"Take her away!" he roared. "Take her away before I offer her violence. Explain my anatomy. Tell her I've got a trunk. Conceal nothing. Only…."
Amid the explosion of pent-up laughter, the rest of the sentence was lost.
As soon as we could speak coherently, we endeavoured to smooth him down.
At length—
"It's transparently plain," said Jonah, "that that dress is out of the question." Here he took out his watch. "Let's see. It's now three o'clock. That gives us just seven hours to conceive and execute some other confection. It shouldn't be difficult."
"Now you're talking," said Berry. "I know. I'll go as a mahout. Now, that's easy. Six feet of butter muslin, four pennyworth of woad, and a harpoon. And we can lock the elephant's switch and park him in the rhododendrons."
"Why," said Jonah, "shouldn't you go as Mr. Sycamore Tight? You're not unlike him, and the excitement would be intense."
After a little discussion we turned the suggestion down.
For all that, it was not without merit.
Mr. Sycamore Tight was wanted—wanted badly. There was a price upon his head. Two days after he had landed in France, a large American bank had discovered good reason to believe that Mr. Tight had personally depleted its funds to the tune of over a million.