Again, the ordinary process of interrogation would be directed to extracting from me a detailed account of my movements during the hours prior to the act with which I was to be charged. Police inquiries under such circumstances are inspired with as much minuteness as the average Teutonic biblical criticism.
The inquisitor at such times always presses his questions under the belief that at the bottom of the charge there is some heinous crime which he will be able to unearth if only he is clever enough.
The moment I was inside the building, therefore, I made haste to get out my version of the affair, and ended with a request for a communication to be made at once to Dormund or Feldermann.
The officer in charge listened with a frown of impatience, and then turned to the men who had taken me in charge. He was a surly individual; and when my revolver was produced, he gathered it in with a sort of cluck, such as a broody hen might give on discovering a titbit for her chicks.
"You will see that it is loaded in every barrel," I said.
He did not even take the trouble to look. The fact that a shot had been fired, and that I had been found running away and in the possession of a weapon, was obviously proof enough for him. "Well, your name and address?" he grunted as he took up his pen very deliberately.
I replied that I had been a newspaper correspondent and gave him the name of the paper, adding that both Dormund and Feldermann were my friends.
"They know me perfectly well, and I desire to communicate with them."
"Address refused," he murmured as if to himself, and wrote that down. It was the preface to just such a list of questions as I had anticipated. What I was doing in the streets at that time of night; where I had been; where I was going; why I carried a revolver; why I had fired the shot; what I had done all the evening, and so on.
I returned much the same answer to all the questions--that I wished to be allowed to communicate with either Dormund or Feldermann; and we reached a deadlock, and he was ordering me to the cells, when it occurred to me to play the "British subject" card.
"Wait a moment, please. You have ignored my statement and are going to charge me with a serious, offence. I am a British subject and demand to be allowed to communicate with the British consul."