He gained his feet, careless of the fact that he was dressed only in a suit of pyjamas. Sara Helmuth looked after him, her eyes brimming, but did not move; Solomon led him out into a wide hallway and across into another room.
Harcourt was lying in a cot, wasted, pale to ghastliness, dark circles under his eyes, but none the less with his mouth wearing its same good-humoured lines. By his side was a chair, and into this Hammer dropped, gazing down at the sleeping face of the man who had been his friend.
How long he sat there he did not know. He was vaguely aware that Solomon had gone away on tiptoe, but before his mind's eye were passing scenes, pictures of Harcourt as he had known him from day to day, now sharp and clear-cut, now dim and ill-remembered.
And three days had wrought this change! Three days, death in their wake, had transformed the broad-shouldered, clean-minded Englishman into this wasted semblance of himself.
"Good God," muttered Hammer, licking his dry lips. "It's horrible!"
As he breathed the words to himself, leaning over the bed, the dark eyelids flickered and opened, and Harcourt's blue eyes met his—at first with blank unrecognition, then with surprised delight. Harcourt smiled faintly, and his voice came clear but weak.
"Hello, old chap! You're—by Jove, where's that Jenson?"
The blue eyes had suddenly flashed out with anger as Harcourt remembered. The American, with more tenderness than he had ever thought to show any man, put out a hand to the cold brow of his friend.
"Quiet, old man; we'll take care of all that."
For the life of him he could not repress the message that leaped from his own eyes to those of the other. Harcourt looked up steadily; he had read the message aright, but the clear blue eyes never faltered.