However, he slept. He was awakened by a scrubby postman, who handed him
a registered letter. Norman opened it hastily, and was delighted to find
that it contained English banknotes for a hundred pounds--delighted but
not surprised, for Arnolfo had by now deadened his sense of wonder. He
gave the postman twopence, and had breakfast in bed on the strength of
his opulence. Indeed he rose so late that at the bank to which he
directed his footsteps a five-pound note was changed only with the
greatest reluctance, five minutes before noon, the Alsandrian closing
time. However, after a lot of little sums had been worked out by a lot
of little desks and after the five-pound note had been bitten, crackled
and held up to the light, and after Norman had executed a lot of
complicated moves and marked time strenuously in front of grilled
windows and "caisses" (all Continental banks seem to work on the
supposition that you have come there to pass a forgery or rob the till),
he was released with a large number of silver coins bulging in his
trouser pockets.
He stood for a moment on the threshold blinking at the sun, his
contentment tempered by annoyance at the reflection that all the shops
were closed and would not be opened again for another three hours, so
that he could not buy so much as a pocket handkerchief for his personal
adornment, when he heard a whirring clangorousness, and there appeared a
motor car crawling and puffing along the ruinous cobbles, followed by a
little crowd of admirers, for a motor was as strange in Alsander as an
aeroplane (shall I add "a year ago"?) above Upper Tooting. Norman would
have known that the car was a London taxi had he ever been to London.
The driver, smartly uniformed, stopped opposite him, and Arnolfo dressed
in his invariable silk and gold stepped out, and bowed to Norman with a
very ostensible deference. "I hope, Sir," he said suavely, "you will do
me the honour of stepping into my car and coming to lunch with me at a
little place I know of?"
"Why, how did you find me here?" cried Norman. "You are as bewildering
as the Cheshire cat."
"It's not hard to find a suspicious fellow like you in a gossipy town
like Alsander!" laughed Arnolfo. "Some other day, moreover, you shall
tell me who the Cheshire cat was; but jump in now; we have no time to
lose."
"I ought to hesitate," said Norman, but he stepped in at once.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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