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nuisance, though," he continued, looking round about, "that there isn't a hook here. The bolt by the window wouldn't hold you. I tell you what you might do, though. You could kneel down by the bench and hang yourself that way, like the monk who hanged himself on a crucifix because of a young Jewess. I'm very keen on suicides. Go it !"
    The gloomy man into whose hands Schweik had thrust the strap looked at it, threw it into a corner and burst out crying, wiping away his tears with his grimy hands and yelling the while. "I've got children! I'm here for drunkenness and immorality! Heavens above, my poor wife! What will they say at the office? I've got children! I'm here for drunkenness and immorality," and so ad infinitum.
    At last, however, he calmed down a little, went to the door and began to thump and beat at it with his fist. From behind the door could be heard steps and a voice :
    "What do you want?"
    "Let me out," he said in a voice which sounded as if he had nothing left to live for.
    "Where to?" was the answer from the other side.
    "To my office," replied the unhappy father, husband, clerk, drunkard and profligate.
    Amid the stillness of the corridor could be heard laughter, dreadful laughter, and the steps moved away again.
    "It looks to me as if that chap ain't fond of you, laughing at you like that," said Schweik, while the desperate man sat down again beside him. "Those policemen are capable of anything when they're in a wax. Just you sit down quietly if you don't want to hang yourself, and wait how things turn out. If you're in an office, with a wife and children, it's pretty bad for you, I must admit. I suppose you're more or less certain of getting the sack, eh?"
    "I don't know," sighed the man, "because I can't remember what I did. I only know I got thrown out from somewhere and
----
    I wanted to go back and light my cigar. But it started all right. The manager of our department was giving a birthday spree and he invited us to a pub, then we went to another and after that to a third, a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, a seventh, an eighth, a ninth . . ."
    "Wouldn't you like me to count for you?" asked Schweik. "I'm good at figures. I was once in twenty-eight pubs. But I'm bound to say I never had more than three drinks in any of them."
    "To cut a long story short," continued the unfortunate clerk whose manager had celebrated his birthday in such magnificent style, "when we'd been in about a dozen different taprooms, we discovered that we'd lost our manager, although we'd tied him with a piece of string and took him with us like a dog. So we went to have a look for him and the end of it was that we lost each other till at last I wound up in a night club, quite a respectable place, where I drank some liqueur or other straight from the bottle. I can't remember what I did after that ; all I know is, that at the commissariat here, when they brought me in, the two police officers reported that I was drunk and disorderly, that I'd been guilty of immoral conduct, that I'd struck a lady, that I'd jabbed a pocketknife through somebody else's hat that I'd taken from the hatrack. Then I'd chased the ladies' orchestra away, accused the headwaiter in front of everyone of stealing a twenty crown note, smashed the marble slab of the table where I was sitting, and spat into the black coffee of a stranger at the next table. That's all I did as far as I can remember. And I can assure you that I'm a steady, intelligent man whose only thoughts are for his family. What do you think of that? I'm not one of the rowdy sort."
    Schweik did not reply, but inquired with interest :
    "Did you have much trouble in smashing that marble slab, or did you splash it at one blow?"
    "At one blow," replied the man of intelligence.
    "Then you're done for," said Schweik mournfully. "They'll prove that you must have trained yourself to do it. And the stranger's coffee you spat in, was it with rum or without rum?"
    And without waiting for an answer, he proceeded