“It is not of that I speak, and I do not appreciate to be mocked! I tell you I had an interest, a considerable interest, in the goods which you insisted to have in your room. You tell me the goods are gone. Very well, I hold you responsible to me. I will have my money, please, if I do not have the goods. I will not be robbed by any damned sham parson.”
“You shall not,” I said quietly. “I am rather at a loss here in your country, but at home if you wanted to charge me with theft you would only have to call a policeman and give me in charge, as they call it. I happen to know these things because I am a county magistrate, as well as being a perfectly genuine parson.”
“Damn you,” said Van Ermengen, whose temper seemed to have gone; but who was as much impressed by the word “magistrate” as the lower orders still are in England, in spite of the degradation which has overtaken the once respectable Commission of the Peace.
There was a lull in the storm.
“I do not want your police,” he said at length. “I want my money.”
“And I will pay nothing, beyond my hotel bill, except through police or lawyers.”
“How did they get the stuff away?” he asked, his curiosity getting the better of his anger. “Damnation, they must have taken it through the window!”
“I don’t think it matters,” I said indifferently. “You must get any information you want from them. As you say, you and I have no business relations.”
“But I will have my money,” he spluttered. “You will not leave Alexandria till I get it.”
This made me uneasy, because I did not know what the man might do, or could do. But I felt it was essential not to betray any uneasiness.