THE STEEL FLEA
other, and there, also, they would not receive him, and so, also, at a third, and a fourth; they dragged him about until morning dawned, through all the most tangled and distant ways, and kept shifting him incessantly, so that they completely wore him out. Then one assistant medical man told the policeman to take him to the Obukhoff hospital for common people, where they receive all people of unknown rank to die.
There they ordered a receipt to be given, and the left-handed man to be set upon the floor in the corridor until he should be examined.
But at the same hour on the following day, the English half-skipper rose, swallowed the second gutta-percha pill, ate a light breakfast of chicken and rice, drank airfixe, and said: "Where is my Russian comrade? I will go and seek him."
He dressed himself and sallied forth.
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