On the dark deck of our Channel boat I had a ’strawnary experience. A British colonel to whom I had not been introduced spoke to me. He wanted a light from my cigarette. And when I had given it to him he didn’t move away, but stayed right there and kept on talking.
“This is my first leave,” he said (but in his own tongue), “since last March. Last year we were let off ten days every three months. Now we get twenty days a year.”
“In 1918,” said I, for something to say, “you’ll probably have no vacation at all.”
“In 1918,” he replied confidently, “I believe we’ll get three hundred and sixty-five days.”
We settled the war in about half an hour. Then he asked me to join him in a Scotch and soda. I was too gentlemanly to refuse. The bar, we ascertained, was closed. But we might find something in the dining-room. We did, but to make it legal we had to order biscuits, alias crackers, with the beverage. We didn’t have to eat them, though. They looked to be in their dotage, like the permanent sandwiches which serve a similar purpose in certain blue-law cities of Les Etats Unis.
We settled the war all over again, and retired, the colonel politely expressing the hope that we would meet for breakfast.
The hope was not realized. I was through and out on deck by the time we docked at the British port, which was about six o’clock this morning.
No one was permitted to leave the ship till the customs officials and alien officers reported for duty, two hours later. Then we were unloaded and herded into a waiting-room, where an usher seated us. Another usher picked us out, four at a time, for examination, using a system of arbitrary selective draft. Mine was a mixed quartet, three gents and a female.
An officer looked at our passports and recorded details of them in a large book. Another officer ran the gamut of queries. And here I got into a little mess by telling the truth. When he asked me what countries I had visited, I told him France and added “Oh, yes, and for one day Belgium.” He marked this fact on a slip of paper and sent me to the next room. The slip of paper was there ahead of me and I was once more a suspect.
The young lady of our quartet, a French girl, was getting hers, and there was nothing for me to do but listen. She had a letter from her mother to a friend in England. The mother, it seems, had expected to come along, but had decided to wait three weeks, “till the submarine warfare is over.” The officers were very curious to know where the mother had picked up that interesting dope. The young lady couldn’t tell them. Well, she would not be permitted to leave town till an investigation had been made. She was led back into the waiting-room and may be there yet for all I can say.
It was my turn.
“Are you an American?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How long ago were you in Belgium?”
“About ten days ago.”
“You told our officer outside that you had been in Paris five weeks.”
“I told him Paris had been my headquarters and I’d made frequent trips in and out.”
“How did you get to Belgium?”
“In an automobile.”
“An automobile!”
“Yes, sir.”
“What were you doing?”
“I was being the guest of your army.”
A great light dawned upon them.
“Oh!” said one, smiling. “He means he was behind our lines, not theirs.”
“I should hope so,” said I.
“We’re sorry to have misunderstood, sir,” said the other, and I was escorted into the baggage-room. There my sordid belongings were perfunctorily examined, the official not even troubling to open my typewriter case nor a large ungainly package containing a toy for certain parties back home.
It was eleven o’clock when the examinations were all over and we entrained for this town. I got off at Waterloo and asked a taxi to take me to the Savoy. It did and it drove on the left side of all the streets en route. I’m still quaking.
Tuesday, September 18. London.
This morning I had my first experience with an English telephone. I asked the hotel’s operator to get me the office of Mr. O’Flaherty, the American correspondent I had met at the British front. In a few moments she rang back.
“Are you there?” she said, that being London for “Hello.”
“Here’s your number, then. Carry on,” she said.
But carrying on was not so easy. There is a steel spring on the combination transmitter-receiver which you must hold down while you talk. I kept forgetting it. Also I kept being electrically shocked. But in the course of half an hour, with the operator’s assistance, I managed to convey to the gentleman an invitation to call.
He came, and we started for the Bow Street police station, where every visitor has to register within twenty-four hours of his arrival. On the way we met Lew Payne, the actor, and Gene Corri, racing man and box-fight referee. Gene has friends among the bobbies, and I was put through in record time. They told me I’d have to go to the American consul for a visé and then come back for a second registration with the police. Mr. O’Flaherty opined that these jobs should be attended to at once, as my boat train was supposed to leave at nine tomorrow morning. Mr. Payne had a better idea.
“Let’s telephone the steamship office,” he said, “and find out whether your ship is really going to sail on schedule. They usually don’t these days.”
Mr. O’Flaherty did the telephoning, and, sure enough, the blamed thing’s been postponed till Saturday night.
They asked me what I wanted to do next, and I said I’d like to pay my respects to George and Mary. But I hadn’t let them know
