“I am thinking of those shell-holes in the road near Les Ormes.”
Manon climbed into the back seat, and Brent leant over and wrapped a blanket round her. She had a little canvas bag in her hand, a bag that contained something heavy, and she dropped the bag into one of the pockets of Paul’s coat.
“I managed to borrow it,” she said, “after much trouble.”
Old Durand refrained from looking over his shoulder.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
Manon gave Paul a nod and a brightening of the eyes.
“Be careful,” she said, “or I shall be worried.”
The red car squeezed its way round the well and disappeared into the Rue Romaine, leaving Paul Brent looking at the empty sunset and feeling the canvas bag that Manon had dropped into his pocket. He drew it out, unfastened the string at the mouth of the bag, and saw protruding the lacquered butt of a little revolver, a mere cheap toy of a pistol such as they made by the thousand in Belgium before the war. There were half a dozen cartridges at the bottom of the canvas bag, and Brent emptied them into the palm of his hand.
The forethought was Manon’s and therefore he had no quarrel with it, discovering in that little weapon associations of tenderness and pathos. The war had made him a fighting man, yet this pistol did not seem to be the tool of a fighting man, but rather a thing to be carried in a pocket like some hooligan’s knife. Brent smiled, but the memories of Manon were behind the smile. He had seen Bibi in action and the beastliness of it had sobered him, suggesting a wild dog among the ruins, a dog that might leap out and snap at your throat. The whole business was primitive and preposterous, rather unconvincing to an Englishman who had been trained to a disciplined and orderly way of killing Germans. The idea of being set upon and bludgeoned in a ruined French village suggested the Police News.