Still I was silent.  The little man went on: 

“For the past half-hour they have been combing that station for you.  How you managed to escape them I don’t know except that none of them seems to have a very clear idea of your appearance.  You don’t look very British, I grant you; but I spotted your tie and then I recognized the British officer all right.

“No, don’t worry to tell me anything about yourself—­it is none of my business to know, any more than you will find out anything about me.  I know where you are going, for I heard you take your ticket; but you may as well understand that you have as much chance of getting into your train if you walk into the railway hall and up the stairs in the ordinary way as you have of flying across the frontier.”

“But they can’t stop me!” I said.  “This isn’t Germany....”

“Bah!” said the guide.  “You will be jostled, there will be an altercation, a false charge, and you will miss your train! They will attend to the rest!

“Damn it, man,” he went on, “I know what I’m talking about.  Here, come with me and I’ll show you.  You have twenty minutes before the train goes.  Now start the German again!”

We went down the street together for all the world like a “mug” in tow of one of those black-guard guides.  As we approached the station the guide said in his whining German: 

“Pay attention to me now.  I shall leave you here.  Go to the suburban booking-office—­the entrance is in the street to the left of the station hall.  Go into the first-class waiting-room and look out of the window that gives on to the station hall.  There you will see some of the forces mobilized against you.  There is a regular cordon of guides—­like me—­drawn across the entrances to the main-line platforms—­unostentatiously, of course.  If you look you will see plenty of plain-clothes Huns, too....”

“Guides?” I said.

He nodded cheerfully.

“Looks bad for me, doesn’t it?  But one gets better results by being one of them.  Oh! it’s all right.  In any case you’ve got to trust me now.

“See here!  When you have satisfied yourself that I’m correct in what I say, take a platform ticket and walk upstairs to platform No. 5.  On that platform you will find a train.  Go to the end where the metals run out of the station, where the engine would be coupled on, and get into the last first-class carriage.  On no account move from there until you see me.  Now then, I’ll have that gulden!”

I gave him the coin.  The old fellow looked at it and wagged his head, so I gave him another, whereupon he took off his cap, bowed low and hurried off.

In the suburban side waiting-room I peered out of the window on to the station hall.  True enough, I saw one, two, four, six guides loafing about the barriers leading to the main-line platforms.  There seemed to be a lot of people in the hall and certainly a number of the men possessed that singular taste in dress, those rotundities of contour, by which one may distinguish the German in a crowd.