Stan ticked them off on his fingers.
"One in Chicago's Palmolive building, one in the Woolworth building on Manhattan Island, one in a dressing room of the Old Howard in Boston. Glasgow, Tokyo, Moscow, London, Rome and 41 others. And now Paris. They're all covered. Fifty ape cities—none of them long for this world."
Tanner nodded thoughtfully. "Mr. Ainsworth will be very pleased. Very pleased indeed."
Reynolds was back with a wine bottle in a small wicker basket and a plate of tired looking sandwiches. Stan drank the wine and ate the sandwiches without actually tasting them at all.
The cities were dirty, filthy ghettoes of brick and stone and the people were only apes, he mused. But somehow....
William Clark lived in a small, stuccoed rooming house in a suburb midway between Paris and Versailles. It looked old even for a rooming house in France, Stan thought. There was a mustiness and an age you could sense even from the outside. The ivy that climbed the walls was dead, the stucco was chipped in spots, and the curtains he could see through the windows looked yellowed and limp.
He climbed the front steps and worked the heavy knocker, then stood back waiting for the concierge to show up.
She didn't.
He tried the knocker again and then the door knob. There was a sudden snapping sound, the door creaked open, and he stepped in.