h, and
neckties as numerous as the sea sands. Noting the rapt attention that
McGuntrie in particular gave to these disclosures, I felt that to
deserve so inhuman a punishment my crime must have been black indeed.
Shoes on their trees; articles of silk underwear; brushes, combs,
gloves, cards, boxes of cigarettes, an extra flask; some light
literature. And so on and so on, ad nauseam, till I grew dully
apathetic, and roused only to praise Allah when we left the boxes for
the trunk.

Hardened by this time, I brazenly endured the exhibition of my pajamas,
not turning a hair when they were held up and shaken out before the
attentive crowd. In a similar spirit I bore the examination of my coats
and trousers, the rummaging of my vests, the investigation of my hats.
"Courage!" I told myself. "Nothing in the world is endless." Indeed, the
last garment was now being lifted, revealing nothing beneath it save a
leather wallet carefully tied.

"Just look through that, will you?" I requested with chilling sarcasm.
"Otherwise you may get to thinking later that I had a note for the
kaiser there. In point of fact, those are simply some letters of
introduction that I am taking to--" I broke off abruptly. "Good Lord
deliver us!" I blankly exclaimed. "What's that?"

The lieutenant, complying with my request, had unbound the wallet and
was flirting out its contents in fan-like fashion like a hand of cards.
I saw the imposing army of letters presented me by Dunny, who knows
everybody, headed by one to his old friend, the American ambassador to
France. So far, so good. But beneath them, with a sickening sense of
being in a bad dream, I beheld a thin sheaf of papers, neatly folded,
bound with red tape and sealed with bright red wax,--an object which, to
my certain knowledge, had no more business among my belongings than
the knives and plates that the conjurer snatches from the surrounding
atmosphere, or the hen which he evolves, clucking, from an erstwhile
empty sleeve.

Standing there with the impersonal calm of utter helplessness, I watched
the Britisher break the seal and unfold the sheets. They were thin and
they were many and they were covered with closely jotted hieroglyphics,
row upon row. But the sphinx-like quality of the contents afforded me
no gleam of hope. If they had proclaimed as much in the plainest English
printing, I could have been no surer that they were the papers of Franz
von Blenheim; nor, as I learned a good while