"Umph! I have to be at Downing Street at twelve. Meanwhile, I shall be in my own inner chamber if you want me. Good-bye! There are cigarettes in that box. Poor little girl!"
The double doors closed, and I was left alone.
I unstrapped Roy's valise without much difficulty—my comminuted collar-bone was mending nicely, though I had been warned that I might never be able to wield a salmon-rod again—and emptied out its jumbled contents on to the floor. At the same moment Eric was announced.
"Come along," I said, "and get that new tin arm of yours to work. Sort out everything in the shape of papers from that mess, and let us go through them."
"Are we looking for anything in particular?" asked Eric, reluctantly setting to work. He always hated drudgery.
"Roy's will."
Eric nodded; and laid a heap of documents on the table. There was a tattered sheaf of battalion orders; an old field dispatch book, a number of maps; and a bundle of letters.
"I fancy the letters are from Marjorie," I said. "We need not bother to read them."
"How is she, by the way?" asked Eric, looking up.
"Getting along, I believe."