I shrugged my shoulders.
“We’ll go to Nîmes.”
“Very good, sir,” said McKeogh.
“And now,” said I, as soon as we had started on the right-hand road, “will you have the kindness to explain?”
“There’s nothing to explain,” he cried, gleefully. “Here am I delivered. I am free. I can breathe God’s good air again. I’m not going to marry Yum-Yum, Yum-Yum. I feel ten years younger. Oh, I’ve had a narrow escape. But that’s the way with me. I always fall on my feet. Didn’t I tell you I’ve never lost an opportunity? The moment I saw an Englishman in difficulties, I realized my opportunity of being delivered out of the House of Bondage. I took it, and here I am! For two days I had been racking my brains for a means of getting out of Aigues-Mortes, when suddenly you—a Deus ex machina—a veritable god out of the machine—come to my aid. Don’t say there isn’t a Providence watching over me.”
I suggested that his mode of escape seemed somewhat elaborate and fantastic. Why couldn’t he have slipped quietly round to the railway station and taken a ticket to any haven of refuge he might have fancied?
“For the simple reason,” said he, with a gay laugh, “that I haven’t a single penny piece in the world.”
He looked so prosperous and untroubled that I stared incredulously.
“Not one tiny bronze sou,” said he.
“You seem to take it pretty philosophically,” said I.