stranger. This stranger was a gentlemanly-appearing person,
dressed in traveling clothes, who had under his arm a small
leather dispatch case. As I entered, I could hear him, speaking in
German with a strong English accent, abusing the innkeeper, the
said Christian Hauck, and accusing him of having drugged his, the
stranger's, wine, and of having stolen his, the stranger's,
coach-and-four, and of having abducted his, the stranger's,
secretary and servants. This the said Christian Hauck was loudly
denying, and the other people in the inn were taking the
innkeeper's part, and mocking the stranger for a madman.

On entering, I commanded everyone to be silent, in the king's name,
and then, as he appeared to be the complaining party of the dispute,
I required the foreign gentleman to state to me what was the
trouble. He then repeated his accusations against the innkeeper,
Hauck, saying that Hauck, or, rather, another man who resembled
Hauck and who had claimed to be the innkeeper, had drugged his wine
and stolen his coach and made off with his secretary and his
servants. At this point, the innkeeper and the bystanders all began
shouting denials and contradictions, so that I had to pound on a
table with my truncheon to command silence.

I then required the innkeeper, Christian Hauck, to answer the
charges which the stranger had made; this he did with a complete
denial of all of them, saying that the stranger had had no wine
in his inn, and that he had not been inside the inn until a few
minutes before, when he had burst in shouting accusations, and
that there had been no secretary, and no valet, and no coachman,
and no coach-and-four, at the inn, and that the gentleman was
raving mad. To all this, he called the people who were in the
common room to witness.

I then required the stranger to account for himself. He said
that his name was Benjamin Bathurst, and that he was a British
diplomat, returning to England from Vienna. To prove this, he
produced from his dispatch case sundry papers. One of these was
a letter of safe-conduct, issued by the Prussian Chancellery, in
which he was named and described as Benjamin Bathurst. The other
papers were English, all bearing seals, and appearing to be
official documents.

Accordingly, I requested him to accompany me to the police station,
and also the innkeeper, and three men whom the innkeeper wanted to
bring as witnesses.

Traugott Zeller
_Oberwachtmeister_

Report approved,