halted in my tracks. With his back to me, bent over a wide-open trunk
that I had left locked, was a man.

Stepping inside, I closed the door quietly, meanwhile scrutinizing my
unconscious visitor from head to foot. He wore no hotel insignia--was
neither porter, waiter, nor valet.

"Well, how about it? Anything there suit you?" I inquired affably, with
my back against the door.

Exclaiming gutturally, he whisked about and faced me where I stood quite
prepared for a rough-and-tumble. Instead of a typical housebreaker of
fiction, I saw a pale, rabbit-like, decent-appearing little soul. He
was neatly dressed; he seemed unarmed save for a great ring of assorted
keys; and his manner was as propitiatory and mild-eyed as that of any
mouse. There must be some mistake. He was some sober mechanic, not a
robber. But on the other hand, he looked ready to faint with fright.

"_Mein Gott_!" he murmured in a sort of fishlike gasp.

This illuminating remark was my first clue.

"Ah! _Mein Herr_ is German?" I inquired, not stirring from my place.

The demand wrought an instant change in him--he drew himself up, perhaps
to five feet five.

"Vat you got against the Germans?" he asked me, almost with menace. It
was the voice of a fanatic intoning "Die Wacht am Rhein"--of a zealot
speaking for the whole embattled _Vaterland_.