I just cropped his ears and now he mustn't be taken away till his ears heal up or else he'd catch cold in them. Give the key to the house porter."

There was only one customer at The Flagon. This was Bretschneider, a plainclothes policeman who was on secret service work. Palivec, the landlord, was washing glasses and Bret-schneider vainly endeavoured to engage him in a serious conversation.

"We're having a fine summer," was Bretschneider's overture to a serious conversation.

"All damn rotten," replied Palivec, putting the glasses away into a cupboard.

"That's a fine thing they've done for us at Sarajevo," Bret-schneider observed, with his hopes rather dashed.

"What Sarajevo's that?" inquired Palivec. "D'you mean the wineshop at Nusle? They have a rumpus there every day. Well, you know what sort of place Nusle is."

"No, I mean Sarajevo in Bosnia. They shot the Archduke Ferdinand there. What do you think of that?"

"I never shove my nose into that sort of thing, I'm hanged if I do," primly replied Mr. Palivec, lighting his pipe. "Nowadays, it's as much as your life's worth to get mixed up in them. I've got my business to see to. When a customer comes in and orders beer, why I just serve him his drink. But Sarajevo or politics or a dead archduke, that's not for the likes of us, unless we want to end up doing time."

Bretschneider said no more, but stared disappointedly round the empty bar.

"You used to have a picture of the Emperor hanging here," he began again presently, "just at the place where you've got a mirror now."

"Yes, that's right," replied Mr. Palivec, "it used to hang there and the flies left their trade-mark on it, so I put it away into the lumber room. You see, somebody might pass a remark about it and then there might be trouble. What use is it to me?"

"Sarajevo must be a rotten sort of place, eh, Mr. Palivec?"

Mr. Palivec was extremely cautious in answering this deceptively straightforward question :

"At this time of the year it's damned hot in Bosnia and Herzegovina. When I was in the army there, we always had to put ice on our company officer's head."

"What regiment did you serve in, Mr. Palivec?"

"I can't remember a little detail like that. I never cared a damn about the whole business, and I wasn't inquisitive about it," replied Mr. Palivec. "It doesn't do to be so inquisitive."

Bretschneider stopped talking once and for all, and his woebegone expression brightened up only on the arrival of Schweik who came in and ordered black beer with the remark :

"At Vienna they're in mourning to-day."

Bretschneider's eyes began to gleam with hope. He said curtly :

"There are ten black flags at Konopiste."

"There ought to be twelve," said Schweik, when he had taken a gulp.

"What makes you think it's twelve?" asked Bretschneider.

"To make it a round number, a dozen. That's easier to reckon out and things always come cheaper by the dozen," replied Schweik.

This was followed by a long silence, which Schweik himself interrupted with a sigh :

"Well, he's in a better land now, God rest his soul. He didn't live to be Emperor. When I was in the army, there was a general who fell off his horse and got killed as quiet as could be. They wanted to help him back on to his horse and when they went to lift him up, they saw he was stone dead. And he was just going

to be promoted to field marshal. It happened during an army inspection.