“The door, nom de Dieu!” shouted a voice.
In front of the chimney was a man struggling desperately with a fire. The watersoaked wood refused to burn, and the man flooded it with shoe grease, which, when it melted, threw out jets of yellow flame and filled the room with a pungent odor and smoke.
“The door, the door! What did he tell you!” cried in different tones voices which came from the heaps of covers.
It was true that a breath of cold air and a swirl of snow had rushed into the smoky dark hall when I came in. I shut the door and asked,
“Is this the second company of machine guns?”
“What of it? What do you want of the second machine guns? It’s here. And after that what do you want? Papers, again? Zut! They have no idea of bothering people at this hour. Leave them on the table and come back in half an hour.”
This diatribe emanated from a pile thicker than the rest, in the chimney corner. At this obsession of papers, of lists to be signed, I guessed he was a sergeant or a quartermaster, and I kept on:
“Don’t worry. There are no papers. I am the mounted intelligence officer attached to this company.”
“M ...!” shouted several voices in the four corners of the room, while I watched arms and muffled heads rise up.