—2—
There was not much humor in my personal situation at this time. The suspense was awful! Complications were setting in.
One day, Chilblaines came in the office and stared at me as if he had seen a ghost. “Sergeant,” he demanded, “didn’t I just meet you on the street a moment ago?”
“Me?” I exclaimed. “No, sir—I haven’t been out of the office for an hour or more.”
He was plainly worried. “I would swear that I saw you getting out of a side car down the street, not more than two minutes ago,” he insisted.
“Well,” I replied, with a laugh, “you must have seen my double, sir, because I’ve been right here all the time.”
He wasn’t convinced, but of course he couldn’t argue the point any further. Finally he observed, “I never knew two people could look so much alike. There was a mole on his cheek, exactly the same.”
“Gee—that’s funny,” I admitted.
“Very odd,” he concluded. “Strange and remark- able coincidence, I should say.” And he dropped the subject, although he kept looking at me rather annoyingly all day. I hated to think of that dizzy pomme-de-terre getting any funny ideas in his head. He was bad enough as it was—God knows what he’d do if he thought I was in any way irregular. It would have been just like him to think I was some kind of a spy or something. I mean, if he thought I lied to him about being in that side car, he’d be liable to suspect almost anything.
All of which didn’t make me feel very comfortable—with Ben hardly pacified yet and Jay-Jay looking for trouble, and Leon doing God only knew what to make matters worse.