id Smithers.

He went out. Jeanne, uncomprehending, sat silent. Captain Willoughby,
cursing an idiot education, composed in his head a polite French
sentence concerning the weather, but before he had finished Smithers
reappeared with a strange twisted packet in his hand. He held it out
to Jeanne.

"Mademoiselle, do you recognize this?"

She looked at it dully for a moment; then suddenly sprang to her feet
and clenched her hands and stared open-mouthed. She nodded. She could
not speak. Her brain swam. They had come to her about Doggie, who was
dead, and they showed her Pere Grigou's packet. What was the
connection between the two?

Willoughby rose impulsively. "For God's sake, Smithers, let her down
easy. She'll be fainting all over the place in a minute."

"If this is your property, mademoiselle," said Smithers, laying the
packet on the chenille-covered table, "you have to thank your friend
Trevor for restoring it to you."

She put up both hands to her reeling head.

"But he is dead, monsieur!"

"Not a bit of it. He's just as much alive as you or I."

Jeanne swayed, tried to laugh, threw herself half on a chair, half
over the great cask, and broke down in a passion of tears.

The two men looked at each other uncomfortably.

"For exquisite tact," said Willoughby, "commend me to an Intelligence
officer."

"But how the deuce was I to know?" Smithers muttered with an injured
air. "My instructions were to find out the truth of a cock-and-bull
story--for that's what it seemed to come to. And a girl in
billets--well--how was I to know what she was like?"

"Anyhow, here we've got hysterics," said Willoughby.

"But who told her the fellow was dead?"

"Why, his pals. I thought so myself. When a man's missing where's one
to suppose him to be--having supper at the Savoy?"

"Well, I give women up," said Smithers. "I thought she'd be glad."

"I believe you're a married man?"

"Yes, of course."

"Well, I ain't," said Willoughby, and in a couple of strides he stood
close to Jeanne. He laid a gentle hand on her heaving shoulders.

"_Pas tue! Soolmong blesse_," he shouted.

She sprang, as it were, to attention, like a frightened recruit.

"He is wounded?"

"Not very seriously, mademoiselle." Smithers, casting an indignant
glance at his superior officer's complacent smile, reassumed mastery
of the situation. "A Boche sniper got him in the leg. It will put him
out of service for a month or two. But there is no