“There’s my address: Rue des Flammes.”
Kreisler looked at it rather fussily and said over: “5 Rue des Flammes. Lowndes.” He hesitated and repeated the name.
“R. W.—Robert Wooton. Here, I’ll write it down for you.”
“Are you in a hurry? Come and have a drink at the Berne,” Kreisler suggested when he had made up his bill.
On the way Lowndes continued a discourse.
“A novelist I knew told me he changed the names of the characters in a book several times in the course of writing it. It freshened them up, according to him. He said that the majority of people were killed by their names. I think a name is a man’s soul.”
Kreisler forged ahead, rhythmically and sullenly.
“If we had numbers, for instance, instead of names, who would take the number thirteen?” Lowndes wondered in German.
“I,” said Kreisler.
“Would you?”