This awakening was no different from most of the others: two damnable pains, one inside and one outside my skull, a stomachful of nausea, and a dread of what lay ahead. The last was quickly settled, at any rate; just as grey light was beginning to steal through the bars of my window—which I guessed was in a police station, for the cell was decent—a uniformed guard brought me a mug of coffee, and then conducted me along a corridor to a plain, panelled room containing a most official-looking desk, behind which sat a most official-looking man. He was about fifty, with iron grey hair and a curling moustache, and cold eyes flanking a beaky nose. With him, standing at a writing pulpit beside the desk, was a clerk. The guard ushered me in, bleary, unshaven, blood-stained, and in the fiend’s own temper.

“I demand to be allowed to communicate with my ambassador this instant,” I began, “to protest at the outrageous manner in which—”

“Be quiet,” says the official. “Sit down.” And he indicated a stool before the desk.

I wasn’t having this. “Don’t dare to order me about, you cabbage-eating bastard,” says I. “I am a British officer, and unless you wish to have a most serious international incident to answer for, you will—”

“I will certainly have you whipped and returned to your cell if you do not curb your foul tongue,” says he coldly. “Sit.”

I was staring, flabbergasted at this, when a cheerful voice behind me said:

“Better sit down, old fellow; he can do it, you know,” and I wheeled round to find Rudi Starnberg lolling against a table by the door, which had hidden him from me when I came in. He was fresh and jaunty, with his undress cap tilted forward rakishly over one eye, smoking a cheroot in a holder.

“You!” cried I, and got no further. He shushed me with a gesture and pointed to the stool; at the same time the official rapped smartly on his table, so I decided to sit. My head was aching so much I doubt if I could have stood much longer anyway.

“This is Doctor Karjuss,” says Rudi. “He is a magistrate and legal authority; he has something to say to you.”

“Then he can start by telling me the meaning of this dastardly ill-treatment,” cries I. “I’ve been set upon, my skull cracked, thrown into a filthy cell, denied the right to see my ambassador, and God knows what else. Yes, by the lord, I’ve been threatened with flogging, too!”

“You were placed under arrest last night,” says Karjuss, who spoke tolerable French. “You resisted the officers. They restrained you; that is all.”

“Restrained me? They bloody well half-killed me! And what is this damned nonsense about arrest? What’s the charge, hey?”

“As yet, none has been laid,” says Karjuss. “I repeat, as yet. But I can indicate what they may be.” He sat very prim and precise, his cold eyes regarding me with distaste. “First, obscene and indecent conduct; second, corruption of public morals; third, disorderly behaviour; fourth, resisting the police; fifth—”