The situation was becoming farcical.

"Nothing in the world, I assure you," I replied. "They are a simple,
kindly people. They are musical. They have given the world Schiller,
Goethe, the famous _Kultur_, and a new conception of the possibilities
of war. But I think they should have kept out of Belgium, and I feel the
same way about my room--and don't you try to pull a pistol or I may feel
more strongly still."

"I ain't got no pistol, _nein_," declared my visitor, sulkily. His
resentment had already left him; he had shrunk back to five feet three.

"Well, I have, but I'll worry along without it," I remarked, with
a glance at the nearest bag. As targets, I don't regard my
fellow-creatures with great enthusiasm and, moreover, I could easily
have made two of this mousy champion of a warlike race. Illogically,
I was feeling that to bully him was sheer brutality. Besides this, my
dinner was not being improved by the delay.

"Look here," I said amiably, "I can't see that you've taken anything.
Speak up lively now; I'll give you just one chance. If you care to tell
me how you got through a locked door and what you were after, I'll let
you go. I'm off to the firing line, and it may bring me luck!"

Hope glimmered in his eyes. In broken English, with a childlike
ingenuousness of demeanor, he informed me that he was a first-class
locksmith--first-glass he called it--who had been sent by the management
to open a reluctant trunk. He had entered my room, I was led to infer,
by a mistake.