He shrugged his shoulders. “How indeed, you may well ask! I cannot tell
you. It must have been some hideous mistake. As soon as I got here I
spoke to the Directeur and to the Surveillant. The Directeur said he
knew nothing about it; the Surveillant told me confidentially that it
was a mistake on the part of the French government; that I would be out
directly. He’s not such a bad sort. So I am waiting; every day I expect
orders from the English government for my release. The whole thing is
preposterous. I wrote to the Embassy and told them so. As soon as I set
foot outside this place, I shall sue the French government for ten
thousand pounds for the loss of time it has occasioned me. Imagine it—I
had contracts with countless members of The Lords—and the war came.
Then I was sent to the front by The Sphere—and here I am, every day
costing me dear, rotting away in this horrible place. The time I have
wasted here has already cost me a fortune.”
He paused directly in front of the door and spoke with solemnity: “A
man might as well be dead.”
Scarcely had the words passed his lips when I almost jumped out of my
skin, for directly before us on the other side of the wall arose the
very noise which announced to Scrooge the approach of Marley’s ghost—a
dismal clanking and rattling of chains. Had Marley’s transparent figure
walked straight through the wall and up to the Dickensian character at
my side, I would have been less surprised than I was by what actually
happened.
The doors opened with an uncanny bang and in the bang stood a fragile
minute queer figure, remotely suggesting an old man. The chief
characteristic of the apparition was a certain disagreeable nudity
which resulted from its complete lack of all the accepted appurtenances
and prerogatives of old age. Its little stooping body, helpless and
brittle, bore with extraordinary difficulty a head of absurd largeness,
yet which moved on the fleshless neck with a horrible agility. Dull
eyes sat in the clean-shaven wrinkles of a face neatly hopeless. At the
knees a pair of hands hung, infantile in their smallness. In the loose
mouth a tiny cigarette had perched and was solemnly smoking itself.
Suddenly the figure darted at me with a spiderlike entirety.