"Henri without a doubt," said Stuart, a note of relief in his voice, for the lusty fellow had taken an enormous liking for Henri. "That's good! I was really beginning to get awfully anxious about him."
"And I had almost given him up for lost," said Jules, equally relieved. "There he is, just outside the door. Ha, Henri! we began to think that you would never return, and now——"
The two inmates of the room, peering through the dusk as the door opened, saw an unfamiliar figure enter: a man dressed in baggy clothing, a man whose eyes were encircled by the broad rims of heavy glasses, and upon whose head sat an absurdly small Homberg hat. He was a man getting on in years, one would have said—though the dusk made the question uncertain—yet a man who stepped actively, whose breath was not tried by the long ascent, and who knew his path well, and was thoroughly acquainted with the door-way. Could it be Henri?—Henri in disguise? A low chuckle escaped the man—a merry giggle—and then Henri's well-known voice awoke the silence.
"I do wish that it were daylight," he told Stuart and Jules; "you'd then see something that 'ud be good for sore eyes."
"Sore eyes—eh? It isn't so very dark here, and I can see enough to startle me as it is," came the astonished rejoinder. "What on earth have you been doing, Henri; and what's the meaning of this get-up? Of course, it's a disguise; but, bless us! what a disguise!"
"Stop! How's this, then? I'll do the heavy German, and you can judge the effect."
The gay, yet thoughtful, Henri closed the door of the room, and, with what was left of the fast-receding daylight illuminating his person, struck an attitude. Leaning on the stick with which he had provided himself, he twirled the heavy moustaches—artificial affairs which he had contrived to become possessed of—and glared at his comrades through that pair of big-rimmed spectacles which so completely altered his appearance. Then he talked to them—cross-questioned his friends in the gruff, staccato accents one might have expected from such an individual as he represented himself to be.
"German—the heavy German official—from the crown of that ridiculous hat right down to your big flat feet," declared Stuart with gusto, when the little performance was finished. "I'd never have thought it possible, but that moustache has done wonders, and now that one really gets a good glimpse of you, for it isn't so dark after all, I've no hesitation in saying that I'd pass you in the street every day and fail to spot you as Henri."
"As Henri, or even as a Frenchman," added Jules, "or even as any alien or enemy of the Germans. It's tremendous, Henri, a ripping turn-out! How did you manage it? And where on earth did you lay your hands on such garments?"
The somewhat bulky and voluminous individual who had joined them sat down before Stuart and Jules and treated the two of them to an amiable grin, made all the more amiable and owl-like by those glasses.