“It’s all blank paper,” said the inspector, and the major registered keen disappointment.
Next to my suit-case lay a bag belonging to a gentleman named Trotter, and on it was a Japanese hotel label. The general glimpsed it and turned on me. “When were you in Japan?” he asked.
I told him never.
“That piece isn’t his,” said the inspector. “It belongs to a Mr. Trotter.”
“His first name is Globe,” said I, but it was a wild pitch.
The major and the general had a whispered consultation. Then the former said: “Well, I guess he’s all right. Let him go.”
Some devil within me suggested that I say good-by to them in German, which I learned in our high school. I cast him out, and here I am, aboard ship, sitting still in the middle of the river. But I don’t like being indefinitely bottled in bond and I appeal to you, Mr. Captain—
Take me somewhere west of Ireland where they know I’m not a spy,
Where nobody gazes at me with a cold, suspicious eye—
To the good old U. S. A.,