we treated our fellow-prisoners to a quarter of an hour's tirade on the
American citizen's right to freedom, swore that the Kingdom of the
Netherlands would repent this outrage, and each of us politely
assured the other it was all the other fellow's fault.

All of which, though true, had no effect on the sniffling young woman
across the way, nor the sleeper on the hardwood bench next mine,
nor the bald-headed, big-lipped police sergeant who bent over his
desk in the corner, impervious to these usual outbursts of the newly
arrested, as he laboriously scrawled in the police blotter the report of
the day's round-up.

"Sit down!" he bellowed as I advanced toward the pen door, and tried
to open it.

When he resumed his scratching I did my best to explain in a
German-French-Dutch dialect of my own invention that we wished to
see Mons. le Commissaire at once; that we had only come to inspect
the concentration camp of German and Belgian prisoners, and that
we were leaving town that day. I particularly emphasized this point.
We were, in fact, I assured him in several different ways, leaving that
very afternoon--as soon as the disagreeable mistake of our arrest
was rectified. He may or may not have understood this: at all events,
he wore an expression as blank and graven as Jack Rose upon the
witness stand. His only answer was a vacant stare at the pit of my
stomach, followed by a slow scratch-scratching on the police blotter.

In fact our arrest on that occasion was rather a Jack Rose affair; that
is to say, it started by our being invited to headquarters, suspicious
but not certain of our status until we finally landed behind the iron