Since He Ran Away From Us He Had Been
Wandering About On Foot For Ten Hours.
He sent a note to Mr. Little,
the British Consul, and to Bush Brothers, the kings of New-Chwang,
and, still tormented by visions of ice and champagne, demanded that
his captors take him to the Manchuria Hotel.
There he swore they
would find a pass from Fukushima allowing him to enter New-Chwang,
three friends who could identify him, four carts, seven servants,
nine coolies, and nineteen animals. The commandant took him to the
Manchuria Hotel, where instead of this wealth of corroborative detail
they found John Fox in bed. As Prior, the only one of us not in New-
Chwang, had the pass from Fukushima, permitting us to enter it, there
was no one to prove what either Lynch or Fox said, and the officer
flew into a passion and told Fox he would send both of them out of
town on the first train. Mr. Fox was annoyed at being pulled from
his bed at three in the morning to be told he was a Russian spy, so
he said that there was not a train fast enough to get him out of New-
Chwang as quickly as he wanted to go, or, for that matter, out of
Japan and away from the Japanese people. At this the officer, being
a Yale graduate, and speaking very pure English, told Mr. Fox to
"shut up," and Mr. Fox being a Harvard graduate, with an equally
perfect command of English, pure and undefiled, shook his fist in the
face of the Japanese officer and told him to "shut up yourself."
Lynch, seeing the witness he had summoned for the defence about to
plunge into conflict with his captor, leaped unhappily from foot to
foot, and was heard diplomatically suggesting that all hands should
adjourn for ice and champagne.
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