So saying, I stretched out my arm to display the garment, and Eagle saw what it was.
"Khaki uniform!" he exclaimed. "From the U. S. A. By Jove! Is it Tony Dalziel's?"
"Indeed it is not," I returned. "I'm here to tell you about it. Oh, Eagle, what should I have done if you hadn't come home?"
"You oughtn't to be here, dear Peggy," he said. "And I'm not sure that I ought to have brought you in, but I've got into the habit of trusting you when you tell me that a thing's important."
"It is important," I cut him short. "So important I hardly know where to begin."
"Your wits are too quick for you to be in doubt long," Eagle flattered me, smiling; "and you must begin at once, dear child, because for the sake of all the conventionalities I can't let you make me a long call, good as it is to see you here. We are alone in the place now, so it's all right for the moment. The servant my friend Jim White lends me with the rooms doesn't stay at night. He lights the fire and puts everything shipshape, and then leaves me in peace till morning. But Jim himself, who is doing interpreter's work in France, has run back for the day on business. He is with some War Office chaps for the evening, but any time after twelve o'clock I expect him back to stay the night. You must be gone before then, so you see we have twenty minutes at most."
"Rome was saved in one minute, I've always heard," I said. "Eagle, this coat was Sidney Vandyke's. It's mine now, because Diana gave it to me, with a lot of other things they cared nothing about, for our Belgian men. They didn't know God was delivering them into my hands—and your hands. For I give this to you to do with as you will. It is the coat Major Vandyke wore the night at El Paso when he was in temporary command. He wore it when his orderly, Johnson, brought him the message you wrote on a leaf out of your notebook—the message he swore never reached him."
As I spoke I held out the coat in both hands, with the inside toward Eagle, so that he could see for himself the hole I had made in the lining, and perhaps draw his own conclusions. I saw his eyes fix themselves on the long, tell-tale slit and the colour rush up to his forehead.
"Who tore that slit in the lining?" he asked sharply.
"I tore it to-night!"