This officer looked up at Gomez and said, "What doest thou here? Have you never heard of the telephone?"

"I must see the Lieutenant-Colonel," Gomez said.

"He is asleep," the officer said. "I could see the lights of that bicycle of thine for a mile coming down the road. Dost wish to bring on a shelling?"

"Call the Lieutenant-Colonel," Gomez said. "This is a matter of the utmost gravity."

"He is asleep, I tell thee," the officer said. "What sort of a bandit is that with thee?" he nodded toward Andres.

"He is a guerrillero from the other side of the lines with a dispatch of the utmost importance for the General Golz who commands the attack that is to be made at dawn beyond Navacerrada," Gomez said excitedly and earnestly. "Rouse the Teniente-Coronel for the love of God."

The officer looked at him with his droopy eyes shaded by the green celluloid.

"All of you are crazy," he said. "I know of no General Golz nor of no attack. Take this sportsman and get back to your battalion."

"Rouse the Teniente-Coronel, I say," Gomez said and Andres saw his mouth tightening.

"Go obscenity yourself," the officer said to him lazily and turned away.

Gomez took his heavy 9 mm. Star pistol out of its holster and shoved it against the officer's shoulder.

"Rouse him, you fascist bastard," he said. "Rouse him or I'll kill you."

"Calm yourself," the officer said. "All you barbers are emotional."

Andres saw Gomez's face draw with hate in the light of the reading lamp. But all he said was, "Rouse him."

"Orderly," the officer called in a contemptuous voice.

A soldier came to the door and saluted and went out.

"His fiancee is with him," the officer said and went back to reading the paper. "It is certain he will be delighted to see you."

"It is those like thee who obstruct all effort to win this war," Gomez said to the staff officer.

The officer paid no attention to him. Then, as he read on, he remarked, as though to himself, "What a curious periodical this is!"

"Why don't you read El Debate then? That is your paper," Gomez said to him naming the leading Catholic-Conservative organ published in Madrid before the movement.

"Don't forget I am thy superior officer and that a report by me on thee carries weight," the officer said without looking up. "I never read El Debate. Do not make false accusations."

"No. You read A. B. C.," Gomez said. "The army is still rotten with such as thee. With professionals such as thee. But it will not always be. We are caught between the ignorant and the cynical. But we will educate the one and eliminate the other."

"'Purge' is the word you want," the officer said, still not looking up. "Here it reports the purging of more of thy famous Russians. They are purging more than the epsom salts in this epoch."

"By any name," Gomez said passionately. "By any name so that such as thee are liquidated."

"Liquidated," the officer said insolently as though speaking to himself. "Another new word that has little of Castilian in it."

"Shot, then," Gomez said. "That is Castilian. Canst understand it?"

"Yes, man, but do not talk so loudly. There are others beside the Teniente-Coronel asleep in this Brigade Staff and thy emotion bores me. It was for that reason that I always shaved myself. I never liked the conversation."

Gomez looked at Andres and shook his head. His eyes were shining with the moistness that rage and hatred can bring. But he shook his head and said nothing as he stored it all away for some time in the future. He had stored much in the year and a half in which he had risen to the command of a battalion in the Sierra and now, as the Lieutenant-Colonel came into the room in his pajamas he drew himself stiff and saluted.

The Lieutenant-Colonel Miranda, who was a short, gray-faced man, who had been in the army all his life, who had lost the love of his wife in Madrid while he was losing his digestion in Morocco, and become a Republican when he found he could not divorce his wife (there was never any question of recovering his digestion), had entered the civil war as a Lieutenant-Colonel. He had only one ambition, to finish the war with the same rank. He had defended the Sierra well and he wanted to be left alone there to defend it whenever it was attacked. He felt much healthier in the war, probably due to the forced curtailment of the number of meat courses, he had an enormous stock of sodium-bicarbonate, he had his whiskey in the evening, his twenty-three-year-old mistress was having a baby, as were nearly all the other girls who had started out as milicianas in the July of the year before, and now he came into the room, nodded in answer to Gomez's salute and put out his hand.

"What brings thee, Gomez?" he asked and then, to the officer at the desk who was his chief of operation, "Give me a cigarette, please, Pepe."

Gomez showed him Andres's papers and the dispatch. The Lieutenant-Colonel looked at the Salvoconducto quickly, looked at Andres, nodded and smiled, and then looked at the dispatch hungrily. He felt of the seal, tested it with his forefinger, then handed both the safe-conduct and dispatch back to Andres.

"Is the life very hard there in the hills?" he asked.

"No, my Lieutenant-Colonel," Andres said.

"Did they tell thee where would be the closest point to find General Golz's headquarters?"

"Navacerrada, my Lieutenant-Colonel," Andres said. "The Ingles said it would be somewhere close to Navacerrada behind the lines to the right of there."

"What Ingles?" the Lieutenant-Colonel asked quietly.

"The Ingles who is with us as a dynamiter."

The Lieutenant-Colonel nodded. It was just another sudden unexplained rarity of this war. "The Ingles who is with us as a dynamiter."

"You had better take him, Gomez, on the motor," the Lieutenant-Colonel said. "Write them a very strong Salvoconducto to the Estado Mayor of General Golz for me to sign," he said to the officer in the green celluloid eyeshade. "Write it on the machine, Pepe. Here are the details," he motioned for Andres to hand over his safe-conduct, "and put on two seals." He turned to Gomez. "You will need something strong tonight. It is rightly so. People should be careful when an offensive is projected. I will give you something as strong as I can make it." Then to Andres, very kindly, he said, "Dost wish anything? To eat or to drink?"

"No, my Lieutenant-Colonel," Andres said. "I am not hungry. They gave me cognac at the last place of command and more would make me seasick."

"Did you see any movement or activity opposite my front as you came through?" the Lieutenant-Colonel asked Andres politely.

"It was as usual, my Lieutenant-Colonel. Quiet. Quiet."

"Did I not meet thee in Cercedilla about three months back?" the Lieutenant-Colonel asked.

"Yes, my Lieutenant-Colonel."

"I thought so," the Lieutenant-Colonel patted him on the shoulder. "You were with the old man Anselmo. How is he?"

"He is well, my Lieutenant-Colonel," Andres told him.

"Good. It makes me happy," the Lieutenant-Colonel said. The officer showed him what he had typed and he read it over and signed it. "You must go now quickly," he said to Gomez and Andres. "Be careful with the motor," he said to Gomez. "Use your lights. Nothing will happen from a single motor and you must be careful. My compliments to Comrade General Golz. We met after Peguerinos." He shook hands with them both. "Button the papers inside thy shirt," he said. "There is much wind on a motor."

After they went out he went to a cabinet, took out a glass and a bottle, and poured himself some whiskey and poured plain water into it from an earthenware crock that stood on the floor against the wall. Then holding the glass and sipping the whiskey very slowly he stood in front of the big map on the wall and studied the offensive possibilities in the country above Navacerrada.