Even here at the front in the light of a bare electric bulb, he having just come in from driving in an open car on a brisk night, his gray face had a look of decay.
His face looked as though it were modelled from the waste material you find under the claws of a very old lion.
"You have what, Comrade?" he asked Gomez, speaking Spanish with a strong Catalan accent.
His eyes glanced sideways at Andres, slid over him, and went back to Gomez.
"A dispatch for General Golz to be delivered at his headquarters, Comrade Marty."
"Where is it from, Comrade?"
"From behind the fascist lines," Gomez said.
Andre Marty extended his hand for the dispatch and the other papers.
He glanced at them and put them in his pocket.
"Arrest them both," he said to the corporal of the guard.
"Have them searched and bring them to me when I send for them."
With the dispatch in his pocket he strode on into the interior of the big stone house.
Outside in the guard room Gomez and Andres were being searched by the guard.
"What passes with that man?" Gomez said to one of the guards.
"_Esta loco_," the guard said.
"He is crazy."
"No.
He is a political figure of great importance," Gomez said.
"He is the chief commissar of the International Brigades."
"_Apesar de eso, esta loco_," the corporal of the guard said.
"All the same he's crazy.
What do you behind the fascist lines?"
"This comrade is a guerilla from there," Gomez told him while the man searched him.
"He brings a dispatch to General Golz.
Guard well my papers.
Be careful with that money and that bullet on the string.
It is from my first wound at Guadarama."
"Don't worry," the corporal said.
"Everything will be in this drawer.
Why didn't you ask me where Golz was?"
"We tried to.
I asked the sentry and he called you."
"But then came the crazy and you asked him.
No one should ask him anything.
He is crazy.
Thy Golz is up the road three kilometers from here and to the right in the rocks of the forest."
"Can you not let us go to him now?"
"Nay.
It would be my head.
I must take thee to the crazy.
Besides, he has thy dispatch."
"Can you not tell some one?"
"Yes," the corporal said.
"I will tell the first responsible one I see.
All know that he is crazy."
"I had always taken him for a great figure," Gomez said.
"For one of the glories of France."
"He may be a glory and all," the corporal said and put his hand on Andres's shoulder.
"But he is crazy as a bedbug.
He has a mania for shooting people."