Part 37 (1/2)

”I'll send you the script when I get it back froh

2

On his return to official work, Eric found that he could not concentrate his attention on anything until he knehat Manders thought of ”The Singing-Bird”; sometimes he wondered whether he could ever concentrate until Barbara had brought his suspense to an end For three months they had not met or corresponded

”Dr Gaisford says I simply make you worse,” she told him ”I mustn't add that to my other sins If you want me, I'm there; but I shan't write to you, and you mustn't write to me I shall miss you horribly, but your health'sback to London in the autumn”

A week before her return, the whole Mill-House party s It was an old prolad to avail himself of it to break the continuity of his stilted Sunday calls As he dressed, a note was brought hi, and he read with so to fail us to-night There is a matter on which I want your advice and, perhaps, your help_”

Eric tore the note into s at his oant of control when he found his hand shaking until he could hardly part his hair There was only one subject on which anybody at Red Roofs could want to consult hi wrote--and wrote to hines would have whispered a word to him before dinner They had received news that Jack was aliveor dead

or they had thought of a newin touch with him

Eric kept his surprise to hih twoto the south end of Lash state vouchsafed no explanation of his letter Eric looked keenly at Agnes and her mother, but their faces and manner betrayed neither elation norWhat else could they betray? he wondered sinkingly If Jack were dead, the dinner-party would have been postponed They still hoped for hih to be exposed

When the men were alone after dinner, Eric's heart ripped the ar with a decanter and tidying away the relass to Eric's end of the table and sat beside hi with a smile whether his note had been delivered in ti back with his legs stretched out and frowning at the blue flahter ”We've had news of a kind about Jack” He raised his hand as Eric tried to speak ”No, ratulate us--_yet_ You see, we've been through the racket once”

”You don't know for certain, then?” Eric asked and wondered whether he was ines told you all about the cheque, didn't she? He was ust last year, and the cheque was drawn in October We no that he was alive in December It appears”

Eric did not hear the next few sentences Stoically, yet with an underlyingJack to security from the presumption of death two months at a tio, eleven o Some one would have heard of hi up hand over fist And one day he would land in England, you would h Berkeley Square, you h's house

”I don't for onewas coent nod, wondering what he had been told

Waring, always soldierly and dapper, with a neat care of person which he had handed on to his children, seee of yellohich settled on his face in cold weather had wholly departed

”Would youin August; the cheque in October; the row in December This fellow Britwell” (Eric wished that he had listened to find out as Britwell) ”was taken prisoner at the same time, and they were in the same prisoner's camp Britwell couldn't say how badly Jack ounded, because he'd been in hospital hi to the story, was hauled up for calling one of the guards a 'Schweinhund' (You know Jack well enough to say if he'd be likely to fling about abuse of that kind without provocation) His only defence was that the guard had told hi, and almost the only German he kneas that word, because they'd shouted it at him when they found him half-unconscious in his trench and kicked him back behind the lines, and the women and children had screa in his face at all the stations And it was the one word that all the cauards used to every British prisoner Well, heor heBritwell heard was that he'd been packed off to solitary confinement in a fortress for nine months December '15to September or October this year That explains the cheque, but it doesn't explain why he hasn't written

Of course, he hasn't had 's coht have died of his wounds or of ill-treatht have offended a second time and been a second time imprisoned without power to coht have been transferred to another ca ban on all his letters lest he tried to describe the barbarisot that straight so far,” said Eric slowly, ”Now tell me what I can do”

If the worst came to the worst, he would at least try to surrender his clairace

”Well, it's the old business: ant news,” said Waring ”I tried the War Office as soon as I heard froo; he's been transferred to Switzerland as one of the badly wounded cases You knohat the War Office is; I may be fed with printed forms for months

Do you know anybody there who can take up the thing personally?”

”If I don't know any one, I can soon _get_ to know the right rateful Meanwhile don't talk about it--to anybody”

Eric refrained fro a promise, for he knew that he would have to tell Barbara the folloeek Within three hours of his return to London he had set half-a-dozen telephone wires hu his department, the newly-found freemasonry of the public service had supplied hi was ”;” but his name had not been reported from any German source; unofficially, the War Office had a copy of Major Britwell's letter to Colonel Waring Nothing reat deal of new infore of wounded prisoners If Captain Waring were incapacitated and if the official Gerht have the luck to be transferred to Switzerland at anyand wrote to Barbara that night for the first time in three months ”_I want you to know as soon as possible that Jack was alive last Deceo, and he may be alive still; the family simply doesn't know I'll tell you the full story e ht for dining together on her return; and Eric spent three days that were as restless and insupportable as the three hours before a first night It would hurt intolerably if she behaved as a stranger, when they met; almost as intolerably if she threw herself into his arms--and forced hi

On the evening before they were to , and Manders' voice, brisk and cheerful, enquired if Eric was likely to be at the Thespian Club that night