"There," he said, and his voice was almost gentle, "I guess I don't quite understand about this thing."
Alice looked at the paper blankly. "But—what is it?" she asked.
The jailer closed one eye very slowly with a wise nod. "It's what you asked for, a permit to see this American prisoner, by special order."
CHAPTER XIII
LLOYD AND ALICE
Kittredge was fortunate in having a sense of humor, it helped him through the horrors of his first night at the depot, which he passed with the scum of Paris streets, thieves, beggars, vagrants, the miserable crop of Saturday-night police takings, all herded into one foul room on filthy bunks so close together that a turn either way brought a man into direct contact with his neighbor.
Lloyd lay between an old pickpocket and a drunkard. He did not sleep, but passed the hours thinking. And when he could think no longer, he listened to the pickpocket who was also wakeful, and who told wonderful yarns of his conquests among the fair sex in the time of the Commune, when he was a strapping artilleryman.
"You're a pretty poor pickpocket, old chap," reflected Kittredge, "but you're an awful good liar!"