ings in lonely Belgian
villages or dwelt ghoulishly on the horrors of the battlefield, the
mounds of decaying corpses, the ghastly mutilations they had seen in the
dead. There were tales, too, of "vengeance" wreaked on "the treacherous
English." One story, in particular, of the fate of a Scottish
Sergeant ... "der Hochlaender" they called him in this oft-told
tale ... still makes me quiver with impotent rage when I think of it.

One evening the name of the Hotel Esplanade caught my ear. I approached
the table and found two flashily dressed bullies and a bedraggled drab
from the streets talking in admiration of my exploit.

"Clubfoot met his match that time," the woman cried. "The dirty dog! But
why didn't this English spy make a job of it and kill the scum? Pah!"

And she spat elegantly into the sawdust on the floor.

"I wouldn't be in that fellow's shoes for something," muttered one of
the men. "No one ever had the better of Clubfoot yet. Do you remember
Meinhardt, Franz? He tried to cheat Clubfoot, and we know what happened
to him!"

"They're raking the whole city for this Englishman," answered the other
man. "Vogel, who works for Section Seven, you know the man I mean, was
telling me. They've done every hotel in Berlin and the suburbs, but they
haven't found him. They raided Bauer's in the Favoriten-Strasse last
night. The Englishman wasn't there, but they got three or four others
they were looking for--Fritz and another deserter included. I was nearly
there myself!"

I was always hearing references of this kind to my exploit. I was never
spoken of except in terms of admiration, but the name of Clubfoot--der
Stelze--excited only execration and terror.

I lived in daily fear of a raid at Haase's. Why the place had escaped so
long, with all that riff-raff assembled there nightly, I couldn't
imagine. It was one of those defects in German organization which puzzle
the best of us at times. In the meantime, I was powerless to escape. The
first thing Haase had done was to take away my papers--to send them to
the police, as he explained--but he never gave them back, and when I
asked for them he put me off with an excuse.

I was a virtual prisoner in the place. On my feet from morning till
night, I had indeed few opportunities for going out; but once, during
a slack time in the afternoon, when I broached the subject to the
landlord, he refused harshly to let me out of his sight.

"The street is not healthy for you j