This restored Winn even more quickly than it restored his luggage. No one followed him into the small stuffy omnibus which glided off swiftly toward its destination. The hotel was an ugly wooden house in the shape of a hive built out with balconies; it reminded Winn of a gigantic bird-cage handsomely provided with perches. It was only ten o'clock, but the house was as silent as the mountains behind it. The landlord appeared, and, leading Winn into a brilliantly lighted, empty room, offered him cold meat. Winn said the kind of thing that any Staines would feel called upon to say on arriving at a cold place at a late hour and being confronted with cold meat. The landlord apologized in a whisper, and returned after some delay with soup. Nothing, not even more language, could move him beyond soup. He kept saying that it was late and that they must be quiet, and he didn't seem to believe Winn when Winn remarked that he hadn't come up there to be quiet. Winn himself became quieter as he followed the landlord through interminable passages covered with linoleum where his boots made a noise like muffled thunder. Everywhere there was a strange sense of absolute cleanliness and silence, the subduing smell of disinfectant and the sight of padded, green felt doors. When Winn was left alone in a room like a vivid cell, all emptiness and electric light, and with another green door leading into a farther room, he became aware of a very faint sound that came from the other side of the door. It was like the bark of a dog shut up in a distant cellar; it explained the padding of the doors. In all the months that followed, Winn never lost this sound, near or far; it was always with him, seldom shattering and harsh, but always sounding as if something were being broken gradually, little by little, shaken into pieces by some invisible disintegrating power. Winn flung open the long window which faced the bed. It led out to a small private balcony--if he had to be out on a balcony, he had of course made a point of its being private--and looked over all Davos. The lights were nearly gone now. Only two or three twinkled in a narrow circle on a sheet of snow; behind them the vague shapes of the mountains hung immeasurably alien and at peace. A bell rang out through the still air with a deep, reverberating note. It was a reassuring and yet solemn sound, as if it alone were responsible for humanity, for all the souls crowded together in the tiny valley, striving for their separate, shaken, inconclusive lives. "An odd place--Davos," Winn thought to himself. "No idea it was like this. Sort of mix up between a picnic and a cemetery!"