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A tall, bird-like young man with a small head, a long nose, and very pale hair, with his hands full of things like shaving-strops, boot-trees, hair-brushes, and toilet tidies, was saying things about Gott and thunder and Dummer Booteraidge as Bert entered. He was apparently an evicted occupant.
Then he approached the group about Bert, calling out something about "mitbringen." An earnest-faced, emaciated man with a white moustache appealed to Bert. "Herr Booteraidge, sir, we are chust to start!" "Where am I?" Bert repeated. Some one shook him by the other shoulder. "Are you Herr Booteraidge?" he asked.
"Herr Booteraidge, we are chust to start!" repeated the white moustache, and then helplessly, "What is de goot? What can we do?" The officer from the telephone repeated his sentence about "Der Prinz" and "mitbringen." The man with the moustache stared for a moment, grasped an idea and became violently energetic, stood up and bawled directions at unseen people.
Some of the men stared at him, and he heard the name of "Booteraidge" several times; but no one molested him, and there was no difficulty about his soup and bread when his turn at the end of the queue came. He had feared there might be no ration for him, and if so he did not know what he would have done. Afterwards he ventured out upon the little hanging gallery with the solitary sentinel.
That was his last idea before the airships seemed to rush up about him as if to look at him, and his car hit the ground and bounded and pitched him out on his head.... He awoke to find himself famous, and to hear a voice crying, "Booteraidge! Ja! Jai Herr Booteraidge! Selbst!" He was lying on a little patch of grass beside one of the main avenues of the aeronautic park.
"Besser," said some one, and some rapid German followed. He perceived that close at hand was a field telephone, and that a tall officer in blue was talking thereat about him. Another stood close beside him with the portfolio of drawings and photographs in his hand. They looked round at him. "Do you spik Cherman, Herr Booteraidge?" Bert decided that he had better be dazed.
There was a crowd of excited people about him, big men mostly in tight uniforms. Everybody was talking, and several were shouting, in German; he knew that because they splashed and aspirated sounds like startled kittens. Only one phrase, repeated again and again could he recognize the name of "Herr Booteraidge." "Gollys!" said Bert. "They've spotted it."
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