by the
scrutinising orbs of a sharp, neatly dressed man who had been a
passenger on the train. He plays the double role of
detective-interpreter, and he plays it in first-class fashion.

While the man behind the desk was writing my biography, the
detective--or rather the interpreter, as I prefer to think of him,
because he spoke such perfect English--cross-examined me in his own
way. As the grilling went on I did not know whether to be anxious
about the future or to glow with pride over the profound interest
which the land of Goethe and Schiller was displaying in my life and
literary efforts.

Had I not a letter from Count Bernstorff?

I was not thus blessed.

Did I not have a birth certificate? Whom did I know in Germany?
Where did they live? On what occasions had I visited Germany
during my past life? On what fronts had I already seen fighting?
What languages did I speak, and the degree of proficiency in each?

Many of my answers to these and similar questions were carefully
written down by the man at the desk, while his companions in the
inquisition glared, always glared, and the room danced with
soldiers passing through it.

At length my passport was folded and returned to me, but my
credentials and reference books were sealed in an envelope. They
would be returned to me later, I was told.

I was shunted along into an adjoining small room where nimble
fingers dexterously ran through my clothing to find out if I had
overlooked declaring anything.

Another shunting and I was in a large room. I rubbed elbows with
more soldiers along the way, but nobody spoke. Miraculously I came
to a halt before a huge desk, much as a bar of glowing iron, after
gliding like a living thing along the floor of a rolling mill,
halts suddenly at the bidding of a distant hand.

Behind the desk stood men in active service uniforms--men who had
undoubtedly faced death for the land which I was seeking to enter.
They fired further questions at me and took down the data on my
passport, after which I wrote my signature for the official files.
Attacks came hard and fast from the front and both flanks, while a
silent soldier thumbed through a formidable card file, apparently
to see if I were a _persona non grata_, or worse, in the records.

I became conscious of a silent power to my left, and turning my
glance momentarily from the rapid-fire questioners at the desk, I
looked into a pair of lynx eyes flashing up and down my pers