The outlook was certainly discouraging and when the train stopped at Wesel—­outside the station I afterwards discovered—­I acted on the impulse for self-preservation, darted along the corridor, found a place of concealment and tucked myself in.  Now I realise that this was the worst thing I could have done, but then my thoughts were centred upon effecting my escape, in the half-hope that the Germans, unable to find me, would assume that I had surreptitiously left the train.

But I misjudged German thoroughness, especially when a suspected spy is the quarry.  Fifteen, thirty, fifty minutes slipped by and still the train did not move.  The other passengers were not being regarded kindly at my non-appearance.  So, stealing out of my hiding place I sauntered as composedly as I could along the corridor to come face to face with the officer, who with his guard was diligently searching every nook and cranny and cross-questioning the other passengers.  Directly he caught sight of me he sprang forward, uttering a command.  The next instant I was surrounded by soldiers.  I was under arrest.

The officer gave a signal from a window and the train pulled into the station.  I was hustled unceremoniously on to the platform, where eight soldiers closed around me to form an escort and I was marched forward.  As we crossed the platform the locomotive whistle shrieked, and about 9.30 p.m. the last train to leave Berlin on the outbreak of war bore my companions homewards.

Personally I was disposed to regard the whole episode as a joke, and an instance of Teuton blind blundering.  The gravity of the situation never struck me for an instant.  I argued with myself that I should speedily prove that I was the victim of circumstances and would be able to convince the military of my bona fides without any great effort.

But as I reflected it dawned upon me that my arrest had been skilfully planned.  The youth on the train, whom I never saw again, had played but a minor part in the drama of which I was the central figure.  My departure must have been communicated from Berlin.  Otherwise how should Wesel have learned that a spy had been arrested?  The station was besieged with a wildly shouting excited crowd who bawled: 

“English spy!  English spy!  Lynch him!  Lynch him!”

I was bundled into a military office which had evidently been hurriedly extemporised from a lumber room.  The crowd outside increased in denseness and hostility.  They were shouting and raving with all the power of their lungs.  These vocal measures proving inadequate, stones and other missiles commenced to fly.  They could not see through the windows of the room so an accurately thrown brick shivered the pane of glass.  Through the open space I caught glimpses of the most ferocious and fiendish faces it has ever been my lot to witness.  Men and women vied with one another in the bawling and ground their teeth when they caught sight of me.