“You’ll leave when it’s proper for you to leave!” Apollyon burst out. “Do you understand?”
“Yes, indeed. Thank you very much,” I replied with a bow, and exited. On the way to The Enormous Room the Black Holster said to me sharply:
“Vous allez partir?”
“Oui.”
He gave me such a look as would have turned a mahogany piano leg into a mound of smoking ashes, and slammed the key into the lock.
—Everyone gathered about me. “What news?”
“I have asked to go to Oloron as a suspect,” I answered.
“You should have taken my advice and asked to go to Cannes,” the fat Alsatian reproached me. He had indeed spent a great while advising me; but I trusted the little Machine-Fixer.
“Parti?” Jean le Nègre said with huge eyes, touching me gently.
“No, no. Later, perhaps; not now,” I assured him. And he patted my shoulder and smiled, “Bon!” And we smoked a cigarette in honour of the snow, of which Jean—in contrast to the majority of les hommes—highly and unutterably approved. “C’est jolie!” he would say, laughing wonderfully. And next morning he and I went on an exclusive promenade, I in my sabots, Jean in a new pair of slippers which he had received (after many requests) from the bureau. And we strode to and fro in the muddy cour admiring la neige, not speaking.