Then came the real moment. Niemeyer’s jaw dropped, his moustachios for a brief instant lost their twirl, his solid stomach swelled less impressively against his overcoat. Just for a moment he became grey and looked very old. But only for a moment. The sound of laughter in the upper corridor windows floated down to him and roused action and the devil in him forthwith. As an initial measure he put all the windows at that end of the building out of bounds and told his sentries to fire at once if a face appeared. Then he had the outer doors of both houses locked. Then he placed a sentry over the tunnel head and stalked away to the Kommandantur to ring up the Company Captain in Holzminden, inform the police, report events to Corps Headquarters at Hanover, and issue emergency orders “for the safety of the camp.” These were posted up in both houses and caused considerable amusement. Briefly, they permitted the officers remaining in the camp to eat, sleep, and breathe, but that was about all. “No one,” so ran the order, “when inside the building was to move from his own room. Conversation with other officers in the corridors or by the notice boards was forbidden. Officers were not allowed to stand about at the doors of the buildings. No officer belonging to one house might enter the other. Officers were not to walk about in groups of more than two.” And so on. Of course we had amply expected all this. Indeed, there was ground for congratulation that things had panned out up to the present without murder being done. Stringent orders had been issued that, in the event of the escape only being discovered at the 9 o’clock _appel_, there was to be no laughter or demonstration calculated to aggravate. Months before, the more serious-minded had discussed the prospects of someone being shot in the Commandant’s first wild ebullition of fury and baffled rage at the defeat of all his precautions. It was one advantage of the premature discovery of the escape that what shooting was ordered was confined to the windows.