“And then!—­” he would exclaim, and he would repeat his pantomime of pointing his forefinger at my stomach and wiggling his thumb.  He was very popular with me.

Meanwhile they were taking me farther away from Brussels and the “environs.”

“When you picked me up,” I said, “I was inside the environs, but by the time I reach ‘the’ general he will see only that I am fifty miles beyond where I am permitted to be.  And who is going to tell him it was you brought me there?  You won’t!”

Rupert of Hentzau only smiled like the cat that has just swallowed the canary.

He put me in another automobile and they whisked me off, always going farther from Brussels, to Ath and then to Ligne, a little town five miles south.  Here they stopped at a house the staff occupied, and, leading me to the second floor, put me in an empty room that seemed built for their purpose.  It had a stone floor and whitewashed walls and a window so high that even when standing you could see only the roof of another house and a weather-vane.  They threw two bundles of wheat on the floor and put a sentry at the door with orders to keep it open.  He was a wild man, and thought I was, and every time I moved his automatic moved with me.  It was as though he were following me with a spotlight.  My foot was badly cut across the instep and I was altogether forlorn and disreputable.  So, in order to look less like a tramp when I met the general, I bound up the foot, and, always with one eye on the sentry, and moving very slowly, shaved and put on dry things.  From the interest the sentry showed it seemed evident he never had taken a bath himself, nor had seen any one else take one, and he was not quite easy in his mind that he ought to allow it.  He seemed to consider it a kind of suicide.  I kept on thinking out plans, and when an officer appeared I had one to submit.  I offered to give the money I had with me to any one who would motor back to Brussels and take a note to the American minister, Brand Whitlock.  My proposition was that if in five hours, or by seven o’clock, he did not arrive in his automobile and assure them that what I said about myself was true, they need not wait until midnight, but could shoot me then.

“If I am willing to take such a chance,” I pointed out, “I must be a friend of Mr. Whitlock.  If he repudiates me, it will be evident I have deceived you, and you will be perfectly justified in carrying out your plan.”  I had a note to Whitlock already written.  It was composed entirely with the idea that they would read it, and it was much more intimate than my very brief acquaintance with that gentleman justified.  But from what I have seen and heard of the ex-mayor of Toledo I felt he would stand for it.

The note read: 

“Dear Brand: 

“I am detained in a house with a garden where the railroad passes through the village of Ligne.  Please come quick, or send some one in the legation automobile.