He had a little clear plastic hose draped over his ears and inserted into his nostrils to give him oxygen. His face and neck and apparently everything but those chicken-foot hands were bloated and stuffed looking, as though he'd been filled up by a bicycle pump trying to solve the tire leak. His eyes were small and mean-looking, their pupils a very wet blue, so that, under the red beret, he looked like a more than usually homicidal hawk. What could be seen of his skin was a raw-looking red, as though he were originally a very pale person who'd been left out in the sun too long. His posture sucked; he sat on his shoulder blades with his wattles on his torso, which seemed to be shaped more or less like a medicine ball. His right knee twitched constantly, as though remembering an earlier life as a dance band drummer.

While Dortmunder sat absorbing these unlovely details, Mr. Hemlow's watery eyes studied him in return; until all at once Mr. Hemlow said, "What do you know about the First World War?"

Dortmunder thought. "We won," he guessed.

"Who lost?"

"The other people. I don't know, I wasn't there."

"Nor was I," Mr. Hemlow said, and gargled out something that was either a laugh or a death rattle, though probably a laugh, because he went on living, saying, "But my father was. He was there. He told me all about it."

"That musta been nice."

"Illuminating. My father was still fighting in that war two years after it was over, what do you think of that?"

"Well, I guess he must of been a real gung ho type."

"No, he was under orders. And you know who he was fighting?"

"With the war over?" Dortmunder shook his head. "I don't think you're supposed to do that," he said.

"In 1917," Mr. Hemlow said, "the United States entered the war. It had been going on in Europe for three years already. That was the same year as the Russian Revolution. The czar was thrown out, the Communists came in."