“What was that you said to my wife?”
Gare Saint Lazare saved me. But you’ll own that even as the author of False Coins, Wrong Doors, Left Umbrellas, and two in preparation, it was not too easy to go on my triumphant way.
At length, after countless trains had steamed into my mind, and countless Dick Harmons had come rolling towards me, the real train came. The little knot of us waiting at the barrier moved up close, craned forward, and broke into cries as though we were some kind of many-headed monster, and Paris behind us nothing but a great trap we had set to catch these sleepy innocents.
Into the trap they walked and were snatched and taken off to be devoured. Where was my prey?
“Good God!” My smile and my lifted hand fell together. For one terrible moment I thought this was the woman of the photograph, Dick’s mother, walking towards me in Dick’s coat and hat. In the effort—and you saw what an effort it was—to smile, his lips curled in just the same way and he made for me, haggard and wild and proud.
What had happened? What could have changed him like this? Should I mention it?
I waited for him and was even conscious of venturing a fox-terrier wag or two to see if he could possibly respond, in the way I said: “Good evening, Dick! How are you, old chap? All right?”
“All right. All right.” He almost gasped. “You’ve got the rooms?”
Twenty times, good God! I saw it all. Light broke on the dark waters and my sailor hadn’t been drowned. I almost turned a somersault with amusement.
It was nervousness, of course. It was embarrassment. It was the famous English seriousness. What fun I was going to have! I could have hugged him.