"London! My God!" he muttered. "There is still a London, I suppose? Savoy and Carlton going still? Pall Mall where it was?""And very much as it was," Thomson assured him. "London's wonderfully unchanged. You been out long?""September the second," was the cheerful reply. "I keep on getting promised a week but I can't bring it off.""He's such a nut with the telephones," the man by his side explained, helping himself to marmalade. "The General positively can't spare him.""Oh, chuck it!" the other exclaimed in disgust. "What about you?--the only man with an eye to a Heaven-ordained gun position, as old Wattles declared one day. We're all living wonders, Major," he went on, turning to Thomson, "but if I don't get a Sole Colbert and a grill at the Savoy, and a front seat at the Alhambra, before many weeks have passed, I shall get stale--that's what'll happen to me.""Hope you'll have your hair cut before you go back, a man from the other end of the table remarked. "Your own mother wouldn't know you like that--much less your sweetheart."The young man fingered his locks reflectively.
"Chap who was going to cut it for me got shot yesterday," he grumbled.
"Anything doing as you came over the ridge, Major?"Thomson shook his head.
"One aeroplane and a few shells."
"That would be Johnny Oates going out in his Bleriot," some one remarked.
"He'll be back here before long with a report."The officer who had met Thomson in the garden, re-entered the room.
"General says he'll see you at once," he announced.
Thomson followed his guide into a small back room. An officer was seated before a desk, writing, another was shouting down a telephone, and a third was making some measurements upon a large Ordnance map nailed upon one of the walls. The General was standing with his back to the fire and a pipe in his mouth. He nodded cheerily to Thomson.
"When did you leave London?" he asked.
"Nine o'clock last evening, sir," Thomson replied. "Rather a record trip. We had a special down and a destroyer over.""And I'm going to tell you what you want to know," the General continued glancing at a document in his hand. "Well, close the door, Harewood. Out with it?""It's about Captain Granet of Harrison's staff," Thomson began.
The General frowned and knocked the ashes from his pipe.
"Well," he asked, "what is it?"
"We've reasons of our own for wishing to know exactly what you meant by asking the War Office not to send him back again," Thomson continued.
The General hesitated.
"Well, what are they?"
"They are a little intangible, sir," Thomson confessed, "but exceedingly important. Without any direct evidence, I have come to the conclusion that Captain Granet is a mysterious person and needs watching. As usual, we are in trouble with the civil authorities, and, to be frank with you, I am trying to strengthen my case."The General shrugged his shoulders.
