The magistrate began on me. “Young man, we want you to explain your business here. Who you are, where you’re from, and what you do for a living? You are suspected as the burglar who last night entered the express agent’s house and made off with four thousand and eight hundred dollars cash. You were seen entering your hotel at daylight this morning. Explain that to us.”

My mind jumped back to the floggings, the dark cells with their bread and water, to my escape from jail, and to every other hardship I had accepted without weakening, and I laughed at him. Here was a little, pompous fat man blustering under his black skullcap behind a cheap table with a few legal papers on it, trying to make me talk.

I said to him: “Did you ever sleep in my hotel?”

“Yes,” he answered, forgetting his dignity.

“Well, then, you know that the washroom and toilet are in a covered space between the two wings of the building, outside and at the rear, and to get to them you go down the back stairs and out a back door.”