buried his face.

On the tin pent-roof, the rain trampled inexorably.

At last, mustering a shaky resolution, he set to work ransacking the
tumbled papers. Happily, Zimmerman had left all in confusion. The very
hopelessness of his accounts proved a relief. Working at high tension,
Rudolph wrestled through disorder, mistakes, falsification; and little
by little, as the sorted piles grew and his pen traveled faster, the old
absorbing love of method and dispatch--the stay, the cordial flagon of
troubled man--gave him strength to forget.

At times, felt shoes scuffed the stone floor without, and high, scolding
voices rose, exchanging unfathomable courtesy with his clerks. One after
another, strange figures, plump and portly in their colored robes,
crossed his threshold, nodding their buttoned caps, clasping their hands
hidden in voluminous sleeves.

"My 'long speakee my goo' flien'," chanted each of these apparitions;
and each, after a long, slow discourse that ended more darkly than it
began, retired with fatuous nods and smirks of satisfaction, leaving
Rudolph dismayed by a sense of cryptic negotiation in which he had been
found wanting.

Noon brought the only other interval, when two solemn "boys" stole in
with curry and beer. Eat he could not in this lazaret, but sipped a
little of the dark Kirin brew, and plunged again into his researches.
Alone with his lamp and rustling papers, he fought through perplexities,
now whispering, now silent, like a student rapt in some midnight fervor.