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Looking at me, he forgot the road. I leaned over and seized the rim of the wheel with both hands and kept it steady.
    I was worried. “Hadn’t we better switch places?”
    McCoy shook himself and reclaimed the wheel. “I’m fine. I just need a little pick-me-up and I’ll even be better.”
    We were entering a town, shaking along a narrow cobble-stoned street that wound past clustered stone buildings, going over an occasional bridge, also of stone. We passed through more than one quaint square around which were a bakery, a cafe, an épicerie, and sometimes a spired church. But human beings were not to be seen.
    Finally McCoy pulled against a high curb, scraping, with an awful sound, not only the tires but the edges of the wheels as well.
    “Got to stop this way,” said he. “The brakes are pretty far gone, and except in the royal garages mechanics are in short supply. Except for foreigners, and of course the prince, cars aren’t permitted in Saint Sebastian. Better slide out this way, so I don’t have to undo that door again.” He left the vehicle.
    I slid over and out and stepped onto the stones of the next street I had touched after leaving the asphalt of Third Avenue, New York City. We were before a modest five- or six-story structure labeled, over its plain entrance, Hotel Bristol.
    Once on his feet, McCoy magically gained a certain sobriety and positively loped into the hotel. I followed, entering a small lobby furnished with a high desk behind which were a set of birdhouse mailboxes and a panel from which hung outsized keys of dull brass. This complex was controlled by a stout person with a handlebar mustache. He wore an ancient-looking tailcoat, which I suspect would on closer examination have proved all but threadbare. His wing collar was none too clean, and the posy in his lapel was browning. He gave me a quick frown and then a slow, broad smile that eventually reached the gold tooth on the far left.
    “Sir, without doubt you are Mr. Wren.” He spun around, frighteningly fast for a fat man, and seized one of the hanging keys. He placed the key on the counter and rang the little domed bell there. From nowhere came a teenaged boy in a green monkey suit with brass buttons. He saluted me with two fingers and was about to pick up the key when, remembering I had no money in my pockets, I shook my head. Call me a tender soul, but I cannot stand to stiff a servitor.
    “No, no,” I said. “I’ll find it myself. I have no luggage.”
    The concierge leaned onto his desk and, lowering his heavy head, winked ponderously. “He is available for more than carrying bags, sir.”
    For an instant I did not get his drift, being impatient to follow McCoy, who, oblivious to me, was already opening the grill-work door of the tiniest elevator I had ever seen.
    “Then,” my oily questioner persisted, “shall I send up a person of the remaining sex?”
    “Neither,” I blurted, and as he was beginning a response that I feared might well extend to zoological matters, I snatched up the key and stepped towards the lift. But I was too late. The feckless McCoy was already ascending in the little cage, his runover shoes just at the level of my nose, through the brass grille of the door.
    It took an eternity for the elevator to return, throughout which I had an unpleasant wait, for the concierge renewed his importunities in a crooning, obsequious voice that was more repulsive than what he was suggesting.
    The lift finally returned, and I took it to the fourth floor, being directed there by the number on the key. When I found my room, the door was open and there, before a rickety desk-table, stood McCoy, draining into his mouth the last few drops from an upended flat pint vessel. His lower lip was dippered out like that of a performing chimpanzee who has learned to drink Coke from the bottle.
    He saw me when he lowered the now dead soldier. “All right,” he said bitterly, “so I have a little snort now and again, so send me