"You'll have enough of that before this is settled. Who are you, and where do you live?"
I said I would explain everything at the police quarters, and to my relief we set off for them then.
As a matter of fact, I was not a little bothered how to reply to the questions. If I gave my address, I knew that it was quite in accordance with the regulation methods for some one to be sent to search my house; and apart altogether from the alarm which such a proceeding would cause Althea following upon the news of my arrest, there was the awkward fact of the Baron's presence there.
Again, the ordinary process of interrogation would be directed to extracting from me a detailed account of my movements during the hours prior to the act with which I was to be charged. Police inquiries under such circumstances are inspired with as much minuteness as the average Teutonic biblical criticism.
The inquisitor at such times always presses his questions under the belief that at the bottom of the charge there is some heinous crime which he will be able to unearth if only he is clever enough.
The moment I was inside the building, therefore, I made haste to get out my version of the affair, and ended with a request for a communication to be made at once to Dormund or Feldermann.
The officer in charge listened with a frown of impatience, and then turned to the men who had taken me in charge. He was a surly individual; and when my revolver was produced, he gathered it in with a sort of cluck, such as a broody hen might give on discovering a titbit for her chicks.
"You will see that it is loaded in every barrel," I said.
He did not even take the trouble to look. The fact that a shot had been fired, and that I had been found running away and in the possession of a weapon, was obviously proof enough for him. "Well, your name and address?" he grunted as he took up his pen very deliberately.
"Paul Bastable."