"Ach! gehen sie zum Teufel!" I cried angrily. But the man persisted, running along beside me and reeling off his tout's patter in a wheezing, asthmatic voice. I struck off blindly down the first turning we came to, hoping to be rid of the fellow, but in vain. Finally, I stopped and held out a gulden. "Take this and go away!" I said. The old fellow waved the coin aside. "Danke, danke," he said nonchalantly, looking at the same time to right and left. Then he said in a calm English voice, utterly different from his whining accents of a moment before: "You must be a dam' cool hand!" But he didn't bluff me, staggered though I was. I said quickly in German: "What do you want with me? I don't understand you. If you annoy me any more I shall call the police!" Again he spoke in English and it was the voice of a well-bred Englishman that spoke: "You're either a past master at the game or raving mad. Why! the whole station is humming after you! Yet you walked out of the buffet and through the whole lot of them without turning a hair. No wonder they never spotted you!" Again I answered in German: "Ich verstehe nicht!" But he went on in English, without seeming to notice my observation: "Hang it all, man, you can't go into Germany wearing a regimental tie!" My hand flew to my collar and the blood to my head. What a cursed amateur I was, after all! I had entirely forgotten that I was wearing my regimental colours. I was crimson with vexation but also with a sense of relief. I felt I might trust this man. It would be a sharp German agent who would notice a small detail like that. Still I resolved to stick to German: I would trust nobody. But the guide had started his patter again. I saw two workmen approaching. When they had passed, he said, this time in English: "You're quite right to be cautious with a stranger like me, but I want to warn you. Why, I've been following you round all the morning. Lucky for you it was me and not one of the others...." Still I was silent. The little man went on: "For the past half-hour they have been combing that station for you. How you managed to escape them I don't know except that none of them seems to have a very clear idea of your appearance. You don't look very British, I grant you; but I spotted your tie and then I recognized the British officer all right. "No, don't worry to tell me anything about yourself--it is none of my business to know, any more than you will find out anything about me. I know where you are going, for I heard you take your ticket; but you may as well understand that you have as much chance of getting into your train if you walk into the railway hall and up the stairs in the ordinary way as you have of flying across the frontier." "But they can't stop me!" I said. "This isn't Germany...." "Bah!" said the guide. "You will be jostled, there will be an altercation, a false charge, and you will miss your train! _They_ will attend to the rest!