bags were waiting for us in the post-office: we could see
them through the grating. But some informality--I have never been able
to understand what it was--had occurred at Constance. The suspicion of
the Swiss postal authorities had been aroused, and special instructions
had been sent that the bags were to be delivered up only to their
rightful owners.

It sounds sensible enough. Nobody wants his bag delivered up to anyone
else. But it had not been explained to the authorities at Innsbruck how
they were to know the proper owners. Three wretched-looking creatures
crawled into the post-office and said they wanted those three bags--"those
bags, there in the corner"--which happened to be nice, clean, respectable-
looking bags, the sort of bags that anyone might want. One of them
produced a bit of paper, it is true, which he said had been given to him
as a receipt by the post-office people at Constance. But in the lonely
passes of the Tyrol one man, set upon by three, might easily be robbed of
his papers, and his body thrown over a precipice. The chief clerk shook
his head. He would like us to return accompanied by someone who could
identify us. The hotel porter occurred to us, as a matter of course.
Keeping to the back streets, we returned to the hotel and fished him out
of his box.

"I am Mr. J.," I said: "this is my friend Mr. B. and this is Mr. S."

The porter bowed and said he was delighted.

"I want you to come with us to the post-office," I explained, "and
identify us."

The hotel porter is always a practical man: his calling robs him of all
sympathy with the hide-bound formality of his compatriots. He put on his
cap and accompanied us back to the office. He did his best: no one could
say he did not. He told them who we were: they asked him how he knew.
For reply he asked them how they thought he knew his mother: he just knew
us: it was second nature with him. He implied that the question was a
silly one, and suggested that, as his time was valuable, they should hand
us over the three bags and have done with their nonsense.

They asked him how long he had known us. He threw up his hands with an
eloquent gesture: memory refused to travel back such distance. It
appeared there was never a time when he had not known us. We had been
boys together.

Did he know anybody else who knew us? The question appeared to him
almost insulting. Everybody in Innsbruck knew us, honoured us, respected
us--everyb