"P.SS.—The engagement is with yours truly, the young lady having conformed to the faith of the Gerevormed Kerk. We are to be married next Sunday. Would you like us to send you some wedding-cake?
"P. B."
Blinders has certainly had the last dig, but his principal victim fails this time to wince or bellow under the point of his humour. With his big face changing from red to white, and from white to crimson half a dozen times in as many seconds, Captain Bingo says, refolding the paper and returning it with a shaky hand:
"Then she—she——"
A lump in his throat slides down and sticks.
"Gerevormed Kerk-time is eleven o'clock." The Colonel looks at his shabby Waterbury, as the brisk clatter of cantering horse-hoofs breaks up the Sabbath stillness of the Market Square, and an orderly, leading an officer's charger, halts before Nixey's door. "The B.S.A. escort, with their man, are due to leave the gaol in ten minutes' time. Here's your orderly with your mount, and you've eight minutes to change in."
"One minute, sir," Captain Bingo utters with an effort. "This man—this Slabberts—is a well-known spy—a trump card in Brounckers' hand, or he wouldn't be so anxious to get hold of him. And therefore—by this exchange—and a woman's dashed ambitious folly—you may lose heavily in the end...."
"I don't deny it." The haggard shadow is again upon the Colonel's face, or is it that Bingo's radiance dulls neighbouring surfaces by comparison? "But don't let the thought of it spoil your good hour." The smile in the eyes that have so many lines about them is kind, if the mouth under the red-brown moustache is stern and sorrowful. "We don't have many of 'em. Off with you and meet her!"
Captain Bingo tries to say something more, but makes a hash of it; and with eyes that fairly run over, can only grip the kindly hand again and again, assuring its owner, with numerous references to the Living Tinker, that he is the most thundering brick on earth. Then, overthrowing the small table and one of the chairs, he plunges down the narrow iron stairway to get into what he calls his kit. Six minutes later, correct to a buckle and a puttee-fold, he salutes his commanding officer, nodding pleasantly to him from Nixey's roof, and buckets down the street at a tremendous gallop, the happiest man in Gueldersdorp, with this shout following him:
"My regards to Lady Hannah. And tell her that the Staff dine on gee-gee at six o'clock sharp, and I shall be charmed if she'll join us."