knows how long. The ceiling was black, the walls grimy, the floor suggestive of undesirable things, the one window obscured by dust and dirt. There was scarcely any furniture an old deal table which looked as if it had had pieces cut out of it, five or six wooden chairs of various patterns, a rickety couch covered with horse-hair, with flock coming out of a hole in the middle, a little painted cupboard in a corner, with glasses, bottles, and plates on the top, no carpet to hide the filthy boards. The most prominent object in the room was what looked to me like a pile of clothing which was heaped on the couch. A less attractive apartment one could scarcely imagine.
The company matched the room. It struck me that that was the kind of apartment to which they had been accustomed all their lives; they seemed so ill-clothed, unkempt, badly washed. Even the man who looked like an Englishman I felt sure was not fond of soap and water. They stared at me with such unfriendly eyes, as if each in his heart would like to murder me. What I had done to cause them annoyance I could not imagine, yet it was sufficiently obvious that they were seriously angry with me about something.
They were silent for some moments, then broke into a babel of speech. The huge man spoke first. They did not wait for him to finish whatever it was he wished to say; directly he opened his mouth they all began to talk together. I know French when I hear it, I know German, and Dutch; I believe, also, that I know the sound of Spanish and Italian. What language they were talking I had not the faintest notion. I had never heard such sounds before; they seemed to me like guttural grunts. They gesticulated, shaking their fists, extending their hands towards me in a way I did not like at all. They seemed to be quarrelling expressing opinions about me which it was perhaps as well I did not understand.
Then, when I was wondering what the talk was all about, the huge man suddenly put out his arm and snatched the canvas bag, which I was still holding, from my hand. When he held it up in the air they simply yelled. In an instant, to my discomfort, each man had a weapon in his hand. The little man near me, and the red-headed man, had each a long, thin knife dreadful-looking weapons. The others had revolvers. They made a general move in my direction; I really thought for a moment that they were going to kill me in cold blood for some offence of which I had not been guilty, but the huge man extended his great left arm, holding it rigid as if it were a bar of iron, and held them back. Then the talk began again. I am aware that when people talk in a language of which you know nothing it often sounds as if they were quarrelling when they are doing nothing of the kind. About the anger of those five men there could be no shadow of doubt. I half expected to see them vent it on each other if they could not get at me. There were, for me, some moments of uncomfortable tension.
Then the decently dressed man said something which induced the giant to hand him over the canvas bag. They all gathered round to look at it, poking at it with their unpleasant fingers. Presently there was an interval of comparative silence; then the decently dressed man said to me, addressing me in English:
"Who are you?"
"I am an inoffensive stranger," I told him.
"What is your name?"
"Hugh Beckwith." I felt it the part of wisdom to answer his questions as briefly and clearly as I could.
"What are you doing with this?" He held out the bag.
Then I did become a little voluble.
"Someone dropped it out of the window of a room upstairs. It fell on my head and smashed my hat just look at that!" I held out the hat for him to look at. "If it hadn't been for my hat it might have killed me. I knocked at the door first of all to return the bag, which is no property of mine, and then to point out that whoever dropped it from the window must buy me a new hat."
The red-faced man looked at me for some seconds, as if he were trying to make up his mind how much of what I said was true. Then he said something in that guttural tongue. In an instant they rained on him what I had no doubt was a torrent of questions. He explained, telling them, probably, what it was I had said. They regarded me with suspicious eyes, as if they did not believe a word of it. Then the red-faced man returned to English.
"What are you?"
"I am a clerk."
"What kind of a clerk?"
"I am a clerk in a dried-fruit firm at least I was until a couple of hours ago. This morning they dismissed me."
"Dismissed you why? What had you been doing?"
"Nothing absolutely nothing! One of the partners was in a bad temper, and let it loose on me. Because I asked him what I had done he paid me a week's wages and told me to leave at once. The injustice of it made me so mad that I have been walking about the streets ever since. Now this happens! What I have done to you to cause you to behave to me like this is beyond me altogether."
"You are very talkative, full of explanations plausible. I wonder if, by any chance, you are connected with the police an artist in your own line. You are playing the part very well if you are."
I stared at him. "I'm no more connected with the police than you are."
"Than I am!" He laughed, oddly. "That's an unfortunate remark. I have been connected with the police a good deal in my time, as it is possible you know."
"I know nothing of the sort! I know nothing about you of any kind. Who are you?"
He spoke with marked deliberation, a pause between each word.
"I am who I am; we all of us are who we are. If you are trying to trick us we'll tear your tongue out by the roots. In spite of what you say you probably know that we should make nothing of a little jest like that."
"I declare to you I don't know why you doubt me I have no thought of trickery. If you will come with me to where I live I will prove that what I said is true."
"No, thank you; I would rather not come with you to where you live. We would rather keep you here."
There was an ominous something in the tone in which he said this which grated on my nerves. The huge man said something, as if he were impatient at being kept in ignorance of what it was that we were saying. The red-faced man replied to him. The clamour was renewed. So angry were their voices, so excited their gestures, that I felt as if every moment I was going in peril of my life. Then the red-faced man asked another question.
"What proof can you give us here that what you say is true? We should like to search your pockets."
They did not wait for my permission; before I could speak the big man took me in some deft way by the scruff of the neck and literally tore my coat off my back. Before I could even expostulate he had turned the pockets inside out. There were two letters in the inside pocket in their original envelopes, my name and address on each. As if he could not make much of them, he passed them to the red-faced man. In the right-hand outside pocket there were a pipe and tobacco and a box of matches, which he threw upon the table. In the left-hand pocket was my handkerchief, which he stretched out and examined. My name was on it in ink "H. Beckwith." There was nothing else in the pockets of my coat; having satisfied himself on that point, he dropped it on to the table.
I supposed that they had taken liberties enough with my attire; there was proof on the envelopes and in the letters they contained that I was who I claimed to be, which must have been plain to the red-faced man. But I was mistaken in imagining that they had subjected me to enough indignity. Before I had even guessed his intention, the huge fellow had even stripped me of my waistcoat, amid what were clearly the jeers of his companions. They regarded the way in which I was being treated as a joke. The big man turned out my waistcoat pockets my watch
