"I'd like to have a squint at the wound presently, if you don't mind. Interesting case. Very."
Harry rose suddenly, his face the color of ashes.
"Sorry, sir," he muttered, "I've got a lot to do now. Later perhaps," and then without a word took up his cap and fled incontinently from the room.
There were but two other officers present, but they stared at him as he went out, for the conversation across the table had drawn attention.
"H-m," remarked the Major into his coffee-cup. "Surly chap that. Considering I saved his life—Croix de Guerre, I see?"
"Yes sir," said a Lieutenant. "Just joined up. Worried, maybe."
"Not much worried about me, apparently," said the Major.
Harry went straight out to his billet, locked the door of his soom and sank on the edge of his bed. The situation was horrible. This man of all men who had seen Jim Horton through the hospital! Suppose out of professional curiosity the fool came nosing around! Was Welby now with the regiment? Harry cursed himself for the hurry of his departure. Would the man suspect anything? Hardly. But Harry couldn't take a chance like that again. A second refusal of the Major's request would surely make him an object of suspicion. And the wound in the shoulder—there was none! D—n them all! Why couldn't they leave him alone?
He couldn't face the thing out. It was too dangerous. Already he had had enough of it. And yet what was he to do? Yesterday he had thought he read suspicion of him in other men's eyes. They seemed to strip him naked, those hundreds of eyes, to be gazing at the white uninjured flesh where his wounds should have been. All this in a week only—and what was to happen in the many weeks to follow? If this fool Welby had come why wouldn't there be other men of the regiment, of the battalion, who had been at the hospital at Neuilly also? They would catch him in a false statement, force him into a position from which he could not extricate himself, and then what? The Major,—the Colonel,—what answer could he give them if they asked to see his wounds?
To Harry's overwrought imagination the whole army seemed joined in a conspiracy to bring about his ruin. To go about his work seemed impossible, but to feign illness meant the visit of a doctor, perhaps Welby himself. He would have to go on, at least for the day, and then perhaps he would think up something—resignation, a transfer to some other unit....