prawling brass fixtures,
and many electric lights. Only former inmates of the Fatherland could
have conceived and executed the embellishments of Grogan's.

There was a palatial bar, behind which fat, white-jacketed Teutons
served slopping steins of beer upon a perforated brass surface. There
was a centre table, piled with those barbarous messes known to the
undiscriminating Hun as "delicatessen"--raw fish, sour fish, smoked
fish, flabby portions of defunct pig in various guises--all naturally
nauseating to the white man's olfactories and palate, and all equally
relished by the beer-swilling boche.

A bartender with Pekinese and apoplectic eyes and the scorbutic facial
symptoms of a Strassburg liver, took the order from Barres and set
before him a frosty glass of Pilsner, incidentally drenching the bar
at the same time with swipes, which he thriftily scraped through the
perforated brass strainer into a slop-bucket underneath.

Being a stranger there, Barres was furtively scrutinised at first, but
there seemed to be nothing particularly suspicious about a young man
who stopped in for a glass of Pilsner on a July night, and nobody
paid him any further attention.

Besides, two United States Secret Service men had just gone out,
followed, as usual, by one Johnny Klein; and the Germans at the tables
at the bar, and behind the bar were still sneeringly commenting on the
episode--now a familiar one and of nightly occurrence.

So only very casual attention was paid to Barres and his Pilsner and
his rye-bread and sardine sandwich, which he took over to a vacant
table to desiccate and discuss at his leisure.

People came and went; conversation in Hunnish gutturals became
general; soiled evening newspapers were read, raw fish seized in fat
red fingers and suckingly masticated; also, skat and pinochle were
resumed with unwiped hands, and there was loud slapping of cards on
polished table tops, and many porcine noises.

Barres finished his Pilsner, side-stepped the sandwich, rose, asked a
bartender for the wash-room, and leisurely followed the direction
given.

There was nobody in there. He had, for company, a mouse, a soiled
towel on a roller, and the remains of some unattractive soap. He
lighted a cigarette, surveyed himself in the looking glass, cast a
friendly glance at the mouse, and stood waiting, flexing his biceps
muscles with a smile of anticipated pleasure in renewing the use of
them after such a very long period