The Princess was in ordinary blue
serge, short and rather shabby, it having been subjected for hours
daily during the past week to rough treatment by the maid now
travelling to Cologne. As for her face and hair, they were completely
hidden in the swathings of a motor-veil.
The sentinels stared rather as these two figures pushed their bicycles
through the gates, and undoubtedly did for some time afterwards wonder
who they could have been. The same thing happened down below on the
bridge; but once over that and in the town all they had to do was to
ride straight ahead. They were going to bicycle fifteen miles to Ruehl,
a small town with a railway station on the main line between Kunitz
and Cologne. Express trains do not stop at Ruehl, but there was a slow
train at eight which would get them to Gerstein, the capital of the
next duchy, by midnight. Here they would change into the Cologne
express; here they would join the bribed maid; here luggage had been
sent by Fritzing,--a neat bag for himself, and a neat box for his
niece. The neat box was filled with neat garments suggested to him by
the young lady in the shop in Gerstein where he had been two days
before to buy them.
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