U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [194]
"Yessir."
"Wel , how do you come to be trying to get into Eng-land in wartime without passport or other identifying doc-ument?" Joe told about how he had an American A.B. certifi-cate and had been on the beach at B.A. . . . Buenos Aires. "And why were you . . . er . . . in this condi-tion in the Argentine?""Wel , sir, I'd been on the Mal-lory Line and my ship sailed without me and I'd been
-38-painting the town red a little, sir, and the skipper pul ed out ahead of schedule so that left me on the beach."
"Ah . . . a hot time in the old town tonight . . . that sort of thing, eh?" The elderly man laughed; then sud-denly he puckered up his brows. "Let me see . . . er . . . what steamer of the Mal ory Line were you travel ing on?""The Patagonia, sir, and I wasn't travel in' on her, I was a seaman on board of her."
The elderly man wrote a long while on a sheet of
paper, then he lifted Joe's cigarbox out of the desk drawer and began looking through the clippings and photographs. He brought out a photograph and turned it out so that Joe could see it. "Quite a pretty girl . . . is that your best beloved, Wil iams?" Joe blushed scarlet. "That's my sister.""I say she looks like a ripping girl . . . don't you think so, corporal?""Quite so, sir," said the corporal dis-tantly. "Now, me boy, if you know anything about the ac-tivities of German agents in South America . . . many of them are Americans or impostors masquerading as Ameri-cans . . . it'l be much better for you to make a clean breast of it."
"Honestly, sir," said Joe, "I don't know a thing about it. I was only in B.A. for a few days.""Have you any parents living?""My father's a pretty sick man. . . . But I have my mother and sisters in Georgetown."" George-town . . . Georgetown . . . let me see . . . isn't that in British Guiana?""It's part of Washington, D. C."
"Of course . . . ah, I see you were in the navy. . . ." The elderly man held off the picture of Joe and the two other gobs. Joe's knees felt so weak he thought he was going to fal down. "No, sir, that was in the naval re-serve." The elderly man put everything back in the cigarbox.
"You can have these now, my boy. . . . You'd better give him a bit of breakfast and let him have an airing in the yard. He looks a bit weak on his pins, corporal."
-39-"Very good, sir." The corporal saluted, and they marched out. The breakfast was watery oatmeal, stale tea and two slices of bread with margarine on it. After it Joe felt hun-grier than before. Stil it was good to get out in the air, even if it was drizzling and the flagstones of the smal courtyard where they put him were like ice to his bare feet under the thin slime of black mud that was over them.
There was another prisoner in the courtyard, a little fatfaced man in a derby hat and a brown overcoat, who came up to Joe immediately. "Say, are you an American?"
"Sure," said Joe.
"My name's Zentner . . . buyer in restaurant furnish-ings . . . from Chicago. . . . This is the tamnest out-rage. Here I come to this tamned country to buy their tamned goods, to spend good American dol ars. . . . Three days ago yet I placed a ten tousand dol ar order in Sheffield. And they arrest me for a spy and I been here al night yet and only this morning vil they let me telephone the consulate. It is outrageous and I hale a passport and visa al they vant. I can sue for this outrage. I shal take it to Vashington. I shal sue the British gov-ernment for a hundred tousand dol ars for defamation of character. Forty years an American citizen and my fader he came not from Chermany but from Poland. . .
. And you, poor boy, I see that you haf no shoes. And they talk about the atrocious Chermans and if this ain't an atrocity, vat is it?"
Joe was shivering and running round the court at a jog-trot to try to keep warm. Mr. Zentner took off his brown coat and handed it to him.
"Here, kid, you put that coat on.""But, jeez,