Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/201

Rh I gave them funds to secure another. For we did not desire that the clerk perceive that we were all to occupy the identic room. We pretended the sailors and I were unacquainted. ......

They finished by inserting a handkerchief into my buccal cavity, tying a strip of the bed linen over it, binding my hands behind my back, and fastening my lower extremities to the bed springs so that I could not even kick. They then departed with my wallet and outer clothing.

After an hour of helplessness, I discovered that the partition to the adjacent chamber was scarcely more than card-board. Because I perceived sounds of the entrance of an individual. I could even hear his breathing. I discerned the words: "How I wish I had three hundred dollars!"

I commenced a continuous jouncing up and down. The uninterrupted tintinnabulation of the springs attracted the individual's attention and he addressed me. I could respond only with a low gurgling. The clerk soon liberated me. I had to confess everything. But he manifested sympathy and donated a nickel for carfare.

One blue-jacket was of about my own measurements. Evidently he intended to desert. For he had abandoned his uniform. I was compelled to attire myself therein and boarded a car for my domicile. My house-key had remained in my appropriated habiliments. How to enter was my problem. If I rang, my arrival at midnight costumed as a sailor would disclose everything. I hoped the butler had neglected to secure the covering of the coal-hole in front of the basement windows.