“Well, you can belittle it as much as you like, but you certainly saved me from an awfully nasty situation.  And you didn’t know who I was, either!”

“No, I didn’t, of course.  But it makes me feel all the better to find out it was you, Fred. Still you know we’re not out of the woods yet.”

“We’re all right here, aren’t we?”

“I don’t know.  I think the Russians will be in East Prussia, and well in, before very long.  If that happens and the German army is pushed back of this line, these people will be entirely out of control, except if Russian troops happen to come to this particular spot—­and there’s no especial reason why they should.”

“You mean they might attack the house?”

“They might do anything, especially if the war seems to be going against them.  They’re good enough people, as a rule, but in times like these there’s no telling what will happen.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.  But—­yes, you’re right, of course.  What do you think we’d better do, Boris?”

“There’s nothing to be done at once.  We’ve got to wait a little while, and let the situation develop.  If we tried to get away now, it would be very risky indeed, I think.  You see, between us and the Russian border there are a lot of German troops.  And, even if you went back now toward Koenigsberg and Berlin, I’m afraid you’d have a hard time.  You see, you haven’t any passport.  And you’re partly Russian.  Then you’ve been here, and they’d know that.  I’m afraid you’d stand a good chance of being locked up.  Tell me just what happened at Virballen.”

Fred told him all that he could remember, and Boris frowned.

“Ernst will make a report, you see,” he said.  “I’m afraid they’ll be looking for you.  It makes it look as if you were in a bad hole.”

“How do you mean?  There’s nothing in what happened there to interest Germany, is there?”

“If things had been normal that night, you’d have found out what there was, I can tell you!  You see the Russian and the German secret police work together very well.  It’s all right when they’re looking for nihilists and violent revolutionaries—­the sort of people who would think it a great thing to assassinate either the Kaiser or the Czar.  But the trouble is that if a big man in either Germany or Russia has a grudge against someone, he can use that whole secret police machinery against him.  That’s what Mikail Suvaroff was doing to you.”

“But the Germans?”

“He would have seen to it, I suppose, that the secret police on our side told the Germans here some cock and bull story—­enough to induce them to make it unpleasant for you.  That was arranged in advance probably.  Right there on the border, with war starting, those fellows lost their importance.  The soldiers, like Ernst, were in full command.  But they’ll be as busy and as active as ever a little way behind the fighting line, looking for spies.  They’ll remember what the Russians had to say about you, and they’ll decide that you’re a suspicious character, and lock you up in some fortress till the war’s over!”