“Don’t you know you did?” he demanded.

“I—­I wasn’t thinking,” she pleaded in fright.

[Illustration:  “‘Did you write this?’”]

He stared at her for a moment, then he went to his desk, picked up a printed form, filled it out quickly and handed it to her.

“There,” he said, and his voice was almost gentle, “I guess I don’t quite understand about this thing.”

Alice looked at the paper blankly.  “But—­what is it?” she asked.

The jailer closed one eye very slowly with a wise nod.  “It’s what you asked for, a permit to see this American prisoner, by special order.”

CHAPTER XIII

LLOYD AND ALICE

Kittredge was fortunate in having a sense of humor, it helped him through the horrors of his first night at the depot, which he passed with the scum of Paris streets, thieves, beggars, vagrants, the miserable crop of Saturday-night police takings, all herded into one foul room on filthy bunks so close together that a turn either way brought a man into direct contact with his neighbor.

Lloyd lay between an old pickpocket and a drunkard.  He did not sleep, but passed the hours thinking.  And when he could think no longer, he listened to the pickpocket who was also wakeful, and who told wonderful yarns of his conquests among the fair sex in the time of the Commune, when he was a strapping artilleryman.

“You’re a pretty poor pickpocket, old chap,” reflected Kittredge, “but you’re an awful good liar!”

In spite of little sleep, he was serene and good-natured when they took him, handcuffed, before Judge Hauteville the next morning for his preliminary examination—­a mere formality to establish the prisoner’s identity.  Kittredge gave the desired facts about himself with perfect willingness; his age, nationality, occupation, and present address.  He realized that there was no use hiding these.  When asked if he had money to employ a lawyer, he said “no”; and when told that the court would assign Maitre Pleindeaux for his defense, he thanked the judge and went off smiling at the thought that his interests were now in the hands of Mr. Full-of-Water.  “I’ll ask him to have a drink,” chuckled Kittredge.

And he submitted uncomplainingly when they took him to the Bertillon measuring department and stood him up against the wall, bare as a babe, arms extended, and noted down his dimensions one by one, every limb and feature being precisely described in length and breadth, every physical peculiarity recorded, down to the impression of his thumb lines and the precise location of a small mole on his left arm.