There was a warm dry earth-wall with heath and thyme and rest-harrow and convolvulus growing on it, and there we sat down. Opposite us opened the marshy gap of Le Port, and every four seconds, every eleven seconds, the aurora-like Light a dozen miles away was faintly reduplicated in the wet mud. All was quiet save for the ceaseless rustle of the ragged poplars, the creeping whisper of the tide.
"Now," I quietly ordered him, "I want you to tell me all the things you've been leaving out."
At first I thought he was going to behave like an obdurate boy, whose affairs are hugely important just because they are his. But he seemed to think better of it. In a hesitating voice he said, "What things?"
"Well, begin with Trenchard's place on Sunday night, the 4th of July. What happened then?"
His answer was hardly audible. "Yes, it was then."
"How much?"
"The whole lot."
"At one go you dropped from twenty-nine to—what is it now? Twenty?"
"Nineteen or twenty. I don't know. Yes."
"Then nothing's happened since then?"