"Oh, Gavan!" she repeated. And then she turned abruptly and went out of the room. Left him standing there. Not even good-by.
It had been hard enough for Gavan to arrange it even before that awful news about Niel.
"You aren't fit," Sir William had stormed. When he calmed down a little, he went and had another talk with the doctor. No medical man who knew his business would pass Mr. Napier, Sir William was told; but the need for officers was great. Mr. Napier would have his way. In the final issue Sir William had his.
The very same evening of the interview with Nan this new thing had been sprung on Napier.
Something, Sir William said, that Gavan could do for the country that the country needed more than it needed another amateur officer at the Front. Gavan was to go to America by the first ship on a secret mission.
The newly commissioned officer protested with all his might. He had no experience of missions, secret or otherwise; he had no experience of America. Nevertheless, there were others in high places who agreed with Sir William. In the scarcity of suitable men at that particular crisis, and in view of the confidence felt in Napier by the authorities, they were in agreement as to the advisability of despatching him, in addition to the practical expert from the Admiralty already over there, to pay a private visit to America, in the course of which certain government contracts for munitions of war were to be effected—quietly, without rousing pro-German opposition.
The exigency was put to Napier in a way difficult to meet. He had himself seen regiments of men in training for months in civilian clothes, and who had never held a firearm in their hands. He had seen an entire camp drilling with dummy rifles. He was aware of the lack even of the plants necessary to turn out rifles to equip a quarter of the recruits called for. And now Sir William told him the secret of the shortage of ammunition for British troops already at the Front.
"We've sent our men out there to face the German guns, and our men can't reply! We've got to have guns and shells and rifles ... everything. We've got to get them from America. You've got to get them from America; you and Jameson."
Sir William quoted yet another reason besides the main ones given, for Gavan Napier's being the man to go; his personal friendship with one of the chief of that group called "Steel Kings" overseas.