It was a good seven minutes' walk to the garage, and
she tried to get warm by running, but the ice crackling in the gutters
and between the cobble stones defied her, and her hands ached with cold
though she put them in turn right through her blouse against her heart
to warm them as she ran. Fetching her car she drove to the Hotel Royal,
and settled down to wait.
A porter came out and swept the steps of the hotel, and a puff of his
dust caught her in the face. He laid a fibre mat on each stone step, and
clipped them with little metal clips.
"Are you for us?" asked a _sous-lieutenant_, looking first up and down
the empty street and then at the car. He had blue eyes and a long, sad
moustache that swept down the lower half of his face and even below his
chin, making him look older than he should.
"I am for a Russian colonel," she said, liking his mild face.
"That's right. Yes, a Russian colonel. Colonel Dellahousse. But can you
manage by yourself? Can you really? I will tell him...."
He disappeared up the steps and through the swing door of the hotel. A
moment later he was out again.
"He will come to you himself, he will see you. But we want to go to
Verdun! Could you drive so far? You could? Yes, yes, perhaps. Yet here
he comes...."
In dark civilian clothes the Russian came down the hotel steps.
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