"I've never seen an American state paper before," he remarked, puffing a cigarette. "What a droll looking affair! So different from ours. Would you mind if I just glanced at it?"
"Certainly not." Anderson's suspicions of the young German glanced through Kirtley's mind. But Rudi was a thick-headed boy, and what could he or anyone accomplish with a passport? Gard had scarcely been called upon to use it. It had been treated almost as a blank formality, an empty courtesy.
"You don't have to show it in German towns—only at the frontier? Am I right?" inquired Rudi after he had minutely read it through as if he had been an official.
"Only at the frontier." Gard grew wary. This knowing and recent familiarity was not becoming entirely agreeable. It would be prudent to mystify the son.
"But of course something might happen in a German town and I might need it. So it's always convenient to have about."
"Where are you going to carry it, then?" pursued the other, handing back the ribboned paper.
"Would you think my grip would be the place?"
"Your grip? Yes, that's just like me. I always shove everything into my grip at last. See here, now. I have none of my papers about me. All in my grip—even in the house." Rudi opened to view his inside coat pocket in testimony, as if he were an important individual. Gard shifted ground again.
"I don't know. I may carry it in my pocket—with my ticket. What if I leave it in my trunk after all? I shall have to open up at the border anyhow."
The subject of the passport kept in Rudi's mind. Three days later he called out to Gard: