The smile suddenly faded from his lips. He seemed to be listening to the calling of the newsboys down the street. “I don’t know what my instructions are going to be,” he continued, dropping his voice a little, “but I’m sick of making war the way our chaps are doing it. If ever I’m lucky enough to get one of those murderous submarines, I can promise you one thing—there’ll be no survivors.”
For a moment or two they neither of them spoke. From out of the windows of the house before which they were standing came the music of a popular waltz. Olive turned a way with a little shiver.
“You think I’m brutal, dear,” Conyers went on, as he patted her hand. “Remember, I’ve seen men killed—that’s what makes the difference, Olive. Yes, I am different! We are all different, we who’ve tackled the job. Thomson’s different. Your young man at luncheon, Geraldine—what’s his name?—Granet—he’s different. There’s something big and serious grown up inside us, and the brute is looking out. It has to be. I’ll come in later, Olive. Tell the mater I shall be home to dinner, Geraldine. The governor’s waiting down at the Admiralty for me. Good-bye, girls!”
He waved his hand and strode down towards the corner of the Square. Both girls watched him for a few moments. His shoulders were as square as ever but something had gone from the springiness of his gait. There was nothing left of the sailor’s jaunty swagger.
“They are all like that,” Geraldine whispered “when they’ve been face to face with the real thing. And we are only women, Olive.”
CHAPTER IV
Surgeon-Major Thomson had apparently forgotten his appointment to view camp bedsteads, for, a few minutes after he had left Geraldine and her brother, his taxicab set him down before a sombre-looking house in Adelphi Terrace. He passed through the open doorway, up two flights of stairs, drew a key of somewhat peculiar shape from his pocket and opened a door in front of him. He found himself in a very small hall, from which there was no egress save through yet another door, through which he passed and stepped into a large but singularly bare-looking apartment. Three great safes were ranged along one side of the wall, piles of newspapers and maps were strewn all over a long table, and a huge Ordnance map of the French and Belgian Frontiers stood upon an easel. The only occupant of the apartment was a man who was sitting before a typewriter in front of the window. He turned his head and rose at Thomson’s entrance, a rather short, keen-looking young man, his face slightly pitted with smallpox, his mouth hard and firm, his eyes deep-set and bright.
“Anything happened, Ambrose?”
“A dispatch, sir,” was the brief reply.