“Of course I do—nothing is more certain.”
“Sir, are you mad? or might you happen to be a Freemason?”
“Mad! mad! Mad yourself, fellow!”
“Just wait a bit, and I’ll show you which of us is mad!” and before the poor president could assume a defensive attitude, the smith had seized him and thrown him into the street.
This roused Bloemstein’s wrath, and his objurgations speedily collected a crowd in the street.
“There he is!” a voice cried suddenly, echoed by “Now you’ve got him!” from another quarter, as the barber’s boy and the photographer appeared on the scene, escorted by a policeman apiece. In the twinkling of an eye the two officials had mastered the furious president, and in spite of his vigorous resistance, and his protestation that, as President of Altenet, his person was inviolable, the unhappy man was lugged off to the little dark hole known to the population of Maastricht as “the larder.”
“What is your name?” was the first question asked him by the police commissioner.
“You might ask it a little more civilly,” was the reply.
The commissioner immediately complied with this request.
“Will you be so kind as to tell me whom I have the honour of speaking to?”