"Show it to me and I will prove my words; aye, and do more than that. I will see that the real one is placed in your possession."
The look he cast at me was almost piteous in its appealing trustfulness; and after a second’s pause, he unfastened the bag, and with fingers which trembled so violently that I feared he would drop it, he handed me the bomb.
That I took it with intense relief may well be imagined, and I handled it with the utmost caution and no little dread. Whether it was really the terrible engine of destruction that he believed, I did not know; but with an assumption of confidence I was very far from feeling, I pointed to some mark on it. "I knew it," I cried. "See that. The proof of the betrayal; shame! shame!" and with that I slipped it into a large inner pocket of my jacket.
"What are you going to do?" he asked as I turned to the door.
"I am on fire until this has been righted. When I return I shall have something to tell you. From this moment you, and you only, are my leader."
He was going to protest, but I gave him no time. My one thought was to get rid of the thing at once. But how to do so perplexed me sorely.
I was consumedly uncomfortable and intensely scared. I felt that my life was in danger every second the confounded thing was in my possession. Every time it moved ever so slightly as I walked I feared that it would explode, and I drew my first deep breath of relief the instant I was out of the house.
But the streets had even more potential terrors. When any one approached me on the side where I was carrying it, I was afraid they would knock against it and blow me and half Berlin with me into eternity.
Every policeman I met was an object of dread; and when one turned to gaze after me, I jumped to the conclusion that he knew what I was carrying and was about to arrest me.
I left the house with no definite purpose or plan for getting rid of it, and I walked on at first aimlessly, wondering vaguely whether I should hide it or bury it somewhere without being observed.
With this thought I made for the Thiergarten, and I had reached the west end of Unter den Linden when it occurred to me that the best and simplest course would be to drop it over the Marschall Bridge into the river.