The gendarme by this time was purple with fury.
“Not know anything about the dog?” he exclaimed in a voice choked with righteous indignation. “Why, he . . . he barked!”
But this indisputable fact in no way disconcerted the miscreant.
“I heard a dog yapping,” he said with consummate impudence, “but I thought he was in the next room. No wonder,” he added coolly, “since he was in a wall cupboard.”
“A wall cupboard,” the gendarme rejoined triumphantly, “situated in the very room which you occupy at this moment.”
“That is a mistake, my friend,” the cynical wretch retorted, undaunted. “I do not occupy this room. I do not lodge in this hotel at all.”
“Then how came you to be here?”
“I came on a visit to a friend who happened to be out when I arrived. I found a pleasant fire here, and I sat down to warm myself. Your noisy and unwarranted irruption into this room has so bewildered me that I no longer know whether I am standing on my head or on my heels.”
“We’ll show you soon enough what you are standing on, my fine fellow,” the gendarme riposted with breezy, cheerfulness. “Allons!”
I must say that the pampered minion of the law arose splendidly to the occasion. He seized the miscreant by the arm and took him downstairs, there to confront him with the proprietress of the establishment, while I—with marvellous presence of mind—took possession of Carissimo and hid him as best I could beneath my coat.