For some time I tossed about the bed try­ing to get the sound of his voice out of my ears, but could not. It filled my head, that mut­ter­ing sound, like thick oily smoke from a fat-ren­der­ing vat or an odour of noi­some de­cay. And as I lay and tossed about, the voice in my ears seemed more dis­tinct, and I began to un­der­stand the words he had muttered. They came to me slowly as if I had for­got­ten them, and at last I could make some sense out of the sounds. It was this:

“Have you found the Yel­low Sign?”

“Have you found the Yel­low Sign?”

“Have you found the Yel­low Sign?”