XXVII
THE MOONLIT WAY
Barres whistled and sang alternately as he tied his evening tie before his looking glass.
“And I care not, I,
Who ever she be
I could not love her more!”
he chanted gaily, examining the effect and buttoning his white waistcoat.
Westmore, loitering near and waiting for him, referred again, indignantly, to Renoux’s report concerning the presence of Freund and Lehr at the Northbrook railway station.
“If I catch them hanging around Thessa,” he said, “I’ll certainly beat them up, Garry.
“Deal with anything of that sort directly; that’s always the best way. No use arguing with a Hun. When he misbehaves, beat him up. It’s the only thing he understands.”
“Well, it’s all right for us to do it now, as long as the French Government knows where Thessa is,” remarked Barres, drawing a white clove-carnation through his buttonhole. “But what do you think of that dirty swine, Tauscher, planning wholesale murder like that? Isn’t it the fine flower of Prussianism? There’s the real and porcine boche for you, sombre, 367 savage, stupidly ferocious, swinishly persistent, but never quite cunning enough, never sufficiently subtle in planning his filthy and murderous holocausts.”