As it grew later I persuaded myself they did not mean to act until morning, and I stretched out on the straw and tried to sleep.  At midnight I was startled by the light of an electric torch.  It was strapped to the chest of an officer, who ordered me to get up and come with him.  He spoke only German, and he seemed very angry.  The owner of the house and the old cook had shown him to my room, but they stood in the shadow without speaking.  Nor, fearing I might compromise them—­for I could not see why, except for one purpose, they were taking me out into the night—­did I speak to them.  We got into another motor-car and in silence drove north from Ligne down a country road to a great chateau that stood in a magnificent park.  Something had gone wrong with the lights of the chateau, and its hall was lit only by candles that showed soldiers sleeping like dead men on bundles of wheat and others leaping up and down the marble stairs.  They put me in a huge armchair of silk and gilt, with two of the gray ghosts to guard me, and from the hall, when the doors of the drawing-room opened, I could see a long table on which were candles in silver candlesticks or set on plates, and many maps and half-empty bottles of champagne.  Around the table, standing or seated, and leaning across the maps, were staff-officers in brilliant uniforms.  They were much older men and of higher rank than any I had yet seen.  They were eating, drinking, gesticulating.  In spite of the tumult, some, in utter weariness, were asleep.  It was like a picture of 1870 by Detaille or De Neuville.  Apparently, at last I had reached the headquarters of the mysterious general.  I had arrived at what, for a suspected spy, was an inopportune moment.  The Germans themselves had been surprised, or somewhere south of us had met with a reverse, and the air was vibrating with excitement and something very like panic.  Outside, at great speed and with sirens shrieking, automobiles were arriving, and I could hear the officers shouting:  “Die Englischen kommen!”

To make their reports they flung themselves up the steps, the electric torches, like bull’s-eye lanterns, burning holes in the night.  Seeing a civilian under guard, they would stare and ask questions.  Even when they came close, owing to the light in my eyes, I could not see them.  Sometimes, in a half circle, there would be six or eight of the electric torches blinding me, and from behind them voices barking at me with strange, guttural noises.  Much they said I could not understand, much I did not want to understand, but they made it quite clear it was no fit place for an Englishman.

When the door from the drawing-room opened and Rupert of
Hentzau appeared, I was almost glad to see him.

Whenever he spoke to me he always began or ended his sentence with “Mr. Davis.”  He gave it an emphasis and meaning which was intended to show that he knew it was not my name.  I would not have thought it possible to put so much insolence into two innocent words.  It was as though he said:  “Mr. Davis, alias Jimmy Valentine.”  He certainly would have made a great actor.