II
Claude set off to find the Grand Hotel, where he had promised to dine with Victor Morse. The porter there spoke English. He called a red-headed boy in a dirty uniform and told him to take the American to vingt-quatre. The boy also spoke English. “Plenty money in New York, I guess! In France, no money.” He made their way, through musty corridors and up slippery staircases, as long as possible, shrewdly eyeing the visitor and rubbing his thumb nervously against his fingers all the while.
“Vingt-quatre, twen’y-four,” he announced, rapping at a door with one hand and suggestively opening the other. Claude put something into it–anything to be rid of him.
Victor was standing before the fireplace. “Hello, Wheeler, come in. Our dinner will be served up here. It’s big enough, isn’t it? I could get nothing between a coop, and this at fifteen dollars a day.”
The room was spacious enough for a banquet; with two huge beds, and great windows that swung in on hinges, like doors, and that had certainly not been washed since before the war. The heavy red cotton-brocade hangings and lace curtains were stiff with dust, the thick carpet was strewn with cigarette-ends and matches. Razor blades and “Khaki Comfort” boxes lay about on the dresser, and former occupants had left their autographs in the dust on the table. Officers slept there, and went away, and other officers arrived,–and the room remained the same, like a wood in which travellers camp for the night.
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