l in an infantry regiment; been a prisoner in
Germany, I forget how long--taken wounded; leg amputated; and fitted
with artificial limb in a Boche hospital; just exchanged for a _grand
blesse_ Boche, and repatriated; been in Paris on important business,
apparently with the War Office--sounded more exciting than he looked!
After I'd prodded the chap tactfully, he came back to the subject of
the message: asked me if I knew Doctor Paul Herter. I said I did know
him. Herter mended up my sister after an air raid. I inquired politely
where Herter was, but Muller evaded that question. He led me to suppose
he'd seen Herter in Paris; but putting two and two together, I got a
different idea--_altogether_ different."

Julian paused on those words, and tried piercingly to read my thoughts.
But I made my face expressionless as the front of a shut-up house, with
"to let unfurnished" over the door.

"I expect you've guessed what my idea was, and I bet you know for a fact
whether I was on the right track," he ventured.

"The only thing so far which I know for a fact," I said, "is that you
had no right to talk to the man at all. You should have sent for me at
once."

"You couldn't have come if I had. Dierdre had told me about five minutes
before that you were putting Mrs. Beckett to bed, and giving her a
massage treatment with a rub-down of alcohol."

"Why didn't you ask the man to wait?"

"I did ask him if he _could_ wait, and he said he couldn't. He'd stopped
at Amiens on purpose to deliver his message, and he had to catch a train
on to Allonville, to where it seems his people have migrated."

"You asked him that because you hoped he couldn't wait--and if he could,
you'd have found some reason for not letting me meet him. You thought
you saw a way of getting a new hold over me!"

"Some such dramatic idea may have flitted through my head. I've often
warned you, I _am_ dramatic! I enjoy dramatizing life for myself and
others! But honestly, he couldn't wait for you to finish with Mrs.
Beckett. I know too well how devoted you are to think you'd have left
the old lady before you'd soothed her off to sleep."

"Where is the message?" I snatched Julian back to the point.

"In my brain at present."

"You destroyed the letter?"

"There wasn't a letter. Oh, make grappling hooks of your lovely eyes if
you like! You can't drag anything out of me that doesn't exist. Herter's
message to you was verbal for safety. That was one thing set