It looked like a deadlock. It was apparently impossible to deliver up her luggage to a woman whose husband was dead. Everybody on the platform, including the idlers, made some suggestion to relieve the strain, and feeling that it might help matters, I said he had been dead a very long time, I was a lonely orphan and I had no brothers. They probably discussed the likelihood of my having any other responsible male belongings and dismissed it, and the man, who knew English, returned to the charge.
“Where—do—you—stay?” and he tapped his way through the sentence.
“At Dr Lewis's.” I felt like doing it singsong fashion myself.
“You—must—tell—Lu Tai Fu—to—come.”
“But,” I remonstrated, “Dr Lewis is busy, and he does not know the luggage.”
There was another long confabulation, then a brilliant idea flashed like a meteor across the crowd. "You—must—go—back—and—write—a— letter,” and with a decisive tap my linguist friend stood back, and the whole crowd looked at me as much as to say that settled it most satisfactorily.
I argued the matter. I wanted to see the luggage.
“The—luggage—is—here”—tapped my friend, reproachfully, as if regretting I should be so foolish—“you—must—go—back—write—one— piecey—letter.”
“I'll write it here,” said I, and after about a quarter of an hour taken up in tapping, I was conducted round to the back of the station, an elderly inkpot and a very, very elderly pen with a point like a very rusty pin were produced, but there was no paper. Everyone looked about, under the benches, up at the ceiling, and at last one really resourceful person produced a luggage label of a violent yellow hue, and on the back of that, with some difficulty, for as well as the bad pen, there was a suspicion of gum on the paper, I wrote a letter to “Dear Sir” requesting that responsible individual to hand over my luggage to my servant, I signed my name with as big a flourish as the size of the label would allow, and then I stood back and awaited developments.
Everybody in the room looked at that valuable document. They tried it sideways, they tried it upside down, but no light came. At last the linguist remarked with his usual tap: