“Ah ain't lost ma nerve. Ah tell you that guy knows.”
Chrisfield's voice rose, suddenly shrill.
“Look, Chris, we can't stand talking out here in the street like this. It isn't safe.”
“But mebbe you'll be able to tell me what to do. You think, Andy. Mebbe, tomorrow, you'll have thought up somethin' we can do...So long.”
Chrisfield walked away hurriedly. Andrews looked after him a moment, and then went in through the court to the house where his room was.
At the foot of the stairs an old woman's voice startled him.
“Mais, Monsieur Andre, que vous avez l'air etrange; how funny you look dressed like that.”
The concierge was smiling at him from her cubbyhole beside the stairs. She sat knitting with a black shawl round her head, a tiny old woman with a hooked bird-like nose and eyes sunk in depressions full of little wrinkles, like a monkey's eyes.
“Yes, at the town where I was demobilized, I couldn't get anything else,” stammered Andrews.
“Oh, you're demobilized, are you? That's why you've been away so long. Monsieur Valters said he didn't know where you were.... It's better that way, isn't it?”