d that my message to
the American Ambassador was undelivered, and at the last trial
before the American representatives there was no apology, but
rather the sullen attitude of those who had been balked in bagging
their game.

When my captor bade me follow him I asked:

"Can I leave word with my friends?" For an answer he smiled
satirically. By accident or design, the time chosen for my taking off
was one when both of my two casual acquaintances were out of
the hotel.

"Not now, but a little later perhaps, when this is fixed up," my
captor answered me.

We stepped into a carriage. The two assistants at the little surprise
party walked away, and my rising sense of fear was allayed by the
friendly offer of a cigarette. It was a brand-new experience to ride
away to prison in royal state like this. The almost pleasant attitude
of my companion reassured me. "After all," I mused, "this is a
lucky stroke; a little uncertain perhaps, but on the whole an
interesting way to while away the tedium of an otherwise eventless
birthday."

We stopped before the Belgian Government building, on the Rue
de la Loi, the headquarters of the German staff. At a word the
sentries dropped back and my companion bade me walk down a
long, dark corridor. I opened a door at the end, and found myself in
a room with a few officers in chairs, and a large array of
documents upon a table.

The moment I came within the safe confines of that room the
whole attitude of my captor changed. His mask of friendliness
dropped away. Perhaps his spirit responded and adapted itself to
the official atmosphere of the headquarters. Anyhow, at once he
froze up into the most rigid formality. Sitting down, he wrote out
what I deemed was the report of the morning's proceedings. I
watched him writing with all the semblance and precision of a
machine, except for a half-smile that sometimes flickered upon his
close-pressed lips.

He was a machine, or, more precisely, a cog in the great fighting
machine that was producing death and destruction to Belgium.
Just as the Germans have put men through a certain mold and
turned out the typical German soldier, in like manner through other
molds they have turned out according to pattern the German
secret service man. He is a kind of spy-destroyer performing in his
sphere the same service that the torpedo-boat destroyer does in
its domain. This man was the German reincarnation of Javert, the
police inspector who hung so relent