Page:Herbert Jenkins - Bindle.djvu/93

 "Well," said Bindle with decision, "you're in the wrong room."

"Mais c'est impossible," cried the Frenchman. "We have been here all night. Is it not so, chérie?" He turned to his wife for corroboration.

Bindle had no time to enter further into the dispute. Suddenly a fresh disturbance broke out further along the corridor.

"What the devil do you mean by this outrage, sir?" an angry and imperious voice was demanding. "What the devil do you"

With a hasty word to the clergyman, who now looked thoroughly ashamed of himself, and a gentle push in the direction of the Office of Works, Bindle trotted off to the scene of the new disturbance. He heard another suppressed scream from the pink négligé betokening the entry of the clergyman.

"What the devil do you mean by entering my room?"

A tall, irate man, with the Army stamped all over him, dressed in pyjamas, with a monocle firmly wedged in his left eye, was fiercely eyeing a smaller man in a bath-robe.

"Not content with having got into my room, but damme, sir, you must needs try and get into my trousers. What the devil do you mean by it?"

Bindle looked along the corridor appreciatively. "Looks like a shipwreck at night, it do," he remarked to the chambermaid.