Rupert of Hentzau smiled delightedly.

“Do you expect us to believe that?” he protested.

“Listen,” I said.  “If you could invent an explanation for that uniform as quickly as I told you that one, standing in a road with eight officers trying to shoot you, you would be the greatest general in Germany.”

That made the others laugh; and Rupert retorted:  “Very well, then, we will concede that the entire British army has changed its uniform to suit your photograph.  But if you are not an officer, why, in the photograph, are you wearing war ribbons?”

I said the war ribbons were in my favor, and I pointed out that no officer of any one country could have been in the different campaigns for which the ribbons were issued.

“They prove,” I argued, “that I am a correspondent, for only a correspondent could have been in wars in which his own country was not engaged.”

I thought I had scored; but Rupert instantly turned my own witness against me.

“Or a military attache,” he said.  At that they all smiled and nodded knowingly.

He followed this up by saying, accusingly, that the hat and clothes I was then wearing were English.  The clothes were English, but I knew he did not know that, and was only guessing; and there were no marks on them.  About my hat I was not certain.  It was a felt Alpine hat, and whether I had bought it in London or New York I could not remember.  Whether it was evidence for or against I could not be sure.  So I took it off and began to fan myself with it, hoping to get a look at the name of the maker.  But with the eyes of the young prosecuting attorney fixed upon me, I did not dare take a chance.  Then, to aid me, a German aeroplane passed overhead, and those who were giving me the third degree looked up.  I stopped fanning myself and cast a swift glance inside the hat.  To my intense satisfaction I read, stamped on the leather lining:  “Knox, New York.”

I put the hat back on my head and a few minutes later pulled it off and said:  “Now, for instance, my hat.  If I were an Englishman would I cross the ocean to New York to buy a hat?”

It was all like that.  They would move away and whisper together, and I would try to guess what questions they were preparing.  I had to arrange my defence without knowing in what way they would try to trip me, and I had to think faster than I ever have thought before.  I had no more time to be scared, or to regret my past sins, than has a man in a quicksand.  So far as I could make out, they were divided in opinion concerning me.  Rupert of Hentzau, who was the adjutant or the chief of staff, had only one simple thought, which was to shoot me.  Others considered me a damn fool; I could hear them laughing and saying:  “Er ist ein dummer Mensch.”  And others thought that whether I was a fool or not, or an American or an Englishman, was not the question; I had seen too much and should be put away.  I felt if, instead of having Rupert act as my interpreter, I could personally speak to the general I might talk my way out of it, but Rupert assured me that to set me free the Count de Schwerin lacked authority, and that my papers, which were all against me, must be submitted to the general of the army corps, and we would not reach him until midnight.