“The password, please! You can’t go through ‘The Artillery’ without it.”
“My friend, we are taking away a dead body.”
I raised the corner of the sacking and uncovered the bluish face. In the light of the acetylene a portion of the pale skin with some tattooed marks could be seen through the chaotic heap of clothes that were saturated with blood. A look of horror passed over the guard’s face, but he said again:
“Lieutenant, go along the main line! It’s not possible this way.”
We plunged back again along the network of rails, disturbed by the clatter of the signals and the rumbling convoys. Sometimes the exhausted stretcher-bearers stopped and placed their burden on the stony embankment and carefully spat on their hands. Trains went by, and we could see, in the bright compartments, women reading, tightly clasping beautiful children who had fallen asleep.
At last the station lights came into view.
“Where are we taking the corpse?” I asked Bonardent.
“I don’t know, sir.”
I finally decided to present myself at the Petite Vitesse. A room there had been taken to receive the wreckage cast off from the swirling activity of the railway station—lost trunks, unemployed men, riderless beasts, stores with no destination, and, when necessary, corpses. A gendarme was smoking a cigarette in front of the door.
“Lieutenant, there’s no room here to-day. It’s full of fugitives from the north, with their kids and packages.”