Then I turned to my brother. He just smiled at me and said, “I suppose you’re happy now, eh?”
“Say!” I exclaimed. “If you don’t want to be killed on the spot, don’t talk to me about being happy.... There have been times since I last saw you when I could have murdered you in cold blood! Where in the name of God have you been and why didn’t you get in touch with me?”
“Well—” he began, placatingly. “For a long time, I couldn’t see any advantage in writing to you. In the first place, it isn’t good for us to be seen together. In the second place, I don’t see how I can help you any. I tried every way possible to get across here without enlisting, but there wasn’t a prayer, so I finally got mad and enlisted and here I am.”
“But what do you expect me to do?” I demanded. “How am I going to get out of this man’s army?”
“I’ve doped it all out,” he replied easily. “If worse comes to worst, I’ll desert and take your place. You resume your proper attire, no one will be the wiser.”
“You’re as brilliant as ever, aren’t you?” I observed after a momentary digestion of this idea. “I suppose you aren’t aware that Jay-Jay Marfield is over here and is dogging me for a show-down already. Also, what would I do in dresses over here? How could I get a passport to get out of France when I couldn’t show any record of having legitimately entered the country?... Perhaps the scheme might work after the war is over, but that may be a couple of years yet—and I’m sure I can’t stand even one more year of it. I’ve got one service stripe already and I don’t crave for any more.”
“Well—we’ll have to dope out something,” he admitted. “However, for the time being, what’s on your mind?”
“Plenty!” I exclaimed. “For one thing I’m in a jamb with Lisa Mantour’s husband—you know, Lisa, at St. Malo? Her husband runs this café on the next corner, Le Chien Rouge, and he threatened to shoot me for coming to see his wife. Lisa wouldn’t tell him that I’m a girl because she’s afraid he’ll talk when he’s drunk, and I guess he’s been raising Cain with her on my account. So now I’m going to tell him the truth and in order that he’ll believe it more readily, you’ve got to come along and face him, too.”
“I don’t want to face that man again!” he declared stubbornly. “I wandered in there about two months ago and he lit on me with a bung-stopper. I didn’t know he had a wife, much less that she was Lisa, and I didn’t know what he was jabbering about until that big fellow there came along and flew into the scrap—and then I ducked.”
“Yes, I know about that. He thought it was me—in fact, he’s had his doubts about it up until just recently. Now he knows it wasn’t me, but I’ve got to explain us to him some way.”