station. I was hustled unceremoniously on to the platform, where eight
soldiers closed around me to form an escort and I was marched forward.
As we crossed the platform the locomotive whistle shrieked, and about
9.30 p.m. the last train to leave Berlin on the outbreak of war bore my
companions homewards.

Personally I was disposed to regard the whole episode as a joke, and an
instance of Teuton blind blundering. The gravity of the situation never
struck me for an instant. I argued with myself that I should speedily
prove that I was the victim of circumstances and would be able to
convince the military of my _bona fides_ without any great effort.

But as I reflected it dawned upon me that my arrest had been skilfully
planned. The youth on the train, whom I never saw again, had played but
a minor part in the drama of which I was the central figure. My
departure must have been communicated from Berlin. Otherwise how should
Wesel have learned that a spy had been arrested? The station was
besieged with a wildly shouting excited crowd who bawled:

"English spy! English spy! Lynch him! Lynch him!"

I was bundled into a military office which had evidently been hurriedly
extemporised from a lumber room. The crowd outside increased in
denseness and hostility. They were shouting and raving with all the
power of their lungs. These vocal measures proving inadequate, stones
and other missiles commenced to fly. They could not see through the
windows of the room so an accurately thrown brick shivered the pane of
glass. Through the open space I caught glimpses of the most ferocious
and fiendish faces it has ever been my lot to witness. Men and women
vied with one another in the bawling and ground their teeth when they