ad flatly declined to carry on with his motor business after Dicky had
joined up, although their firm was doing government work. Finally, he
had vanished into the maw of the War Office and all I knew was that he
was "something on the Intelligence." More than this not even _he_ would
tell me, and when he finally disappeared from London, just about the
time that I was popping the parapet with my battalion at Neuve Chapelle,
he left me his London chambers as his only address for letters.

Ah! now it was all coming back--Francis' infrequent letters to me about
nothing at all, then his will, forwarded to me for safe keeping when I
was home on leave last Christmas, and after that, silence. Not another
letter, not a word about him, not a shred of information. He had utterly
vanished.

I remembered my frantic inquiries, my vain visits to the War Office, my
perplexity at the imperturbable silence of the various officials I
importuned for news of my poor brother. Then there was that lunch at the
Bath Club with Sonny Martin of the Heavies and a friend of his, some
kind of staff captain in red tabs. I don't think I heard his name, but I
know he was at the War Office, and presently over our cigars and coffee
I laid before him the mysterious facts about my brother's case.

"Perhaps you knew Francis?" I said in conclusion. "Yes," he replied, "I
know him well." "_Know_ him," I repeated, "_know_ him then ... then you
think ... you have reason to believe he is still alive...?"

Red Tabs cocked his eye at the gilded cornice of the ceiling and blew a
ring from his cigar. But he said nothing.

I persisted with my questions but it was of no avail. Red Tabs only
laughed and said: "I know nothing at all except that your brother is a
most delightful fellow with all your own love of getting his own way."

Then Sonny Martin, who is the perfection of tact and diplomacy--probably
on that account he failed for the Diplomatic--chipped in with an
anecdote about a man who was rating the waiter at an adjoining table,
and I held my peace. But as Red Tabs rose to go, a little later, he held
my hand for a minute in his and with that curious look of his, said
slowly and with meaning:

"When a nation is at war, officers on _active service_ must occasionally
disappear, sometimes in their country's interest, sometimes in their
own."

He emphasised the words "on active service."

In a flash my eyes were opened. How blind I had been! Francis was in
Ger