“Thanks.”
Then he proceeded up the stairs to the room assigned to him. The smell of garlic which pervaded the air caused him to make a grimace. Once alone in the room, he looked about. There was neither soap nor towel, but there was a card which stated that the same could be purchased at the office. He laughed. A pitcher of water and a bowl stood on a small table, which, by the presence of a mirror (that could not in truth reflect anything but light and darkness), served as a dresser. These he used to good advantage, drying his face and hands on the white counterpane of the bed, and laughing quietly as he did so. Next he lit a pipe, whose capacity for tobacco was rather less than that of a lady's thimble, sat in a chair by the window, smoked quietly, and gazed down on the busy street.
It was yet early in the morning; sellers of vegetables, men and women peasants, with bare legs and wooden shoes, driving shaggy Servian ponies attached to low, cumbersome carts, passed and repassed, to and from the markets. A gendarme, leaning the weight of his shoulder on the guard of a police saber, rested against the corner of a wine shop across the way. Students, wearing squat caps with vizors, sauntered indolently along, twirling canes and ogling all who wore petticoats. Occasionally the bright uniform of a royal cuirassier flashed by; and the Englishman would lean over the sill and gaze after him, nodding his head in approval whenever the cuirassier sat his horse well.
In the meantime the gendarme, who followed him from the station, had entered the hotel, hastily glanced at the freshly written name, and made off toward the palace.
“Well, here we are,” mused the Englishman, pressing his thumb into the bowl of his pipe. “The affair promises some excitement. To-morrow will be the sixth; on the twentieth it will be a closed incident, as the diplomats would say. I don't know what brought me here so far ahead of time. I suppose I must look out for a crack on the head from some one I don't know, but who knows me so deuced well that he has hunted me in India and England, first with fine bribes, then with threats.” He glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the gun cases. “It was a capital idea, otherwise a certain ubiquitous customs official, who lies in wait for the unwary at the frontier, would now be an inmate of a hospital. To have lived thirty-five years, and to have ground out thirteen of them in her Majesty's, is to have acquired a certain disdain for danger, even when it is masked. I am curious to see how far these threats will go. It will take a clever man to trap me. The incognito is a fort. By the way, I wonder how the inspectors at the station came to overlook my traps? Strange, considering what I have gone through.”
At this moment the knuckles of a hand beat against the door.
“Come in!” answered the Englishman, wheeling his chair, but making no effort to rise. “Come in!”
The door swung in, and there entered a short, spectacled man in dark gray clothes which fairly bristled with brass buttons. He was the chief inspector of customs. He bowed.
The Englishman, consternation widening his eyes, lowered his pipe.
“Monsieur Hamilton's pardon,” the inspector began, speaking in French, “but with your permission I shall inspect your luggage and glance at your passports.” He bowed again.