characters painted on it hung above my head, announcing that I had
arrived at my destination. As I paid off the cabman another cab passed.
It was apparently the one with which my Jehu had had words, for he
turned round and shouted abuse into the night.

My cabman departed, leaving me with my bag on the pavement at my feet
gazing at a narrow dirty door, the upper half of which was filled in
with frosted glass. I was at last awake to the fact that I, an
Englishman, was going to spend the night in a German hotel to which I
had been specially recommended by a German porter on the understanding
that I was a German. I knew that, according to the Dutch neutrality
regulations, my passport would have to be handed in for inspection by
the police and that therefore I could not pass myself off as a German.

"Bah!" I said to give myself courage, "this is a free country, a neutral
country. They may be offensive, they may overcharge you, in a Hun hotel,
but they can't eat you. Besides, any bed in a night like this!" and I
pushed open the door.

Within, the hotel proved to be rather better than its uninviting
exterior promised. There was a small vestibule with a little glass cage
of an office on one side and beyond it an old-fashioned flight of
stairs, with a glass knob on the post at the foot, winding to the upper
stories.

At the sound of my footsteps on the mosaic flooring, a waiter emerged
from a little cubby-hole under the stairs. He had a blue apron girt
about his waist, but otherwise he wore the short coat and the dicky and
white tie of the Continental hotel waiter. His hands were grimy with
black marks and so was his apron. He had apparently been cleaning