gnia--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_.

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--fir