Extracting some metal counters from the drawer, which he closed with a bang, he thrust them toward me.
“What am I to do with these?” I asked.
The policeman winked at him, and I caught the word “Spain.” The clerk’s amazement changed to malignant mirth.
“The value of your chronometer,” he screamed in my ear, as if I were deaf.
“But I don’t intend to sell it,” I retorted.
A shriek of laughter at my side apprised me that the crowd had gathered about me. The space about the desk was packed with the same sneering, mirthless faces, and fifty hands were raised in mimicry or gesticulation.
“What a barbarian!” murmured a young woman with a typewriter badge on her shoulder.
The clerk looked at her and winked maliciously. Then he addressed me again.
“If you don’t understand now, you will before the Council ends ascribing you,” he said. “However, I’ll explain. Your museum chronometer, not being an object of necessity, is the property of this Province. This is a civilized country, and you can’t have hoard-property here, whatever you can do in Spain. Strangers’ effects are bought by the Province at their listed value, and your chronometer is listed at two hundred labor units, or ones—in other words, if you have ever heard of the metric system, two hektones.”
“Ah, give him the Rest Cure!” said the girl with the typewriter badge, swinging about and stalking away contemptuously.