The Underground City by H.L. Humes

Author:H.L. Humes [Humes, H. L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-49235-7
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-01-24T16:00:00+00:00

XIII

The first necessity was getting settled in the quarters Carnot had arranged. Nice was not unfamiliar ground, but Dante knew he would have to be careful. Times might have changed since he’d last worked in Nice for any length of time—although with the expectation of an Allied landing in everyone’s mind, things might be easier. He had agreed, after Carnot’s detailed description, that the Hôtel de Home would be satisfactory; Carnot had used it once himself on a previous occasion. He had sketched for Dante its interior layout and ground plan. All outside rooms were served by balconies from which it would be a simple matter, in emergency, to climb to the ground. The building had only four stories, and the outside walls were covered with Victorian latticework that was nothing more than an elaborate fire escape, for only sparse vines grew on it. The grounds were covered with a tangle of neglected palm gardens and a thick wall which could easily be vaulted. The hotel was private, comfortable, and still enjoyed an air of run-down respectability.

It had once been a favorite resort of middle-class British spinsters, who before the war took refuge there from the bone-aching island winters of the North Atlantic and passed their afternoons and even mornings in the Casino diligently recording each spin of the wheel. Systemières they were called by the bored croupiers who manned the low-stakes, daytime tables. But the system players were gone with the system; the wheels no longer turned for them. The last bewildered tenants of the Hôtel de Home had been shepherded out of their lodgings by a harried young man from the British consulate in the final days before Dunkirk. Now it was more or less a convalescent home for old men whose families could somehow or other find the money to pigeonhole them in style. But essentially it was still a hotel. There were even rooms for transients, although the permanent weathered sign outside on the door still read Complet, a relic from more prosperous days.

What the Hôtel de Home lacked in luxury was more than made up for in musty cleanliness. The rugs were threadbare and the curtains in the rooms were laundered thin, but there was no dust anywhere. It looked as though it was still swept and scrubbed every week; the unblemished gilt on the cage-elevator that didn’t work made it look as if it ought to—it seemed only temporarily out of order, the door always open invitingly, the faded red velvet cushions on the seat inside plumped and brushed until the nap stood up. On the wall beside the elevator was a sign, in English, that read, Please not more than three persons in the lift! Dante was struck by the place. In contrast to so many hotels he had seen in France during the war, the Hôtel de Home seemed unchanged, even cheerful in its threadbare way, as though everything was being held in readiness for the day when the old residents would return.

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