CHAPTER VII
THE INDISCREET TRAVELLER
Lavendale walked slowly down the sunny side of Pall Mall. It was early in August, and for the first time he seemed to notice some reflection in the faces of the passers-by of the burden under which the country was groaning. The usual fashionable little throng about the entrance to the Carlton, was represented by a few sombrely-dressed women and one or two wounded warriors. The glances of the passers-by towards the contents bill of the evening papers had in them a certain furtive eagerness, the fear of evil news triumphing now over the sanguine optimism of earlier days. It was just at that tragical epoch when Russia, to the amazement of the whole world, was being swept back from her frontier cities, when there were murmurs of an investment of Petrograd. Lavendale, in his light grey suit and straw hat, sunburnt, over six feet tall, broad and athletic, seemed somehow a strange figure as he passed along through streets which appeared destitute of a single man under middle-age who was not in khaki. The recruiting sergeant at the corner of Trafalgar Square, where Lavendale paused for a moment to cross the road, caught his eye and smiled insinuatingly.
'Fine figure for a uniform, sir,' he ventured.
'I am an alien,' Lavendale replied, watching a troop of recruits pass by.
'American, sir?'
'That's so,' Lavendale admitted.
The sergeant looked him up and down and sighed.
'America's a country, begging your pardon, sir, that don't seem to have much stomach for fighting,' he remarked, as the young man passed on.
Lavendale crossed the street with a slight frown upon his forehead. He made his way to the War Office and found Captain Merrill in his room alone. The two men exchanged the greetings of intimate friends.
'Say, Reggie,' Lavendale began, 'you folks are getting kind of nervy, aren't you? A recruiting sergeant in Trafalgar Square has just gently intimated to me that I belong to a country which has no stomach for fighting.'