Half an hour later I came down-stairs to motor to the Main Telegraph Office with my American cables. No sooner had I stepped to the threshold of the hotel than three policemen grabbed me--one pinioning my right arm, another my left, and the third gripping me by the back of the neck. All around the hotel entrance stood gesticulating Germans yelling, like Comanche Indians, "_Englischer Spion! Nach Spandau mit ihm!_" (English spy! To Spandau with him!) In far less time than it takes me to tell it, my captors, who had now drawn their sabers to "protect" me, as they explained, from the murderous intentions of the mob, tossed me into the rear seat of an open taxicab waiting at the curb. They allowed sufficient time to elapse for the mob, which now encircled the cab shouting "_Englischer Hund!_" (English dog!) "_Schiesst den Spion!_" (Shoot the spy!) and other cheery greetings, to cool its passions on my hapless head and body with fisticuffs and canes, while a misdirected upper-cut from a youth, aimed squarely at my jaw, did nothing but knock my hat into the bottom of the car and send my eye-glasses splintered and spinning to the same destination. The police, still covering me with their sabers, shoved me to the floor of the car and gave orders to the driver to make post-haste for the Mittel-strasse police station, half a dozen blocks away. The power of speech having temporarily returned--I wonder if my readers will regard it a humiliating confession if I acknowledge that cold chills were now chasing up and down my spine?--I ventured to ask the policemen to whom or to what I was indebted for this "striking" token of their solicitude.