Though I dash along with this story of mine, Padre, as if I went straight on describing the scene between Julian and me from beginning to end, without a break, it isn't really so. I've been interrupted more than once, and may be again; but I shall tell you everything that's happened since we came to Amiens, as if I wrote consecutively. You can understand better in that way, and help me with your strength and love, through your understanding, as I feel you do help, whenever I make you my confessions. Since I've begun to write you, as in old days when you were in the flesh, I've felt your advice come to me in electric flashes. I'm sure I don't just imagine this. It's real, dear Padre, and makes all the difference to me that a rope flung out over dark waters would make to a drowning man.
At three o'clock I was in the garden. It was cold, but I didn't care. Besides, I was too excited to feel the chill. I wanted to be out of doors because there would be people about, and no chance for Julian to try and kiss my hand—no vulgar temptation for me to box his ears!
He was already waiting, strolling up and down, smoking a cigarette which he threw away at sight of me. Evidently he'd decided on this occasion not to be frivolous!
I selected a seat safely commanded by many windows. "Now!" I said, sitting down close to one end of the bench.
Julian took the other end, but sat gazing straight at me without a word. There was an odd expression on his face. I didn't know how to read it, or to guess what was to come. But there was nothing Puckish about the enemy at that moment. He looked nervous—almost as if he were afraid. I thought of something you told me when I was quite small, Padre: how the Romans of old used to send packets of good news bound with laurel, or of bad news, tied with the plumes of ravens. I stared into Julian O'Farrell's stare, and wished that he'd stuck a green leaf or a black feather in his buttonhole to prepare my mind.
"Yes—now!" he echoed at last, as if he'd suddenly waked up to my challenge. "Well, a man blew into this hotel last night—a lame Frenchman with a face like a boiled ghost. I was writing an important telegram (I'll tell you about that later), when I heard this person ask the concierge if a Miss Mary O'Malley was staying in the house. That made me open my eyes—because he was of the lower bourgeois class, and hadn't the air of being—so to speak—in your set. It seemed as if 'twas up to me to tackle him; so I did. I introduced myself as a friend of Miss O'Malley's, travelling with her party. I explained that Miss O'Malley was taking care of an old lady who'd been ill and was tired after a long journey. I asked if he'd like to give a message. He said he would. But first he began to explain who he was: an Alsatian by birth, named Muller, corporal in an infantry regiment; been a prisoner in Germany, I forget how long—taken wounded; leg amputated; and fitted with artificial limb in a Boche hospital; just exchanged for a grand blessé Boche, and repatriated; been in Paris on important business, apparently with the War Office—sounded more exciting than he looked! After I'd prodded the chap tactfully, he came back to the subject of the message: asked me if I knew Doctor Paul Herter. I said I did know him. Herter mended up my sister after an air raid. I inquired politely where Herter was, but Muller evaded that question. He led me to suppose he'd seen Herter in Paris; but putting two and two together, I got a different idea—altogether different."
Julian paused on those words, and tried piercingly to read my thoughts. But I made my face expressionless as the front of a shut-up house, with "to let unfurnished" over the door.
"I expect you've guessed what my idea was, and I bet you know for a fact whether I was on the right track," he ventured.
"The only thing so far which I know for a fact," I said, "is that you had no right to talk to the man at all. You should have sent for me at once."
"You couldn't have come if I had. Dierdre had told me about five minutes before that you were putting Mrs. Beckett to bed, and giving her a massage treatment with a rub-down of alcohol."