"You smoggle--smoggle seegar. Zen it must zat you pay amende, hundred francs. You me understand? Hundred francs--pay! pay! pay!" At each repetition of the last word he brought down a dirty fist into the palm of the opposite hand immediately under Quelch's nose. "Hundred francs--Engleesh money, four pound." Quelch caught the last words, and was relieved to find that it was merely a money payment that was demanded of him. But he was little better off, for, having but a few shillings in his pocket, to pay four pounds was as much out of his power as if it had been four hundred. He determined to appeal to the mercy of his captors. "Not got," he said, apologetically, with a vague idea that by speaking very elementary English he came somehow nearer to French, "That all," he continued, producing his little store and holding it out beseechingly to the official. "_Pas assez_, not enouf," growled the latter. Quelch tried again in all his pockets, but only succeeded in finding another threepenny piece. The officer shook his head, and, after a brief discussion with his fellows, said, _"Comment-vous appelez-vous, monsieur?_ How do you call yourself?" With a vague idea of keeping his disgrace from his friends, Quelch rashly determined to give a false name. If he had had a few minutes to think it over he would have invented one for the occasion, but his imagination was not accustomed to such sudden calls, and, on the question being repeated, he desperately gave the name of his next-door neighbour, Mr. Henry Fladgate. "Henri Flodgett," repeated the officer as he wrote it down. "_Et vous demeurez?_ You live where?" And Quelch proceeded to give the address of Mr. Fladgate, 11 Primrose Terrace. "_Tres bien._ I send teleg-r-r-amme. _Au violon!_" And poor Benjamin was ignominiously marched to the local police station. Meanwhile Quelch's arrangements at home were scarcely working as he had intended. The estimable Mrs. Widger, partly by reason of her deafness and partly of native stupidity, had only half understood his instructions about the letters. She knew she was to stamp them and she knew she was to post them, but the dates in the corners might have been runic inscriptions for any idea they conveyed to her obfuscated intellect. Accordingly, the first time she visited her usual house of call, which was early on the morning of Good Friday, she proceeded, in her own language, to "get the dratted things off her mind" by dropping them both into the nearest pillar-box.