"Whom is he seeking? own accord. Fortune was Not me, surely?" "Oh, no! of course not you." And then the person told me the purpose of the deteotive's visit. It was clear that I had had a very narrow escape, as this was one of the very places in which I expected the detectives to seek me, less than two hours later. "You have have not not escaped, have you?" Again I forced a laugh as I said "No, indeed not. I am out on leave, as I said before." Then, glancing at my watch, I pretended to be horrified at the time. "Good heavens! I must be going. I have squared my soldier to wait for me at such and such a place, and I shall be late if I do not leave immediately. Goodbye." I went out, wondering what on earth I should say by way of a last attempt at bluff if I met the detective at the door. On arrival in the street, I found that he was not there; but the street was fairly crowded, and I thought it best to assume that he was somewhere among the people waiting to watch my move ments. "All right," I said to myself; "I will see, at any rate, that I get a run for my money, and give you one as well." All thoughts of returning to the Camp had vanished of their harrying me at every turn, and my blood was up. I turned down the first quiet street which I could find, and, choosing only those streets which were little frequented by people, I zigzagged until I had quite lost my bearings. As I turned round one corner, I glanced back along the quiet street, through which I had just passed, in order to make sure that no one answering the description of the detective had followed me. This was an easy matter, seeing that I always chose streets which were not crowded with people. When I felt fairly certain that I had thrown him off the scent, if he were actually following me, I decided to make matters doubly certain by dropping down into a tube station and taking train to another part of the city. I asked my way to a certain tube station of an old man whom I met, and discovered that I had completely lost my bearings. In order to get to this tube station, I had to go along the whole length of the prison in which I had been incarcerated for over two years, and also along the whole length of the Chief Police Station in Berlin. Luckily, I saw no warders, and arrived at the tube station in safety. There, without loss of time, I took a train to the West End of Berlin, and got out at the Zoological Gardens Station. I was still at large, but the precious freedom for which I had struggled so long and so persistently seemed no nearer than before. "Wot, mit diesem Hund ? Det glaub' ich nit." (What! with this tyke? Not likely!) There was a great shortage of fodder, and I do not remember to have seen one decently fed horse, either in Berlin or in any of the other German towns through which I passed. By this time I was hungry, one jehu, and asked him to and went into the Wilhelms drive me there. He looked Hallen Restaurant, which I me up and down, and then, had visited on a former escape, jerking his thumb over his having previously purchased shoulder at his horse, which smart imitation - leather was simply a bag of skin and attaché - case, into which I bones, said in his funny Berlin transferred the odd articles I dialecthad brought with me from the Camp, and with which my pockets were overloaded. Throughout the remainder of my stay in Berlin, I carried this attaché-case wherever I went, walking about with the air of a twenty-fifth rate commercial traveller. A major, resplendent in his parade uniform, sat at the next table to me, but I took no notice of him, and ordered an expensive vegetable meal which quite failed to satisfy my hunger, but served, nevertheless, to stave off its more acute pangs. Afterwards I visited a number of cafés, and walked along the Kurfürstendamm and the Tauentzienstrasse — the Pall Mall and Regent Street of Berlin-and did my utmost to ascertain the whereabouts of a certain address which had been given to me by a Russian Pole in prison. Two addresses which I had obtained in this way I had written down on cigarette papers and concealed on my person, with a view to using them in some such emergency. It appeared, however, that this particular address was in one of the most unsavoury slums in Berlin. All the cab-drivers whom I approached refused point-blank to drive me there, mainly, I suppose, on account of the distance. I spoke to The contrast between London and Berlin in time of war is most marked. While there are few indications in London, at the present day, that England is involved in war, apart from the presence of an unusual number of men in khaki and an all-round rise in prices, in Berlin it is impossible to escape from the atmosphere of war. There is much less traffic in the streets than in times of peace. Apart from army automobiles, practically no motorcars are to be seen in the streets, and the very few which one meets are, on account of the shortage of rubber, furnished with noisy wooden tyres, which are fitted with steel cushion springs between the outer and the inner rim. No bicycles may be used except for business purposes, and the few that are allowed have a type of tyre similar to the one described. By paying through the nose, and producing the necessary coupons, it is still possible to obtain a meal in hotels and restaurants; but I usually found that I had to have a meal in each of at least two restaurants to satisfy my hunger. The low-class night cafés which used to be characteristic of a certain seamy side of Berlin life are still to be found, but the better-class cafés, such as the Palais de Danse, Maxim's, and the Fledermaus, have been olosed by the police. There is a marked absence in the streets of able-bodied men of miltary age in civilian clothes, and many of the women and children look pinched and hungry. I noticed the effects of the shortage of food more particularly in the case of little children. Tea, cocoa, coffee, and chocolate were unprocurable. The coffee supplied in the most sumptuous Berlin cafés is a concoction brewed from roasted acorns, barley in the husk, or corn, and it is supplied without sugar or saccharine. The hand of war lies heavy on the German people, and wherever I went I heard no sentiments so frequently uttered or so strongly expressed as an utter loathing of war and a fervent desire for peace. About three o'clock in the afternoon, after many futile attempts to find the address given to me by the Russian Pole, I began to think again that there was something wrong with my luck, and I rashly resolved to put matters immediately to the test. I walked along the Kurfürstendamm in search of the most sumptuous café there. I found one without a name, and en tered, to find that it had been called, in times of peace, "Das englische Café." I sat down in an easy-chair, lit my last English "Waverley " cigarette, and decided that I would startle the waiter. He came up. "What will you take, sir?" "Bringen Sie mir bitte ein Whisky and Soda." He stared at me, with a puzzled expression on his face, and said quietly "We haven't got that, sir." I then decided that I would ask for something French, and told him to bring me a Hennessy's cognac. "I think we have a little of that, sir," he replied, and presently brought me a small glass of Three Star brandy, and left me. I sat there for threequarters of an hour, sipping my brandy and smoking my English cigarette to the end. Neither the aroma of the English cigarette nor the strange thing I had ordered seemed to arouse the waiter's suspicions. When I left the café I felt justified in coming to the conclusion that luck was with me after all-that my star was not as malignant a one as I had feared it must be. I then set about with more determination than I had previously shown, to find the address which I sought, and, with the help of a chauffeur, who gave me partial instructions, I managed to find the place in the slums of Alt Moabit, after a wearisome journey by tram and on foot. I was not altogether sorry when I found the door of the house banged in my face and locked, before I had had an opportunity of explaining the purpose of my visit. I left to wander a little longer in the streets of that part of Berlin, in the dark and rain, and then, with the future as black before me as ever, I took a tram to the Potsdamer Platz in the centre of the city. It was a Saturday night, and there was a great crowd of people. I needed an opportunity to collect my thoughts, and to decide definitely upon some course of action before it was too late. It was quite out of the question for me to go to a hotel, for I was not furnished with papers, nor had I any luggage, and I had not sufficient confidence in the quality of my German to risk long conversations with any one-at any rate, not until I had become a little more experienced in the art. It occurred to me to visit a café and cinema theatre. In the café I sat among German soldiers and officers for about an hour, examining time-tables, and wondering whether I ought to endeavour to escape from Berlin before midnight. It was essential, however, before I did so, that I should have a more or less clear idea of the lines on which I intended to carry my escape through, and this was not a problem which could be settled in & few minutes. Thinking that I might have the best opportunity of collecting my thoughts in a cinema theatre, where the darkness, to a certain extent, would shield me from too eritical observation, I went to the best cinema theatre I could find, and took one of the best seats. I had not been there three minutes before I discovered that the film on the screen was a detective film, in which the particular Sherlock Holmes in question was getting the best of it all the time! Now, I had had enough of detectives for one day; they were beginning to get on my nerves, and, leaving the filmstar to track down his luckless victim, I got up and walked out of the theatre into the drizzling rain. People who knew Berlin well had warned me to steer clear of the Unter den Linden, Friedrichstrasse, Leipzigerstrasse, the Potsdamer Platz, Tauentzienstrasɛe, and the Kurfürstendamm; but, by some strange cussedness, I found myself, during the three days I spent in Berlin, wandering most of the time along those very streets. If I took a quiet side street in order to get out of one of them, the quiet side street invariably led me into another of the main streets. By this time I had come to my last card. It was one which I wished to avoid playing if I could possibly do so, but everything else had failed me. It was impossible for me to sleep out. Not only was the weather cold and wet, but there was the more important consideration that I had by this time decided, that I would not endeavour, as one usually does on such an enterprise, to keep out of sight as much as possible. I would try and disarm suspicion by deliberately placing myself in the way of people, and would try and do everything which the average German, on whom no suspicion rested, might be expected to do. This meant that I could not go about like a vagabond. A clean collar, clean shirt, a shave, and, at any rate, the remains of a crease in my trousers, were quite as essential as cool nerves, and it was therefore necessary that I should find some place in which I could spend the remaining nights of my stay in Berlin with a certain amount of safety. I therefore set out in search of my last address, which was a brothel in one of the lower parts of Berlin. This address, too, I had obtained during my long sojourn in prison, and had treasured it up in my memory for some such emergency. It took me fully an hour to find the exact neighbourhood in which the place was supposed to be situated, but when I came to make close inquiries, I discovered that the number given me did not exist, and I did not dare to make chance inquiries at what might turn out to be quite respectable houses. In my despair, I saw the gaily-lighted windows of a low-class café on the opposite side of the road, and, without a moment's hesitation, walked across and entered. It was a fairly large café, ohiefly frequented by unfortunates, dissipated - looking men, and a few soldiers. I took a seat at a table near the door. Near me, at the next table, was a girl of about twenty to twenty-two years of age, whose smile drew my attention. This caused me to regard her with more care. I was feeling lonely, and it seemed years since I had had a smile from any one. Her features had nothing that was vicious in them. She was rather a pretty girl, with big, blue, melancholy eyes, and, among the loose women who were there, seemed to me to be quite a thing apart. At my invitation, she came to my table and drank coffee with We talked, and I had not spoken many sentences before she said to me "You are a foreigner, are you not?" I smiled and said 66 'No, I am a German, but prior to the outbreak of war I spent many years in America, hence the foreign accent which is noticeable when I speak German. I came over from America shortly before the outbreak of war, volunteered for the army when war was deolared, but was rejected as being physically unfit for military service. "Oh! that is it," she said. "I thought you spoke with a foreign accent." Whilst we were talking, I noticed a noisy group of soldiers on a raised dais to my right, all of whom were more or less tipsy. They were drinking Sekt (German champagne), and one of them, more tipsy than the rest, was smashing champagne-glasses by flinging them on to the floor as fast as the waiter brought fresh ones. He |