Napier thanked him a little sheepishly. "Of course I don't expect you to find anything. I only feel we've got to make sure."
CHAPTER VIII
Sir William and Napier returned to London to face those days of intolerable suspense, when men carried about like a waking nightmare the new proof that an impregnable fortress was a thing of the past. The defenses of Liège had failed. A vast system of forts had been pounded into ruin. Through breach after breach, the German hosts were pouring. People far away from the scenes of carnage and chaos woke in the night under a clutch of dread. What is it? What's the matter with life? The Germans! On and on they were coming, and nothing, it seemed, could stop them.
Then came the Mons retreat and the Battle of the Marne. Belgium was in ruins, but the German flood had been stayed. Sir William, worn and aged after a second heart attack, carefully concealed from every one except the doctor, and Gavan came down from London to spend Saturday night and Sunday at the place he had taken on the Essex coast. Apart from public anxieties, Sir William had been subject to the annoyance of questions in the House, about his chauffeur—a member of his Majesty's Government couldn't be driven about by an unnaturalized German. A new chauffeur had brought Sir William from town.
"Do say you are going to like the house, William, dear!" his wife implored on the familiar note, before he had time to see anything beyond the entrance and the drawing-room. "Remember how little time we had to find anything near enough for you. But talk about it's being a furnished house!"
"Great luck to find such a place," Napier reassured her. "How did you hear of it?"
Lady McIntyre shook her head, as with an effort to shake some clear recollection out of the inner disorder. "We heard of so many! But this—I think Greta saw an advertisement somewhere about this one. I had to come and do the inspecting because of that silliness about getting a permit for Greta."
"Seems all right," said Sir William, rattling his seals as he joined Napier in the bay-window.