"Hush!" said Daphne.
"Hush yourself," replied her husband. "The man is ill. I would minister to him."
We got him away somehow and bore him towards a taxi. Before we could stop him, he had congratulated the driver in excellent French on his recovery from the accident "which had so painfully disfigured him," and had asked for the name and address of the man who had designed the body of his cab. This was too much for Daphne, and she and Jonah called another taxi, and said they would see us at the hotel. Satisfied that the conductor of the hotel omnibus was collecting our luggage, I followed Jill and Berry into the cab, and we drove out of the station.
When we reached the hotel, Berry told the porter that he need not uncover, as he was travelling incognito, and asked if Mrs. Pleydell had arrived. Receiving a negative answer, he gave the man five marks and asked him to be very careful as to the way he lifted the cat's basket out of his wife's cab. Then he suffered himself to be conducted to the sitting-room which I had engaged on the first floor.
Five minutes later Daphne burst into the room.
"What on earth's the matter with the people here?" she demanded. "Half the staff are feeling all over the inside of our cab, and the porter keeps asking me if I'm sure the cat was put in at the station. Is this some of your doing?"
"Possibly some idle banter—"
"I knew it," said Daphne. "If this is how you begin, we shan't get out of Munich alive."
Why we had chosen Munich is not very easy to tell. Of course, we ought to have gone to Biarritz and taken the car, but they wouldn't have that. Everybody had wanted to go to a different place. Berry's choice was Minsk, because, he said, he wanted to rub up his Hebrew. Such a suggestion is characteristic of Berry. Then Munich was mentioned, and as no one had seemed very keen, no one had taken the trouble to be very rude about it. Consequently, Munich won. A day or two after our arrival, one of Wagner's triumphs was to be given at the Opera House, and, amid a scene of great excitement, Berry secured four tickets. I say four because I mean four. I have never appreciated opera, and was all along reluctant to go. But when I found that the show began at half-past four, I put my foot down and reminded the others of the Daylight Saving Bill. With gusto they retorted that I had been to more matinees than they cared to remember. I replied that for a theatre to begin at half-past four was out of all order and convenience, and that, as an Englishman and a member of a conservative club, I was not prepared to subscribe to such an unnatural arrangement.
"Brother," said Berry, "I weep for you. Not now, but in the privacy of my chamber I often weep great tears."