Steps. Sudden throwing of door open. Pause.
“Come out, American.”
As I came out, toting bed and bed-roll, I remarked: “I’m sorry to leave you,” which made T-c furiously to masticate his insignificant moustache.
Escorted to bureau, where I am turned over to a very fat gendarme.
“This is the American.” The v-f-g eyed me, and I read my sins in his porklike orbs. “Hurry, we have to walk,” he ventured sullenly and commandingly.
Himself stooped puffingly to pick up the segregated sack. And I placed my bed, bed-roll, blankets and ample pelisse under one arm, my 150-odd pound duffle-bag under the other; then I paused. Then I said, “Where’s my cane?”
The v-f-g hereat had a sort of fit, which perfectly became him.
I repeated gently: “When I came to the bureau I had a cane.”
“I don’t give a damn about your cane,” burbled my new captor frothily, his pink evil eyes swelling with wrath.
“I’m staying,” I replied calmly, and sat down on a curb, in the midst of my ponderous trinkets.