"Cotillion Coterie. That's French," translated the Ober-Offizier on the bench, gravely illuminated. An assistant suggested that sec might, in fact, refer to champagne. That would be French too.
"When did you leave France the last time?" the other demanded in a hoarse, triumphant tone.
"Never been in France," returned Jim in a loud voice.
"Never been in France and yet you use French fluently."
"Tell him I don't know a word of French. I didn't know that was especially French. With us it's just dancing language—everybody uses it. Tell him"—Jim added encouragingly—"tell him I never knew a Frenchman in my life."
"This is evidently a French affair as well as English," commented the officer. "Anglo-French. Reaches out."
"What are they saying?" anxiously asked Deming of his intermediary.
On learning the new and extensive ramifications into which the sportive CCC was leading him, he threw up his hands before he thought and exclaimed, "Oh, my God!" It expressed his disgusted confirmation of Mr. Anderson's assertion—"What egregious asses such Germans can be!"—and also his own alarm over his situation. When would he get back to America at this rate? It was going to cost money to escape from this scrape, and how would his governor and mother feel about it? A few months in a political prison with rats and vermin crawling over him seemed ahead instead of the jolly summer he had planned. He cursed under his breath the member of the CCC who had carelessly let his card get away from his clutches.
But a greater surprise awaited him. It revealed an example of the tremendous thoroughness and immense detail that were the pride of the Teuton bureaucracy. Deming was taken off his feet. The chief held up a little battered sheet.
"Have you always paid your bills in Germany?"