“The dialogue seems to have been darned sparkling but I don’t remember it. It must have been after that that I stopped one. I don’t seem quite to have caught up with myself since I got hit.”
“Oh! That’s how you got that scar?”
“No. I got that jumping through a plate-glass window in London on Armistice night.”
“What on earth did you do that for?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It seemed a good idea at the time.”
“But if you can remember a thing like that, why can’t you remember your name?”
“I remember everything that happened after I came out of hospital. It’s the part before that’s gone.”
Archie patted him on the shoulder.
“I know just what you want. You need a bit of quiet and repose, to think things over and so forth. You mustn’t go sleeping on Park benches. Won’t do at all. Not a bit like it. You must shift to the Cosmopolis. It isn’t half a bad spot, the old Cosmop. I didn’t like it much the first night I was there, because there was a dashed tap that went drip-drip-drip all night and kept me awake, but the place has its points.”
“Is the Cosmopolis giving free board and lodging these days?”