I had taken a seat beside her on a bench in the railway station and began to study her face. She was alert and cunning, but her attitude was vague and evasive.
When the express train rolled into the station, I was ready to board it without delay. The evening was pleasant and the train moved rapidly toward the metropolis. Miss Bross alighted at Potsdamer Platz, while I went as far as Friedrich Strasse.
Several times I met Miss Bross at the reading rooms of the _Chicago Daily News_, where she observed the news columns and editorials of the German-American newspapers with special interest. Near the last of November she told me she had decided to go home to Denmark on the third of December. By this time I had purchased passage to New York and left for Copenhagen the same morning.
After luncheon on the railway diner, Miss Bross seemed worried about the examination at Warnemünde, where German officers inspected the baggage and person of the passengers. This examination, owing to much espionage, had been greatly intensified.
"What do you think of the case of Miss Edith Cavell?" she asked, "I mean the nurse who was executed as a spy in Belgium by the Germans."
"This case," I answered, "is an unusual one. Miss Cavell had the utmost confidence of the German officers, who granted her extraordinary privileges as a nurse, while she busied herself most of the time organizing a band of spies to operate against the German army in France."
"Yes, that is true; but she was a woman who had done some good and her life should have been spared. At least they think so in France and England where funds are being raised to build monuments to her memory."
XII--THE "SCRAP OF PAPER"--A DEATH WARRANT
The train was entering the station at Warnemünde. Miss Bross seemed nervous. She handed me a small scrap of paper, saying, "If I am on the train after we leave Warnemünde, hand it back to me; otherwise do what you like with it."
It was currently reported that all the passengers when entering or leaving a country at war, in Germany as well as in France and England, would be required to remove all their clothes and undergo a thorough examination. This proved to be the case in this instance, except where travelers could make an unusually good showing of neutrality and fairness, under which condition I passed the scrutinizing officers to my utmost satisfaction.