"Just arrived," Humphrey said. He was glad to see a friend. That unkempt man who had followed him made him feel uncomfortably insecure.
"Where are you stopping?" O'Malley asked.
"At the Dorade."
"I'm there too: there's a whole gang of French and English fellows here. Been having no end of adventures. My carriage was held up outside Argelliers yesterday, and they wanted to see my papers. As bad as the flight to Varennes, isn't it?" He laughed, and they sat down to drink.
The unkempt man took up his position against the parapet of the bridge opposite.
Humphrey noticed that O'Malley wore a white band round his arm with a blue number on it, and his name, coupled with The Sentinel, written in ink that had frayed itself into the fabric.
"You'll have to get one of these," O'Malley explained. "It isn't safe to be a stranger here. They're issued by the People's Committee to journalists who show their credentials. A lot of detectives have been down here, you see, posing as journalists, and asking questions in the villages, getting all sorts of information; that's how they managed to arrest the ringleaders in the villages."
"It was a pretty mean trick," Humphrey said.
"Mean—I should think it was. They nearly lynched Harridge, the photographer, yesterday, and they chased another so-called journalist to the river, and he had to swim for his life, while the mob fired pot-shots at him from the bridges. So now they've placarded the town to explain that every real journalist has a white armband with a number on it."