“Well, what have you to say, you filthy defective?” he shouted at me, when the police had ended.
I heard a suppressed chuckle behind me, and then became aware that all the police had gathered about me, convulsed with amusement at my rags.
“Stand back, you swine!” bellowed the magistrate. “Give me the Escaped Defectives Book,” he added, to his clerk.
The clerk handed up to him a small publication which I could see contained numerous miniature photographs in color. He began studying it, looking up at me from time to time. Occasionally, at his nod, one of the policemen would seize my face and push it into profile. At last the magistrate thrust the book away petulantly.
“This isn’t one of them,” he announced to the policemen. “Who are you?” he continued, glaring at me. “You’re not on the defectives’ list. Where do you come from? Tell the truth or I’ll commit you to the leathers. Why are you in masquerade? Where’s your brass? Your print? Your number? Your district?”
The clerk wagged his middle finger at me and, drawing a printed form from a pile, pushed it toward me. I took it, but I could make nothing of it, for it was in the same unknown characters.
“I can only read the old-fashioned alphabet,” I said.
The room echoed with the universal laughter. The magistrate almost jumped out of his chair.
“What!” he yelled. “You’re lying! You know you are. You have an accent. You’re from another province. What’s your game?”
The clerk, ignoring his superior’s outburst, pulled back the form, and, taking in his hand a sort of fountain pen, began to fill it in with a black fluid that dried the instant it touched the paper.