He was a man of middle size and slightly built, but his shoulders were broad enough for a giant. His body narrowed down from the shoulders, so that the hips and waist were totally out of proportion to the upper part of the body. His right leg opened outwards in a curve below the knee and he placed the toe of the right foot on the ground before the heel when he walked, so that his walk had the crouching appearance of a wild animal stalking in a forest. His face was thin and sallow. His hair was black and cropped close. His eyebrows were black and bushy. His eyelashes were long and they continually drooped over his eyes. When his eyelashes drooped his eyes were blue, sharp and fierce. But when he raised his lashes for a moment to think of something distant and perhaps imaginary, his eyes were large, wistful and dreamy. They were soft and full of a sorrow that was unfathomable. His jaws were square, sharp and fleshless. His lips were thin and set tightly. This gave the lower part of his face a ferocious appearance. His nose was long and straight. His cheeks were hollow and on the cheekbones a bright flush appeared when he was seized with a fit of hard, dry coughing which he tried to suppress. He was dressed in a shabby pair of wrinkled navy blue trousers and a fawn-coloured, shabby raincoat, buttoned up around his throat like a uniform. His boots were old and thin. They creaked with moisture soaked in through their torn soles. He wore a grey tweed cap. Under his left armpit he carried an automatic pistol in a leather holster. The pistol hung from a lanyard that was suspended from his neck. As he stood looking in through the door, the fingers of his right hand were thrust in between the first and second buttons of his raincoat. The tips of the fingers rested on the cold butt of the automatic. Within the hall three old men were waiting in a row outside the closed glass window of the office on the right-hand side. The nearest old man to the door wore a brown pauper’s uniform. Both his eyes had cataracts and he seemed to be on the point of going into a faint. He was leaning on a stick and his head kept bobbing like a man that is in a drunken stupor and is on the point of falling asleep. The second old man wore a torn old dress suit. He looked like a waiter thrown out of employment through old age. He had a sharp lean face. The farthest old man was dressed in a medley of unspeakable rags and he shook his body continually trying to scratch himself on the insides of his clothes. The three of them stood in silence. Beyond them, four more concrete steps led to a long passage through the building. A corridor crossed the passage at the far end. Men passed along the corridor now and again in groups.