs, and a large array of documents upon a table.