Every hostelry bedroom in the north of Europe is provided with a table, pens, ink and writing materials. A few minutes after the door had been locked I might have been seen seated at table preparing a despatch and puzzling deeply over certain sprawled hieroglyphics which had apparently been made on rough paper, _possibly inside my pocket with a pencil stump when perhaps reclining in an awkward position and unable or unwilling to see to guide the fingers which gripped the active stump of lead_. Be that as it may, the writing was awfully bad and very difficult indeed to make out. I studied it with the greatest of care all ways, upside down, and at every angle; whilst the smiles on my face may have portrayed evident satisfaction at the result. Suddenly a heavy tread caused the solid stairs to creak, and loud knocking, equivalent to peremptory demands, upon the door of my room caused me to jump in my chair as though a guilty conscience plagued my peace of mind. Quick as lightning I removed and concealed certain precious belongings, doubled up the sheet of paper upon which I was working, and started to scribble silly messages upon some picture postcards I had purchased at the village store to people of no importance who lived at no great distance away. Again the knocking was repeated, this time louder and more emphatic than before. "All right, my friend, no hurry. Take all things quietly and all things will be well." But the impatient visitor would not and did not wait. He placed so much force behind the lock that it yielded, and he nearly fell on to his nose as the door gave way. Recovering himself he came quickly forward, and I rose to meet him half way. "You know who we are?" he said to me. "My dear sir, I exceedingly regret to say that I have not that pleasure," I replied. "We are police officers." As he spoke, another burly individual appeared in the opening of the doorway, who, without sign of interest in the preliminary conversation, proceeded to prop up the broken door to some semblance of its former state. "You have just landed from Femern and we arrest you as a German spy." At these words my eyes glittered, I clenched my hands in a way which did not augur well for the visitors. "My good sir," I muttered through compressed lips, "you may do what you please, and you may assign me to any nationality in the wide, wide world, except that one. I am not in any way related to the barbarians, nor will I permit you to take me for one. If you repeat such an insulting accusation again I shall throw you out." "You forget, sir, you are under arrest," he snapped. "I do not forget that, if I am anything at all, I am an Englishman, and that I am in a private apartment. If the door is guarded, the window is not; you will observe that it is an unpleasant height from the ground to fall."