He was very popular with me.
Meanwhile they were taking me farther away from Brussels and the "environs." "When you picked me up," I said, "I was inside the environs, but by the time I reach 'the' general he will see only that I am fifty miles beyond where I am permitted to be.

And who is going to tell him it was you brought me there?
You won't!" Rupert of Hentzau only smiled like the cat that has just swallowed the canary.
He put me in another automobile and they whisked me off, always going farther from Brussels, to Ath and then to Ligne, a little town five miles south.

Here they stopped at a house the staff occupied, and, leading me to the second floor, put me in an empty room that seemed built for their purpose.

It had a stone floor and whitewashed walls and a window so high that even when standing you could see only the roof of another house and a weather-vane.

They threw two bundles of wheat on the floor and put a sentry at the door with orders to keep it open.