The erstwhile sombre eyes of the doctor blazed down upon him, as though searching for a mortal enemy even in this friend. Then, with a distinctly apparent effort of will, the anguished man mastered himself.
“Listen!” he said. “This clock was a present to me from my wife. It was a love-marriage, ours—we loved, she and I——” he broke off, his eyes blazing again. Then, with a gesture of the hand as though he put that from him, he continued: “Before the war I was in practice at Cambrai. We lived out of the town—in a country house such as this. In August, 1914, I was mobilized. They sent me to Lorraine. I left my wife at home, believing her to be safe. You know what happened. The enemy swept over that part of the country. Trench-warfare began and my home, all I cared for in the world—my wife—was in the German lines. I never saw her again. I could never get any news. I waited four desperate years—and then, when we advanced, I went to find my home. It simply did not exist—it was a heap of bricks with a trench through it. My wife—no hint!” He pressed a hand over his eyes, then stared once more at the clock. “And now—I find this—here!”
Again there was a tense silence. The battalion-commander broke it at last.
“Interrogate the woman,” he said, briefly. “She must know something.”
“It is a pity her husband is dead,” said the captain, with grim humour. “We could have the pleasure of condemning him by court-martial, after he had confessed—whatever there is to confess.”
The doctor’s face set hard. He replaced the clock on the mantelpiece and wrote a few words on a page of his notebook.
“I am going to have the truth,” he said, tearing out the page and folding it up. “Ring the bell, my dear Jordan.”
An orderly appeared.
“Take this to Madame,” said the doctor, “at once.”
The orderly departed. The three men waited, two of them tingling with the excitement of this unexpected drama, the third standing with compressed lips and eyes that seemed to be frowning into a world which transcended this. He was certainly oblivious of his companions in the fixity of his thought. At last his lips moved.