With that I wrapped myself and the telephone in double blankets, took out the plug, and cautiously rang up a livery-stable.
“Carriage!” I said, “to Senor Kirby's house, North Road, in an hour.”
Then I prospected in the kitchen on tiptoe, and collected a spirit-lamp and such matters, got dressed, and breakfasted behind the shutters with a calmness that was a bit artificial. The City Guard wasn't breakfasting. By the calamitous features of the elderly officer sitting on my horse-block, they didn't expect to. El Capitano Lugo was his name, and a very friendly man, after breakfast.
I sat smoking behind the shutters, and waited for the carriage, which came along leisurely about nine. The soldiery destroyed the picket-fence getting into the road all together.
“Eh!” he said. “But I know nothing, Senor Capitano, nothing! Carriage to Senor Kirby, North Road. A telephone.”
With that they were all crowded close about the carriage, talking in low tones, but excited. It was about ghosts, as the captain told me after, and there ran a theory among them that I had been a spirit for the last twelve hours, turning off lights and sending telephones to avenge the atrocity of my murder.
But it got no farther than a theory, because of the opening of the door, and me coming out on the porch in duck trousers, polka-dot tie, and a calm that was artificial.
“Ah!” shouted the captain, making for me, over the wrecks of the picket-fence. I said:
“Of course you do. Get into the carriage.”
And off we went bowling toward the city, with the guard plodding far behind in pink uniforms, and very dejected. Captain Lugo himself would answer nothing when I tried to show him that pink uniforms were in bad taste for a city guard.
But, oh, the extravagance of language at the City Hall, and the Mayor with his beautiful temper in ruins!
“Intolerable! The contempt of dignity, the mockery of constituted power! By whose orders were the lights turned off?”
“Mine, your Excellency, of course. Told you all about it last Saturday.”
“_Â la carcel!_” he shouted, with his official moustache standing up at the ends. “He has despised the city. Take him to jail, hastily.”
“You'd better look out,” I said. “It's an international complication. The United States will be capturing Portate with an extension of the Monroe Doctrine,” I said, fishing wildly for an argument.