"They took everything," he announced. "All they left me was a pair of pajamas." "What! You mean they have your papers?" "All of them," he smiled. "Likewise a trunk full of letters and a valise. Oh, well, they'll send them on. They took my address. Gad, they stripped me through!" I began laughing. The courier could see no mirth in the situation. "You," I gasped, "you, who by all rights should have paraded through, from you they take everything while they let me pass." "Do you mean to say," he exclaimed, "that they didn't take your letters?" "Not one," I grinned. "Well, I'll be damned!" he said. Locked in the compartment we nervously watched the door, half expecting that the police spy would come back for us. We could not have been delayed more than a few minutes, but it seemed hours, before, with German regard for comfort, the train glided out of the shed. It must have been trying on my companion's good humor, but the absurdity of stripping a courier of everything he carried, was irresistible. Perhaps it was our continued laughter that brought the knock on the door. Pushing aside the curtains we saw outside--for it was one of the new German wagons with a passageway running the entire length of one side of the car--a tall, broad-shouldered, lean man with features and expression both typical and unmistakable. "An Englishman!" We saw him smile and shake his head. I hesitatingly let fall the curtain and looked at the courier. "Let him in," he said. "He's got the brand of an English university boy all over him. We'll have a chat with him. You don't mind, do you?" "Mind!" In my eagerness I banged back the compartment doors with a crash that brought down the conductor. I saw my companion hastily corrupt that official whose murmured "_Bitte schon_" implied an un-Teutonic disregard for the fact that he had done something _verboten_ by admitting a second-class passenger into a first-class coupé; and the stranger entered. We were gazing upon a strikingly handsome, fair-haired man not yet thirty. His eyes twinkled when he said that he supposed we were Americans. His manner and intonation made me stare at him. "And you?" we finally asked. "I'm going first to Berlin, then to Petrograd," he said, perhaps avoiding our question. "Business trip." We chatted on, the obvious thought obsessing me. Of course the man was an English spy. But how absurd! If his face did not give him away to any one who knew--and my word for it, those police spies do know!--he would be betrayed by his mannerisms. His accent would instantly cry out the English in him. Of what could Downing Street be thinking? It was sending this man to certain death. One began to feel sorry for him. Feeling the intimacy brought by the common experience at Warnemunde, I presently said: "You certainly have your nerve with you, traveling in Germany with _your_ accent." "Why?" he laughed. "A neutral is safe."