He started away through the gloom, dragging his twisted foot. Belinda hesitated a moment only. She did not wish to be questioned. And there was possibly nothing wrong. Yet—"Trust not Rabbit-mouth too far." Renaud's written warning returned to her mind with insistence as she went her way.
Nor was all the nurse's fear unfounded. The lout of an orderly was indeed asleep and snoring within half an hour of her departure. Ward Three lay wrapped in gloom, for there was but a single shaded light on the table at the head of the room. Sighs—a few low moans—then the stertorous breathing of most of the occupants of the cots proclaimed the fact that the orderly was not alone asleep. The rest of these wounded and broken men were perhaps uneasy, for their dreams could not be happy ones.
Separated from their families, from all they loved and held dear; led by their overlords like sheep to the shambles; then, broken and suffering, brought from the trenches to this makeshift hospital, here to be made over into further food for the thundering cannon. Could men, under such conditions, sleep peacefully?
Sighing, turning, sometimes crying out in the nightmare of a remembrance of their wounds, the early hours of the night dragged by. If they woke it was to groan, seek to turn to a more restful position and then to sink back into troubled dreams again.
The swinging door of the ward was pushed quietly open. A figure crept in—a hoop-shouldered, apparently emaciated figure. With dragging step it shuffled down the ward past the sleeping orderly, who lay back in his chair with his mouth wide open, choking and snorting in his heavy sleep.
Dragging, dragging the step went down the aisle. It was a familiar sound to any who might be awake.
At the bed of the aviator it halted. Sanderson was already awake.
"Erard!"
A sharp hiss closed Sanderson's mouth. Ernest, across the aisle, raised cautiously from his pillow. He needed the use of both ears, for it was too dark for his eyes to be of much value to him.
The boy lay thus listening to catch the murmured words. They were neither German nor French phrases he overheard. He dared not betray a more active interest in the secret conference.