"They want to scare me to make me pay up," he said to himself. "They are afraid they won't get it. I'll pay the little two or three dollars and that will end the matter. These blamed Germans with their ten cents and twenty-five cents! What a system of government to be bothering with these idiotic trifles!"
He sought distraction in several games of billiards followed by dinner at his favorite café. When he returned to his room late that night he found that his effects had been ransacked by two detectives. Fully incensed by this high-handed procedure he determined to place his inalienable rights in the hands of a lawyer the first thing after the early morning meeting.
The taking of his testimony was a proceeding held in a small side apartment before an elderly crotchety underling who pretended to understand English and French, but whose thick-wittedness seemed monumental. The slowness and dullness indicated a whole summer's programme of this preposterous horseplay. Everything was being written down in detail in long hand in the form of questions and answers. All Deming's candles, soiled linen, stained napkins and what-not, reported from all directions of the Empire, began to be raked over. There were green, yellow, red, blue telegrams from half the German States. Harassed by this muck and by the leering taunts of the old party, Jim was glad to find, at the noon hour, that the session was postponed to the second day after.
As he was leaving the room, another offensive inquiry about an absurdity caused him suddenly to remember Mr. Anderson's advice. And in one immortal moment in his existence he rose to a sublime height of moral courage.
"Go to hell!" he shot back. And as he saw the clumsy servitor beginning to pen "Answer: Go to h——" in his great book, Jim slipped out.
He briskly hunted a lawyer to whom he related all the circumstances, winding up elatedly with the last remark.
"Did they write that down too?"
"Yes."
The attorney was at first convulsed, familiar with Teuton naïveté. Then he dubiously shook his head. To Jim's unexpected discomfort the affair was regarded seriously. If he had not ejaculated this affront, something could be done. But now he had been guilty of what the Germans might rightfully construe as a voluntary indignity offered to the Imperial Secret Service in the performance of its highly responsible duties. If he wanted to avoid important trouble, the only simple and effective course would be to quit the country. He could leave that night and in not many hours would be in Russia and beyond German control.
And so Jim Deming made a hasty and unceremonious exit from the Deutschland he had been so fond of, without having time to salute any of his many friends good-by. He had to send them a line of farewell from St. Petersburg.