“Well, I don’t know. Seeing after the wounded, perhaps.”
Attending to wounded men is properly speaking work for women; but both Lady Moyne and Marion were in London.
“There are sure to be a few somewhere,” I said. “They’ve been fighting all over the town, and I don’t suppose the soldiers were as careful everywhere else as they were here.”
“Are you a surgeon as well as a lord?” asked Bland.
“Oh no. I don’t know anything about surgery. My idea—”
“Then I expect the wounded, if there are any, would rather you left them alone. Besides, a town like this must have hundreds of doctors in it. They’ll all be out after the wounded by this time as keen as vultures. It isn’t every day that an ordinary practitioner gets the chance of gouging out bullets. They wouldn’t let you interfere with their sport even if you paid them. There won’t, as a matter of fact, be nearly enough wounded to go round the profession. They’d hate to have an amateur chipping in. Let’s forage about a bit and get some food.”
It was not very easy to find food in the club, and the only surviving waiter was still undressing Clithering. But Bland is a good forager. He found two dressed crabs somewhere, and then came upon a game pie. I let him have the dressed crabs all to himself. He is a much younger man than I am and is a war correspondent. He ought to be able to digest anything.
I fully intended to eat three helpings of game pie, for I was very hungry; but before I had finished the first of them I was interrupted. Crossan stalked into the room. He was the last man I wanted to see. His appearance and manner are, at the best of times, tragic. Clithering had been with me, off and on, most of the day, so I had got rather tired of tragedy.
“I think it right to inform your lordship,” said Crossan, “that Mr. Godfrey D’Aubigny has just been arrested in the streets.”