Page:C N and A M Williamson - The Lightning Conductor.djvu/205

 for a man's life! Bah! You aristocrats! Five hundred francs; not a sou less, or you do not stir from this place. Fifty francs! Mazette!"

"You are talking nonsense, and you know it," said I roughly. "Stand out of our way, or we will send for the police."

Now this was bluff, for the last thing to be desired was the presence of the police. I had been careful to get in Paris the necessary permis de conduire from the Department of Mines, without which it is illegal to drive a motor vehicle of any sort in France. But I had heard Payne boasting to Miss Randolph that he never bothered himself about a lot of useless red tape; it was only milksops and amateurs who did that. I, as Brown, had kept "my master's" papers, but it would do more harm than good to our cause, should it come to an investigation, if I attempted to pass over my permit to Payne. Were the police to appear on the scene their first demand would be for papers, and if the man who had been driving were unable to produce any, not all our just complaints of the peasants' unlawful threats would help us. Payne would be liable to arrest and imprisonment; not only would he be heavily fined, but we should all be detained, perhaps for weeks; and as French magistrates have as strong a prejudice against the automobile as their English brothers, especially when the offender is a foreigner, it might go hard with everyone concerned. This would be a dismal interruption of our tour, and if I hadn't felt sure that the enemy would be in as great a funk of the police as we were, I wouldn't have ventured on so bold a bluff. I