"But I've just told you--" George plunged again into the maelstrom, and a pretty girl appeared from the firelit room behind to stir him to his highest flights of eloquence. A smell of savoury cooking came also, and out in the street night shut down dark and chill and sinister, as it does in all the best novels. John let part of the kit down on the door-sill. It was his way of explaining that at the present moment there was a deeper, more intimate call than the Call of the Wild. Colin moved up a step and turned the haunting-stop full on. George redoubled his efforts, making them very clear indeed. We could understand almost every word he said. Then Madame answered, and we could understand that too. "No beds," she said. The pretty girl smiled in a troubled way and murmured something in a soft voice. "She says they haven't got any beds in the rooms. Fritz took them all," interpreted George. "_Écoutez, Mademoiselle_. We have beds. _Trois lits. Nous les avons. Tous les trois. Oui. À la gare. Absolument_." Mademoiselle looked at Madame with a kink of her pretty brows. Madame rose like a balloon to the need. "No beds," she said very distinctly, with a rounding of eyes and mouth. "No beds, Messieurs. No-o-o--_beds_." Before George could recover John interfered. He makes a hobby of cutting Gordian knots. "Oh, what's the earthly use of telling 'em we have beds when they can see for themselves that we haven't? They just think we can't understand. Let's go up and take the rooms if they're decent. Then we'll get the stretchers and put 'em up. That's the only sort of argument we can handle." Manfully George went to work again. And reluctant, and yet obviously fascinated by his French, like a bird by a snake, Mademoiselle led up the narrow stairs and into a sizeable room, clean as a pin and as naked. On the threshold Madame washed her hands of hope. "_Regardez!_ No beds. _C'est affreux!_" George began again. He had courage. Whatever else Nature and luck denied him there was no question of that. For a little it looked as though he were in sight of the goal. Then Mademoiselle explained. They were _désolées_, but the _sales Boches_ had stolen all the beds, and Madame would not let the bare rooms to _Messieurs les Anglais_. It would not be _convenable_ when they had no beds. "No beds!" Madame appealed to the skylight as witness, and we looked at each other. It was getting late and the others would have rustled all the best bivvies by now. John had another brain-wave. "Let's pantomime it. They always understand pantomime. There's no use _saying_ we've got beds--not when George has to say it. We'll show them." Earnestly we pantomimed stretcher beds--our own stretcher beds--and reposeful slumber thereon. "_Mon Dieu!_" cried Mademoiselle, retreating in haste. "No beds," repeated Madame, unconvinced and unafraid. "She means that she doesn't want to have us," said John in cold despair.