ian clothes entered,
approached me with an air of authority, and announced in a loud
tone of voice that he had heard that I had said that I had come to
East Prussia in search of Russian atrocities.

"My name is Curtin," I began, introducing myself, although I felt
somewhat uneasy.

"Thomas!" was all he said.

"Good Heavens!" I thought. "Is this man looking for me? Am I in
for serious trouble now?"

Instead, however, of _Thomas_ being an interrogation as to my first
name, it was his simple introduction of himself--a strange
coincidence.

Although he was addressing his remarks to me, he exclaimed in a
tone which could be heard all over the room that he was Chief of
Police during the Russian occupation of Wehlau for three weeks, and
took great pride in asserting that he was the man who could tell me
all that I wished to know. He was highly elated because the
Russians had employed him, given him a whistle and invested him
with authority to summon aid if he detected any wrong-doing. They
had furthermore paid him for his services. Although he now
roundly tongue-lashed them in general terms, there was no definite
personal accusation that he could make against them.

He told me of a sergeant who went into a house, ordered a meal and
then demanded money, threatening the woman who had served him. A
lieutenant entered at this moment, learned the particulars of the
altercation, and struck the sergeant, whom he reproved for
disobeying commands for good conduct which had come from
Headquarters. "Just think of such lack of respect among officers,"
Thomas concluded. "One officer striking another for something done
against a person in an enemy country. That is bad for discipline.
Such a thing would never happen in the German Army."

The moral of the story as I saw it was quite different from what he
had intended it to be.

A few days later I was again in the crowded beer hall when Herr
Thomas entered. He liked to be in the limelight, and had a most
extraordinary manner of apparently addressing his conversation to
some selected individual, but carried it on in a tone which could
be heard throughout the entire room. The Russian whistle which he
still wore, and of which he was very proud, threatened to become a
millstone about his neck, for returning refugees were accusing him
of inefficiency during his reign, since they asserted that the
Russians had stolen their goods from under his very nose.

After he had hurl