"Take this to your master," said I, "and tell him it was brought by Monsieur Clamart himself."
Then I turned on my heel and went back to my little hotel in Passy, with the feeling of a man who has come to the surface after a deep dive.
It doesn't take long to step from the underworld into the upper when you happen to be at home in both. I paid my little hotel bill, walked out into the Bois with my old black valise, found a thicket over by the bicycle path and did a lightning-change act from a goggled predicatéur into a young man of fashion, then walked over to the Pré Catelan, picked up a taxi and went to my garconnière over by the Ternes.
The concierge seemed glad to see me. I told him I had been working up the car in England and had run over for a few days to see if there was anything new. Naturally I'd left the black valise in the Bois, and my being without luggage meant nothing, as he might have thought that I had left it at the Cuttynges or the Automobile or Travellers clubs. Your Paris concierge is a past-master in the art of never being surprised at anything; and if you happen to be a foreigner the only thing that could possibly surprise him would be the lack of things to be surprised about.
I read a few letters and then walked over to the office on the Avenue de la Grande Armée; and, let me tell you, the luxury of that walk in the open was greater than any I'd ever enjoyed. Chu-Chu might have walked up and shoved a knife into my solar plexus and I'd scarcely have tried to stop him. I was enjoying my respectability just as a respectable
