patrolled by blue-capped men on bicycles, who rode, four by four, as
silently as shadows, through every quarter of the city. They had a
startling habit of surrounding any lonely man who might be walking in
the late hours and interrogating him as to his nationality, age and
business.

Several times I was arrested in this way and never escaped the little
frousse which came to me when these dark figures closed upon me,
as they leapt from their bicycles and said with grim suspicion:

"Vos papiers, s'il vous plait!"

My pockets were bulging with papers, which I thrust hurriedly into the
lantern-light for a close-eyed scrutiny.

They were very quick to follow the trail of a stranger, and there was
no sanctuary in Paris in which he might evade them. Five minutes
after calling upon a friend in the fifth floor flat of an old mansion
at the end of a courtyard in the Rue de Rivoli, there was a sharp
tap at his door, and two men in civil clothes came into the room,
with that sleuth-hound look which belongs to stage, and French,
detectives. They forgot to remove their bowler hats, which seemed
to me to be a lamentable violation of French courtesy.

"Vos papiers, s'il vous plait!"

Again I produced bundles of papers--permis de séjour in Paris,
Amiens, Rouen, Orleans, Le Mans; laisser-passer to Boulogne,
Dieppe, Havre, Dunkirk, Aire-sur-Lys, Béthune and Hazebrouck;
British passports and papiers visés by French consuls, French police,