"Shake!" said the chief of the party. They clasped hands.
"Never mind the formal papers now," laughed our Yankee Red Cross bargainer, "we'll take each other's word. I haven't a minute to lose, as we must have the place ready for supplies within forty-eight hours."
"Impossible!" cried the French landlord. He knew the real condition of the place, which had been unused and unrepaired for months.
Yet within forty-eight hours the Red Cross supplies from overseas actually were being moved in. Immediately upon closing the deal, the Americans had sought labor. It was not to be found, they were told; all the surplus labor of Paris being in the trenches or else engaged in some work vital to the war's operations.
"Why not use permissionnaires?" some one suggested.
The hint was a good one. It so happened that the French Government already had consented to the employment of this very sort of labor by the American Red Cross. So down to the larger railroad stations of Paris hurried our Red Cross agents. Soldiers back from the trenches were given the opportunity to earn a few francs—and gladly accepted it. Within a few hours a crew of more than a hundred men had been gathered and the work of making the newly acquired property ready to receive supplies begun. And under American supervision it was completed—within the allotted two days.
This experience was repeated a few weeks later when the American Red Cross took over the old stables of the Compagnie Générale des Petites Voitures in the Rue Chemin du Vert as still another warehouse and had to clean and make them fit for supplies—all within a mere ten days. The Compagnie Générale des Petites Voitures was an ancient Parisian institution. It operated—of all the vehicles perhaps the most distinctive upon the streets of the great French capital—the little victoria-like fiacre, drawn by a wise and ancient horse with a bell about its neck. The war had drained the city of most of its horses—they were in the French artillery—and for a long time before the coming of our Red Cross the great stables in the Rue Chemin du Vert had been idle; in fact for the first time in more than half a century.
In taking over the place the officers of the American Red Cross were not blind to the fact that they were getting nothing more than a great, rambling, two-story stable and its yards, which were just as they had been left when a thousand horses had been led forth from their stalls. The place was a fearful litter of confusion, while crowded together at one end of the courtyard were the old fiacres—ancient, weather-beaten, decrepit, abandoned. They made a pathetic picture.
Rumor told the neighborhood, and told it quickly, that the Croix Rouge Américaine—as the French know our organization over there—had taken over the old stables and were to use them for warehousing purposes, but rumor was not smart enough to tell how the trick was to be done. It did not know; the Red Cross workers did. They had found after making a careful inventory of the place, that they had on their hands about 8,000 square yards of ground, covered for the greater part with more or less dilapidated buildings a hundred years old or even older. More than that, there were five hundred tons of manure in the structures which must be completely removed and the premises thoroughly disinfected before there could be even a thought of using them for goods storage. Cleaning the Augean stables was something of the same sort of a job.
Various Parisian contractors who specialize in that sort of work were asked what they would charge for the task of getting the big stables clean once again. One said seven thousand francs. Another allowed that it would cost five thousand. He was the lowest bidder. The Red Cross turned from all of them and went to the market gardeners of the great central Halles. Would they help? Of course they would—the name of the Croix Rouge Américaine has some real potency in France. In four days the stables were cleaned—perfectly and at an entire cost of less than two hundred francs!