"Honestly or dishonestly, it is all the same." He made a move to detach it, and I caught his hand.
"Please don't do that. I am extremely irritable; and I might throw you out of the window. I can get back to my hotel without guidance."
"I am going to see you to your lodgings," asserted the Count, rubbing his wrist, for I had put some power into my grasp.
"Still, I might take it into my head to throw you out."
"You'd better not try."
"Are you afraid?"
"Yes. There would be a scandal. Not that I would care about the death of a miserable adventurer, but it might possibly reflect upon the virtue of her Highness the Princess Hildegarde."
"What do you want?" I growled.
"I want to see if your passports are proper so that you will have no difficulty in passing over the frontier."
"Perhaps it would be just as well to wake the American Minister?" I suggested.