This last to the insistent man who had edged up once more.
The man looked at him and spat contemptuously.
The passionate impatience of the week leaped up in Dick and clothed itself like a flash in violence, the honorable, the traditional resource of his land; he stepped forward and slapped the man’s face.
They surged about him, threatening, waving their arms, trying ineffectually to close in on him—with his back against the wall Dick hit out clumsily, laughing a little and for a few minutes the mock fight, an affair of foiled rushes and padded, glancing blows, swayed back and forth in front of the door.
Then Dick tripped and fell; he was hurt somewhere but he struggled up again wrestling in arms that suddenly broke apart.
There was a new voice and a new argument but he leaned against the wall, panting and furious at the indignity of his position.
He saw there was no sympathy for him but he was unable to believe that he was wrong.
They were going to the police station and settle it there.
His hat was retrieved and handed to him, and with some one holding his arm lightly he strode around the corner with the taxi-men and entered a bare barrack where carabinieri lounged under a single dim light.
At a desk sat a captain, to whom the officious individual who had stopped the battle spoke at length in Italian, at times pointing at Dick, and letting himself be interrupted by the taxi-men who delivered short bursts of invective and denunciation.
The captain began to nod impatiently.
He held up his hand and the hydra-headed address, with a few parting exclamations, died away.
Then he turned to Dick.
“Spick Italiano?” he asked.
“No.”
“Spick Francais?”
“Oui,” said Dick, glowering.
“Alors. Ecoute.
Va au Quirinal.
Espece d’endormi. Ecoute: vous etes saoul.
Payez ce que le chauffeur demande.
Comprenez-vous?”
Diver shook his head.
“Non, je ne veux pas.” “COME?”
“Je paierai quarante lires.
C’est bien assez.”
The captain stood up.
“Ecoute!” he cried portentously.
“Vous etes saoul.
Vous avez battu le chauffeur.
Comme ci, comme ca.”
He struck the air excitedly with right hand and left,
“C’est bon que je vous donne la liberte.
Payez ce qu’il a dit—cento lire.
Va au Quirinal.”
Raging with humiliation, Dick stared back at him.
“All right.”
He turned blindly to the door—before him, leering and nodding, was the man who had brought him to the police station.
“I’ll go home,” he shouted, “but first I’ll fix this baby.”
He walked past the staring carabinieri and up to the grinning face, hit it with a smashing left beside the jaw.
The man dropped to the floor.
For a moment he stood over him in savage triumph—but even as a first pang of doubt shot through him the world reeled; he was clubbed down, and fists and boots beat on him in a savage tattoo.
He felt his nose break like a shingle and his eyes jerk as if they had snapped back on a rubber band into his head.
A rib splintered under a stamping heel.
Momentarily he lost consciousness, regained it as he was raised to a sitting position and his wrists jerked together with handcuffs.
He struggled automatically.
The plainclothes lieutenant whom he had knocked down, stood dabbing his jaw with a handkerchief and looking into it for blood; he came over to Dick, poised himself, drew back his arm and smashed him to the floor.
When Doctor Diver lay quite still a pail of water was sloshed over him.
One of his eyes opened dimly as he was being dragged along by the wrists through a bloody haze and he made out the human and ghastly face of one of the taxi-drivers.
“Go to the Excelsior hotel,” he cried faintly.