We returned confidence for confidence: that Nessa and I were engaged to be married; how I had come from England to find her; the plight she had been in owing to von Erstein's persecution; that we had been in the train smash, and had escaped with our lives, but had lost the passports.
She knew the von Erstein type of German well enough to sympathize deeply with Nessa and listened in tears to that part of the story.
"I can help you both, and I will; but you'll have to be as cautious as a pair of wild birds. They're just grabbing the men into the army with both hands, for one thing, and they'll take you at sight, and then what would she do, poor thing?"
"But aren't a lot of mechanics exempted?"
"Do you know anything about such things really?"
"Most there is to know about motors and aeroplanes."
"Oh, that's better," she cried, rubbing her hands. "They're making that sort of thing now at a place called Ellendorf, out Lingen way; and they're wanting men badly. You can say you've heard of it and are on your road there, and it may help you through. But understand that all strangers about here are suspected and the police are mighty curious; and it's worse the closer to the frontier you get. Have you thought how you're to get across?"
"If we're as lucky there as we have been here, it mayn't be so difficult. My rough idea was to join up with some of the folk who are smuggling things over and look for a chance to slip across."
"I'd thought of that, too, and I can help you," she said, and then explained her plan.
She declared that nearly every one near the frontier was taking a hand in the smuggling game and that the authorities, both police and military, not only winked at it, but secretly encouraged it. Lately, however, owing to the more drastic rounding up of men for the army, there had been a good deal of the slipping over which we wished to do, and stringent measures were being taken in consequence.
"That makes it more difficult," she continued; "but my late husband's brother, Adolf Fischer, lives there. I'll give you a note to him and he'll help you."
She smiled and nodded. "He's getting rich at it and has several people working with him. I'll have to lie for you; but I don't mind. I'll tell him I know all about you and that you want to join him; but don't say a word about skipping over, or he'll put the police on you. He's very thick with them, but that needn't scare you. They won't touch one of his men."