“From Nice. I am on the road.”
“Quoi!” cried the three, in suppressed chorus, “on the road! Then why don’t you go to the gendarmerie?” and they pointed away across the beach to a lighted window.
“They’ll give you a bed for three nights,” went on one of the trio; “we’ve been stowed away there as many times as the law allows or we wouldn’t make our nests here.”
I crouched out of sight until the patrol had passed once more and dashed across the sand towards the lighted window. A door stood ajar; inside, an officer, armed in a way more fitting to a chief of brigands than to the guardian of a peaceful watering-place, leaned back in his chair, puffing at a long Italian cigar.
“Bien! Qu’est-ce qu’il y a?” he demanded, laying the stogie on the table edge and surveying me leisurely from head to foot.
I waved the five-franc piece in the air. “I’m a sailor, walking to Marseilles, and the innkeepers won’t accept this.”
“Ça!” he cried contemptuously, after examining the bill under the light; “Why, that’s Italian. No good at all! Why do you come to the gendarmerie so late? We can’t let vagabonds into the Asile de Nuit at this hour.”
“The Asile de Nuit!” I protested. “I’m not looking for the Asile, but for an inn; and I don’t see that I’m a vagabond, with a five-franc note—”
“That’s no good,” he finished, “perhaps not, legally, but—Where are your papers?”
I handed over the consular letter and the cattle-boat discharge. The officer studied them a moment as if English were not unknown to him and fell into a reverie.