He was waiting in the office when we came back. He was an old man with long hair and he mumbled. But he spoke American.
"I was waiting" he said. "They told me you had a class."
"Quite true," we were cheerful, "but the professor cut."
"When will you mob him?" he asked, interested. It was then that we put him down as an idiot.
"Why should we mob him?"
"We used to." He seemed to enjoy the memory, for his old gums showed slightly. And then it was our turn to be polite as we asked just when and where.
"In Paris," he said, "a few hundred years ago." He was a genial liar. There was a pause. He broke it quietly.
"The Employment Office sent me down here. I was looking for a job."
Luckily it is possible to be businesslike even with an idiot and a liar, so we asked him his name.
"The Pilgrim of Infirmity will do," he said. And in truth he looked weak.
"Profession?"
"Thinking."
It hardly sounded like a compliment from the office but we tried again with "Expert in anything?"
"In Universals."
The efficiency method was getting us nowhere, so we shifted to cordiality and asked him "had he been in town long."
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CRIMSON ENTERED IN SIX LEGION EVENTS
