Then I said, "Where's my
cane?"
The v-f-g hereat had a sort of fit, which perfectly became him.
I repeated gently: "When I came to the _bureau_ I had a cane."
"I don't give a damn about your cane," burbled my new captor frothily,
his pink evil eyes swelling with wrath.
"I'm staying," I replied calmly, and sat down on a curb, in the midst of
my ponderous trinkets.
A crowd of _gendarmes_ gathered. One didn't take a cane with one to
prison (I was glad to know where I was bound, and thanked this
communicative gentleman); or criminals weren't allowed canes; or where
exactly did I think I was, in the Tuileries? asks a rube movie-cop
personage.
"Very well, gentlemen," I said. "You will allow me to tell you
something." (I was beet-colored.) "In America that sort of thing isn't
done."
This haughty inaccuracy produced an astonishing effect, namely, the
prestidigitatorial vanishment of the v-f-g. The v-f-g's numerous
_confreres_ looked scared and twirled their whiskers.
I sat on the curb and began to fill a paper with something which I found
in my pockets, certainly not tobacco.
Splutter-splutter-fizz-Poop--the v-f-g is back, with my oak-branch in his
raised hand, slithering opprobria and mostly crying: "Is that huge piece
of wood what you call a cane? It is, is it? What? How? What the--," so
on.
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