For perhaps two hours I sat on that staircase musing about the peculiar turn in my affairs, when the front door opened and Huyliger ascended the stairs. "I have brought you such of your belongings as I still had, O'Brien," he said, softly. "The rest, as I told you, I cannot give you. They are no longer in my possession." I looked through the little bunch he handed me. It included my identification disk, most of the papers I valued, and perhaps half of the photographs. "I don't know what your object is in retaining the rest of my pictures, Huyliger," I replied, "but, as a matter of fact, the ones that are missing were only of sentimental value to me, and you are welcome to them if you want them. We'll call it a heat." I don't know whether he understood the idiom, but he sat down on the stairs just below me and cogitated for a few moments. "O'Brien," he started, finally, "I'm sorry things have gone the way they have. I feel sorry for you and I would really like to help you. I don't suppose you will believe me, but the matter of the order which I asked you to sign was not of my doing. However, we won't go into that. The proposition was made to you and you turned it down, and that's an end of it. At the same time, I hate to leave you to your own resources and I'm going to make one more suggestion to you for your own good. I have another plan to get you into Holland, and if you will go with me to another house I will introduce you to a man who I think will be in a position to help you." "How many millions of pounds will he want for his trouble?" I asked, sarcastically. "You can arrange that when you see him. Will you go?" I suspected there was something fishy about the proposition, but I felt that I could take care of myself and decided to see the thing through. I knew Huyliger would not dare to deliver me to the authorities because of the fact that I had the telltale passport, which would be his death-knell as well as my own. Accordingly I said I would be quite willing to go with him whenever he was ready, and he suggested that we go the next evening. I pointed out to him that I was entirely without food and asked him whether he could not arrange to bring or send me something to eat while I remained in the house. "I'm sorry, O'Brien," he replied, "but I'm afraid you'll have to get along as best you can. When I brought you your breakfast this morning I took a desperate chance. If I had been discovered by one of the German soldiers entering this house with food in my possession, I would not only have paid the penalty myself, but you would have been discovered, too. It is too dangerous a proposition. Why don't you go out by yourself and buy your food at the stores? That would give you confidence, and you'll need plenty of it when you continue your journey to the border." There was a good deal of truth in what he said, and I really could not blame him for not wanting to take any chances to help me, in view of the relations between us.