“Marseilles, March the 27th.
“Cabin passage. Punctual. Good night. French on the make. Train table d’hôte twenty-five francs, everything extra. Few passengers on boat. This is the Alfred Jingle style, but it contains all I have to say. It won’t be easy to work or read, for every one is on the prowl looking for some one else to talk to or to play Bridge with. I must be strong and refuse Bridge at first. Or at least so as not to be grumpy, I shall say, ‘Bridge—delighted.’ I love to play Bridge. Let me see—I always forget—are there four suits or five? Of course I know there are twelve cards in each suit.
“Talk is not so easily dealt with. But there are some decent people on board. I have talked with two sad, efficient, disgruntled Indian Colonels, going back to earn their pension. And of course there are social ladies. When I was a lean gawky youth, they were not kind enough to me. I don’t blame them, but when they are kind now, I wish they had come earlier.
“Book is all right. Small corrections occur to me. Can’t make ’em now. Doesn’t matter. God be with the office and all that therein are!”
A few days later he arrived at Port Said and sent me the last letter I ever received from him.
“Here I am at Port Said after a calm and easy voyage.... I am to go by train to Jerusalem to-night (it takes some seventeen or eighteen hours). There I am to meet Ellington and to be his fellow-guest at the house of the High Commissioner. He is to drive me to the Nablus road. Then to Cairo by aeroplane and from Cairo direct to Baghdad....
“It’s going to be tiresome to-night, but once I get to the R.A.F. I think things will be very easy....
“Baghdad seems to be a gay centre. I came on the boat with Major Lord Gough, a one-armed Irish officer, who has left home to escape the tax-collector, and is going to command Arab levies at Baghdad. He will do well, I am sure; he is cool, pleasant, practical, ready-witted and original. Indeed he shocked the Anglo-Indian officers on board, but the Arabs, I think, will take to him.
“It has all been absurdly easy up to now, thanks to you. I will write again.”
He never did.