“Yes, yes,” says I. “Never mind whether it was Monday or Tuesday. What did you do then?”
“Moi? I fly!” says Heiney. “I am distract. I r-r-r-run on ze r-r-r-road. I tear-r-r off my white apron, my white chapeau. Ah, sacr-r-ré nom! How my heart is thoomp, thoomp, on my inside! All night I speak to myself: ‘You have keel zem all! Ze belle ladies! Ze pauvre shildren! All, you have poi-zon-ed! Zey make to tweest up on ze floor!’ Ah, diable! Always I can see zem tweest up!”
“Reg’lar rough on rats carnival, eh?” says I. “Three hundred beautiful ladies and poor children, not to mention a few men, doin’ the agony act on the dinin’ room floor! There, Jarvis! How’d you like to carry round a movin’ picture film like that in your mem’ry? Course, I’ve tried to explain to Heiney that nothing of the kind ever took place; that the papers would have been full of it; and that he’d been in the jug long before this, if it had. But this is Heiney’s own particular pipe dream, and he can’t let go of it. It’s got tangled up in the works somehow, and nothing I can say will jar it loose. Poor cuss! Look at him! No doubt about its seemin’ real to him, is there? And how does your little collection of fleabites show up alongside it; eh, Jarvis?”
But Jarvis, he’s gazin’ at Heiney as if this lump of moldy sweitzerkase was fascinatin’ to look at.
“I beg pardon,” says he, “but you say this hotel was at Lake Como?”
Heiney nods his head, then covers his face with his hands, as if he was seein’ things again.
“And what was the date of this—this unfortunate occurrence?” says Jarvis.
“Year before the last, in Augoost,” says Heiney, shudderin’,—“Augoost seven.”
“The seventh of August!” says Jarvis. “And was your hotel the Occident?”
“Oui, oui!” says Heiney. “L’Hôtel Occident.”