"It was no time for argument. I hurled my stool at the nearest of them, and so secured a start. On the winding stair one of them clutched at the skirt of my cape; I threw my arms back, so that it came off in his hands. Then, in my evening dress and opera-hat, I gained the streets and ran, some twenty Neapolitan ruffians, with their knives drawn, pursuing.
"'It was no time for argument. I hurled my stool at the nearest of them.'"
"But I was fleet of foot, and they pursued in vain; and when I had reached the railway-station, and jumped into the carriage of a departing train—which seemed, in the circumstances, the safest place of refuge—I found that my bag of coins was safely in my pocket.
"'Voyons!' I said to myself, as I examined it. 'If I could return each of these coins to its rightful owner! But that is obviously impossible; there is no alternative but to retain them as a memento of a remarkable experience that is hardly likely to occur again.'"
THE VISIT TO THE HOLY MAN.
It was at the time when the name of the Senussi—the mysterious Holy Man who frightened the Foreign Office from an oasis of the Libyan Desert—was in the papers.
"The Senussi!" exclaimed Stromboli. "When I tell you that I—moi qui vous parle—have spoken with the Senussi; when I tell you that I—moi qui vous parle—have inflicted an indignity upon the Senussi; nay, more, when I tell you that the Senussi and I exchanged indignities! Are you at leisure? Then let me tell you."
I consented to listen; and Stromboli began—
"You all talk of the Holy Man with bated breath, as if he was Beelzebub; but I, for my part, always spoke of him openly and fearlessly. And it happened one day, some fifteen years ago, that I was imparting information about him to some old friends of mine, who were Irish members of your House of Commons.