Valentine Williams

The Man with the Clubfoot Valentine Williams

He shot a quick glance at me from under his reddened eyelids. "The gentleman would doubtless like a German house?" he queried. You may hardly credit it, but my interview with Dicky Allerton that afternoon had simply driven the war out of my mind. When one has lived much among foreign peoples, one's mentality slips automatically into their skin. I was now thinking in German-at least so it seems to me when I look back upon that night-and I answered without reflecting. "I don't care where it is as long as I can get somewhere to sleep out of this infernal rain!" "The gentleman can have a good, clean bed at the Hotel Sixt in the little street they call the Vos in't Tuintje, on the canal behind the Bourse. The proprietress is a good German, jawohl ... Frau Anna Schratt her name is. The gentleman need only say he comes from Franz at the Bopparder Hof." I gave the man a gulden and bade him get me a cab. It was still pouring.