Page:The Jail, Experiences in 1916.pdf/41

 Mr. Kolbe smiled mysteriously. "Well, it's that article in the French paper. "L'independence",—I don't know how it's pronounced—"

"An article? I? Impossible."

"But your name is there."

—"Has the chief commissary got it?"

"Yes that's what this search is for and why you have been sum- moned there."

The chief commissary asked me about my name.

"What is this J. S.?"

"You see, it's a little souvenir of the Roman Catholic Church. It gave me two baptismal names, and I when left it, I returned the names to it and kept only these two letters."

"Well, all right", he remarked. "Have you written anything recently for a paper in Geneva?"

"No."

"Anything for the Hus number?"

"No."

"What about this?" And he laid before me a copy of a newspaper of about the same size as Sládek's old "Lumír"; above as the title "L'indépendance Tchéque", beneath this a bad reproduction of Brožík's well-known picture of Hus before the Council of Constance, beneath the picture about ten lines of letter-press and beneath the letter-press,—my full name. It occurred to me that perhaps it was a quotation from something,—I read it through,—no, not a word was mine,—horrible journalistic bombast.

"Sir" I said, "I can only tell you what you will hear from every criminal at the first moment when he is caught: I didn't do