“Then they told you what wasn’t true. For it does. See here!”
What the Major calls upon him to look at are some bits of pasteboard, like butterflies, fluttering in the air, and settling down over the copestone of the dock. They are the fragments of the torn ticket.
“Now, old boy! You’re booked for Boulogne.”
The melancholy smile, up to that time on Ryecroft’s face, broadens into a laugh at the stratagem employed to detain him. With cheerfulness for the time restored, he says:
“Well, Major, by that you’ve cost me at at least one pound sterling. But I’ll make you recoup it in boarding and lodging me for—possibly a week.”
“A month—a year, if you should like your lodgings and will stay in them. I’ve got a snug little compound in the Rue Tintelleries, with room to swing hammocks for us both; besides a bin or two of wine, and, what’s better, a keg of the ‘raal crayther.’ Let’s along and have a tumbler of it at once. You’ll need it to wash the channel spray out of your throat. Don’t wait for your luggage. These Custom-house gentry all know me, and will send it directly after. Is it labelled?”
“It is; my name’s on everything.”
“Let me have one of your cards.” The card is handed to him. “There, Monsieur,” he says, turning to a douanier, who respectfully salutes, “take this, and see that all the baggage bearing the name on it be kept safely till called for. My servant will come for it. Garçon!” This to the driver of a voiture, who, for some time viewing them with expectant eye, makes response by a cut of his whip, and brisk approach to the spot where they are standing.
Pushing Captain Ryecroft into the back, and following himself, the Major gives the French Jehu his address, and they are driven off over the rough, rib-cracking cobbles of Boulogne.