Then I waited until the launch had drifted pretty close to the bank on the side where the railway ran, when I let myself carefully over the side and struck out.
Just as I was pushing off I heard Marlen start shouting and hammering again at the hatch, and the muffled sounds reached me across the water until I reached the shore.
They ceased as I finished dressing myself and started out to ascertain where I was and which was the nearest station to make for.
The swim in the cold water chilled me; but I set off at a brisk pace and soon had my blood circulating again.
I had not an idea where I was, except that I knew my way lay up stream; so I struck across country until I came to a road leading in the direction I had to go, and I set off to walk until I could ascertain where to find a station.
I knew I should have to be very cautious about asking any questions. German police methods were very different from English, and a man garbed as I was, without any papers of identification and carrying a loaded revolver, was pretty sure to be an object of suspicion. It would be exceedingly difficult for me to give any acceptable account of myself without telling all that had occurred; and that would certainly mean that I should be detained, and probably left to cool my heels in a police-cell while the cumbersome wheels of the law were put in motion to investigate my story.
I plodded along for an hour or two, keeping my ears at full strain for any footsteps ahead of me, and taking the greatest care to make as little noise in walking as possible.
In my weakened state, I found this extremely fatiguing, and more than once I had to sit down and rest. Eager as I was to reach the capital, I grudged every second of these intervals of inaction.
I was on fire with impatience to ascertain what had happened to Althea in my absence. How long I had been away from home I could not tell; and I tortured myself with a hundred fears on her account.
Von Felsen was not the man to lose a minute in getting to work, as soon as he knew I was out of his way; and of course his creature, Dragen, would have told him at once of the success of the attempt to kidnap me.
Until I had left the launch, the consideration for my own safety and the weighing of the chances of escape had kept me from fretting about matters in Berlin; but now that I was free and on the way back, every minute seemed to be of vital consequence, and the thought that I might be stopped by the police harassed and worried me into a positive fever of dread.