Seeing its harmless appearance the cloak-room receipt—­I calculated—­would, unlike Semlin’s document, attract no attention if, by any mischance, it fell into wrong hands en route. I therefore did not scruple to commit it to the post.  Before taking my bag of books to the cloak-room I wrote two letters.  Both were to Ashcroft—­Ashcroft of the Foreign Office, who got me my passport and permit to come to Rotterdam.  Herbert Ashcroft and I were old friends.  I addressed the envelopes to his private house in London.  The Postal Censor, I knew, keen though he always is after letters from neutral countries, would leave old Herbert’s correspondence alone.

The first letter was brief.  “Dear Herbert,” I wrote, “would you mind looking after the enclosed until you hear from me again?  Filthy weather here.  Yours, D.O.”  This letter was destined to contain the cloak-room receipt.  To conceal the importance of an enclosure, it is always a good dodge to send the covering letter under separate cover.

“Dear Herbert,” I said in my second letter, “If you don’t hear from me within two months of this date regarding the enclosure you will have already received, please send someone, or, preferably, go yourself and collect my luggage at the cloak-room of the Rotterdam Central Station.  I know how busy you always are.  Therefore you will understand my reasons for making this inordinate claim upon your time.  Yours, D.O.”  And, by way of a clue, I added, inconsequently enough:  "Gott strafe England!"

I chuckled inwardly at the thought of Herbert’s face on receiving this preposterous demand that he should abandon his dusty desk in Downing Street and betake himself across the North Sea to fetch my luggage.  But he’d go all right.  I knew my Herbert, dull and dry and conventional, but a most faithful friend.

I called a porter at the entrance of the buffet and handing him Semlin’s bag and overcoat, bade him find me a first-class carriage in the Berlin train when it arrived.  I would meet him on the platform.  Then, at the cloak-room opposite, I gave in my bag of books, put the receipt in the first letter and posted it in the letter-box within the station.  I went out into the streets with the second letter and posted it in a letter-box let into the wall of a tobacconist’s shop in a quiet street a few turnings away.  By this arrangement I reckoned Herbert would get the letter with the receipt before the covering letter arrived.

Returning to the railway station I noticed a kind of slop shop which despite the early hour was already open.  A fat Jew in his shirt-sleeves, his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, stood at the entrance framed in hanging overcoats and bats and boots.  I had no umbrella and it struck me that a waterproof of some kind might not be a bad addition to my extremely scanty wardrobe.  Moreover, I reflected that with the rubber shortage rain-coats must be at a premium in Germany.