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I returned to the hall, despite my dislike for the clerk.

As I had expected, he insisted that my visits to the hall would do nothing to further the process of my application.

Meanwhile spring had passed well into summer.

At last, when I put it to him directly, the clerk was forced to admit that the delay in my case was unusual.

When I asked him what, if anything, I could do about it, he surprised me by referring me to the director of the hall.

I could consult this personage on any weekday morning, though not before ten o'clock.

The clerk impressed this upon me: that I should not arrive in the hall before ten o'clock.

When I went for my interview with the director I saw why.

Although it was dark as usual I could see that the hall had only recently contained a great many people.

Cigarette butts littered the floor.

The big fans were going, drawing from the large room the remnants of stale smoke which drifted about in pale strata underneath the ceiling.

I had felt the draft they were making while mounting the stairs.

The staircase itself seemed still to be echoing the heavy footfalls of many men.

I stopped by the counter.

No one was behind it, but in the rear wall of the office I noticed, for the first time, a door which had been left partially open.

Past it I could see part part of a desk, a flag in a corner, a rug on the floor.

The director's office.

I rapped my knuckles on the counter.

The director came to the door.

I was at once disappointed, although just what I had expected him to look like I could not have explained.

He was a man in his late forties, with graying hair, of medium height ; ;

he looked dapper in a lightweight summer suit, brown silk tie and green-tinted soft collar.

He wore perforated, white-topped shoes ; ;

they somehow made me expect to see him launch into a vaudeville tapdance routine any moment.

But he came toward me sedately enough, showed me around the counter, offered me a seat inside his office, then walked to a file cabinet and got out my application.