me.

Meanwhile they were taking me farther away from Brussels and the
"environs."

"When you picked me up," I said, "I was inside the environs, but by
the time I reach 'the' general he will see only that I am fifty miles
beyond where I am permitted to be. And who is going to tell him it
was you brought me there? You won't!"

Rupert of Hentzau only smiled like the cat that has just swallowed the
canary.

He put me in another automobile and they whisked me off, always
going farther from Brussels, to Ath and then to Ligne, a little town five
miles south. Here they stopped at a house the staff occupied, and,
leading me to the second floor, put me in an empty room that
seemed built for their purpose. It had a stone floor and whitewashed
walls and a window so high that even when standing you could see
only the roof of another house and a weather-vane. They threw two
bundles of wheat on the floor and put a sentry at the door with orders
to keep it open. He was a wild man, and thought I was, and every
time I moved his automatic moved with me. It was as though he were
following me with a spotlight. My foot was badly cut across the instep
and I was altogether forlorn and disreputable. So, in order to look less
like a tramp when I met the general, I bound up the foot, and, always
with one eye on the sentry, and moving very slowly, shaved and put
on dry things. From the interest the sentry showed it seemed evident
he never had taken a bath himself, nor had seen any one else take
one, and he was not quite easy in his mind that he ought to allow it.
He seemed to consider it a kind of suicide. I kept on thinking out
plans, and when an officer appeared I had one to submit. I offered to
give the money I had with me to any one who would motor back to
Brussels and take a note to the American minister, Brand Whitlock.
My proposition was that if in five hours, or by seven o'clock, he did not
arrive in his automobile and assure them that what I said about
myself was true, they need not wait until midnight, but could shoot me
then.

"If I am willing to take such a chance," I pointed out, "I must be a
friend of Mr. Whitlock. If he repudiates me, it will be evident I have
deceived you, and you will be perfectly justified in carrying out your
plan." I had a note to Whitlock already written. It was composed
entirely with the idea that they would read it, and it was much more
intimate than my very brief acquaintance with that gentleman jus