When, for instance, it sought to obtain one of the largest of its needed Parisian warehouses--a really huge structure with 2,500,000 cubic feet of storage space and served by two railroad tracks thrust into its very heart--it tried to drive a good Yankee bargain. The place had been found after a day of seemingly hopeless and heartless search. Its owner was located and the rental cost discussed briefly. The owner wanted ninety centimes (approximately seventeen cents) a square meter. The Red Cross agents demurred. They counter-offered with eighty centimes. The owner accepted. "Shake!" said the chief of the party. They clasped hands. "Never mind the formal papers now," laughed our Yankee Red Cross bargainer, "we'll take each other's word. I haven't a minute to lose, as we must have the place ready for supplies within forty-eight hours." "Impossible!" cried the French landlord. He knew the real condition of the place, which had been unused and unrepaired for months. Yet within forty-eight hours the Red Cross supplies from overseas actually were being moved in. Immediately upon closing the deal, the Americans had sought labor. It was not to be found, they were told; all the surplus labor of Paris being in the trenches or else engaged in some work vital to the war's operations. "Why not use _permissionnaires_?" some one suggested. The hint was a good one. It so happened that the French Government already had consented to the employment of this very sort of labor by the American Red Cross. So down to the larger railroad stations of Paris hurried our Red Cross agents. Soldiers back from the trenches were given the opportunity to earn a few francs--and gladly accepted it. Within a few hours a crew of more than a hundred men had been gathered and the work of making the newly acquired property ready to receive supplies begun. And under American supervision it was completed--within the allotted two days. This experience was repeated a few weeks later when the American Red Cross took over the old stables of the Compagnie Générale des Petites Voitures in the Rue Chemin du Vert as still another warehouse and had to clean and make them fit for supplies--all within a mere ten days. The Compagnie Générale des Petites Voitures was an ancient Parisian institution. It operated--of all the vehicles perhaps the most distinctive upon the streets of the great French capital--the little victoria-like _fiacre_, drawn by a wise and ancient horse with a bell about its neck. The war had drained the city of most of its horses--they were in the French artillery--and for a long time before the coming of our Red Cross the great stables in the Rue Chemin du Vert had been idle; in fact for the first time in more than half a century.