"Guard my back!" I cried to Lou.
She hardly needed telling. The spirit of the true Englishwoman in a crisis was aflame in her.
Fixing the crowd with my eyes and my barrel, we edged our way to the door. One man took up a glass to throw; but the Padrone had slipped out from behind the bar, and knocked his arm down.
The glass smashed to the floor. The attack on us degenerated into a volley of oaths and shrieks. We found ourselves in the fresh air-and also in the arms of half a dozen police who had run up from both ends of the street.
Two of them strode into the wine-shop. The uproar ceased as if by magic.
And then we found that we were under arrest. We were being questioned in voluble, excited Italian. Neither Lou nor I understood a word that was said to US.
The sergeant came out of the dive. He seemed an intelligent man. He understood at once that we were English.
" Inglese ? " he asked. " Inglese ? " and I forcibly echoed " Inglese, Signore Inglese," as if that settled the whole matter.
English people on the Continent have an illusion that the mere fact of their nationality permits them to do anything soever. And there is a great deal of truth in this, after all, because the inhabitants of Europe have a settled conviction that we are all harmless lunatics. So we are allowed to act in all sorts of ways which they would not tolerate for a moment in any supposedly rational person.
In the present instance, I have little doubt that, if we had been dressed as ourselves, we should have been politely conducted to our hotel or put into an automobile, without any more fuss, perhaps, than a few perfunctory questions intended to impress the sergeant's men with his importance.
But as it was, he shook his head doubtfully.
" Arme vietate," he said solemnly, pointing to the revolvers which were still in our hands.
I tried to explain the affair in broken Italian. Lou did what was really a much more sensible thing by taking the affair as a stupendous joke, and going off into shrieks of hysterical laughter.
But as for me, my blood was up. I wasn't going to stand any nonsense from these damned Italians. Despite the Roman blood that is legitimately the supreme pride of our oldest families, we always somehow instinctively think of the Italian as a nigger.
We don't call them " dagos " and " wops, " as they do in the United States, with the invariable epithet of "dirty " ; but we have the same feeling.
I began to take the high hand with the sergeant and that, of course, was quite sufficient to turn the balance against us.
We found ourselves pinioned. He said in a very short tone that we should have to go to the Commissario.
I had two conflicting impulses. One to shoot the dogs down and get away ; the other to wish, like a lost child, that Feccles would turn up and get us out of the mess.
Unfortunately for either, I had been very capably disarmed, and there was no sign of Feccles.
We were marched to the police station and thrown into separate rooms.
I cannot hope to depict the boiling rage which kept me awake all night. I resented ill-temperedly the attempts of the other men to be sympathetic. I think they recognised instinctively that I had got into trouble through no fault of my own, and were anxious to show kindness in their own rough way to the stranger.
The worst of the whole business was that they had searched us and removed our stand-by, the dear little gold-topped bottle ! I might have got myself into a mood to laugh the whole thing off, as had so often happened before ; and I realised for the first time the dreadful sinking of heart that comes from privation.
It was only a hint of the horror so far. I had enough of the stuff in me to carry me through for a bit. But, even as things were, it was bad enough.
I had a feeling of utter helplessness. I began to repent having repulsed the advances of my fellow prisoners. I approached them and explained that I was a " Signor Inglese " with " molto danaro " ; and if any one could oblige me with a sniff of cocaine, as I explained by gesture, I should be practically grateful.
I was understood immediately. They laughed sympathetically with perfect comprehension of the case. But as it happened, nobody had managed to smuggle anything in. There was nothing for it but to wait for the morning. I lay down on a bench, and found myself the prey of increasingly acute irritation.
The hours passed like the procession of Banquo's heirs before the eyes of Macbeth ; and a voice in me kept saying, " Macbeth hath murdered sleep, Macbeth shall sleep no more ! "
I had an appallingly disquieting sensation of being tracked down by some invisible foe. I was seized with a perfectly unreasonable irritation against Feccles, as if it were his fault, and not my own, that I was in this mess.
Strangely enough, you may think, I never gave a thought to Lou. It mattered nothing to me whether she were suffering or not. My own personal physiological sensations occupied the whole of my mind.
I was taken before the Commissario as soon as he arrived. They seemed to recognise that the case was important.
Lou was already in the office. The Commissario spoke no English, and no interpreter was immediately available. She looked absolutely wretched.
There had been no conveniences for toilet, and in the daylight the disguise was a ridiculous travesty.
Her hair was tousled and dirty; her complexion was sallow, mottled with touches of unwholesome red. Her eyes were bleared and bloodshot. Dark purple rims were round them.
I was extremely angry with her for her unprepossessing appearance. It then occurred to me for the first time that perhaps I myself was not looking like the Prince of Wales on Derby Day.
The commissary was a short, bull-necked individual, evidently sprung from the ranks of the people. He possessed a correspondingly exaggerated sense of his official importance.
He spoke almost without courtesy, and appeared to resent our incapacity to understand his language.
As for myself, the fighting spirit had gone out of me completely. All I could do was to give our names in the tone of voice of a schoolboy who has been summoned by the head master, and to appeal for the "Consule, Inglese."
The commissary's clerk seemed excited when he heard who we were, and spoke to his superior in a rapid undertone. We were asked to write our names.
I thought this was getting out of it rather nicely. I felt sure that the " Sir " would do the trick, and the " V-C., K.B.E." could hardly fail to impress.
I'm not a bit of a snob ; but I really was glad for once to be of some sort of importance.
The clerk ran out of the room with the paper. He came back in a moment, beaming all over, and called the attention of the commissary to one of the morning newspapers, running his finger along the lines with suppressed excitement.
My spirits rose. Evidently some social paragraph had identified us.
The commissary changed his manner at once. His new tone was not exactly sympathetic and friendly, but I put that down to the man's plebeian origin.
He said something about " Consule," and had us conducted to an outer room. The clerk indicated that we were to wait there-no doubt, for the arrival of the consul.
It was not more than half an hour; but it seemed an eternity. Lou and I had nothing to say to each other. What we felt was a blind ache to get away from these wretched people, to get back to the Caligula ; to have a bath and a meal; and above all, to ease our nerves with a good stiff dose of heroin and a few hearty sniffs of cocaine.
Chapter X.
The Bubble Bursts