"Both hinges went, of course. It says much for the box that the whole thing didn't melt then and there. If I hadn't corded it, most of the stuff would have been all over the Vauxhall Bridge Road. "Well, I was so rattled that I could hardly think. I joined mechanically in the laughter, I assured complete strangers that it didn't matter at all, I carried through the registration like a man in a dream, and I tipped everybody I could see. It was as I was thrusting blindly towards the gates that I first realised that half the people in the place were sneezing to glory. I was still digesting this phenomenon when I sneezed myself.... "Still it never occurred to me. There are times when you have to be told right out. I didn't have to wait long. "As I presented my ticket, a truck full of luggage was pushed through the gate next to mine. The porters about it were sneezing bitterly. 'Snuff?' said one of them contemptuously. 'Snuff be blarsted! _It's pepper!_' "Whether at that moment my stomach in fact slipped or not I am unable to say, but the impression that my contents had dropped several inches was overwhelming. "I staggered into the Pullman, more dead than alive.... After a large barley and a small water, I felt somewhat revived, but it was not until the train was half-way to Dover that I had myself in hand. I was just beginning under the auspices of a second milk and soda, to consider my hideous plight, when a genial fool upon the opposite side of the table asked me if I had 'witnessed the comedy at Victoria.' Icily I inquired: 'What comedy?' He explained offensively that 'some cuckoo had tried the old wheeze of stuffing pepper in his trunk to put off the Customs,' and that the intended deterrent had untimely emerged. My brothers, conceive my exhilaration. 'The old wheeze.' I could have broken the brute's neck. When he offered me a filthy-looking cigar with a kink in it, and said with a leer that I shouldn't 'get many like that on the other side of the Chops,' I could have witnessed his mutilation unmoved.... "Still, it's an ill wind.... The swine's words were like a spur. I became determined to get the stuff through. "Grimly I watched the case go on to the boat, to the accompaniment of such nasal convulsions as I had never believed to be consistent with life itself. By way of diverting suspicion, I asked one of the crew what was the matter. His blasphemous answer was charged with such malignity that I found it necessary to stay myself with yet another still lemonade. "Arrived at Calais, I hurried on board the train.