“James Higgins.”
“Your address?”
“I'm just stayin' with a friend.”
“The friend's address?” and so on: where had Jimmie worked last, what work had he done, what references had he to offer. Jimmie could not help grinning as he realized how his record must sound to a military martinet. He had been discharged and blacklisted at the motor-truck factory in Ironton, his last job; he had been discharged and black-listed at the Empire Shops; he had been arrested and sent to jail for “soap-boxing” on the streets of Leesville; he had been arrested in the bomb-conspiracy of Kumme and Heinrich von Holst. The sergeant entered each of these items without comment, but when he come to the last, he stared up at the applicant.
“I didn't have nothin' to do with it,” declared Jimmie.
“You got to prove that to me,” said the sergeant.
“I proved it once,” replied Jimmie.
“Who to?”
“Mr. Harrod, the agent of the Department of Justice here.”
The other took up the telephone and called the post office building. Jimmie listened to one-half of the conversation—would Mr. Harrod look up the record of James Higgins, who was applying for enlistment in the Mechanical Department of the Motor Corps? There was some delay—Mr. Harrod was talking—while Jimmie sat, decidedly nervous; but it was all right apparently—the sergeant hung up the receiver, and remarked reassuringly, “He says you're just a dub. He told me to congratulate you on having got some sense.”