Prelude For War

He knew she was telling the truth. As he was then, she could never have made him believe a lie.

'Was the envelope sealed when you put it in the check­room?'

'Yes.'

'It didn't look as if it had been tampered with when you got it out?'

'No.'

But there he knew he was on the wrong tack. If Luker and Company had been able to get at the packet, they wouldn't have left any of it. And if they had known where it was, in order to tamper with it, they wouldn't have been going to such lengths to locate it.

This was all that there had ever been. And this was what Kennet and Windlay had died for.

He had expected that that dossier would give him a light that would make clear all mysteries, and instead it had only given him a darker riddle. He stared at that enigmatic last sheet with a glacial and immobile fury. Whatever Kennet and Windlay had been murdered for must be hidden there —he was as sure of that as he could be sure of anything, but that was no help to him. ... In a sudden uncontrolla­ble defining of his belief he ripped off the rest of the heavy batch of papers and tossed them into her lap.

'There you are,' he said. 'You can have 'em. If there's anything there that's worth a penny more than the News of the World would pay you for it it 'll take somebody a lot cleverer than me to dig it out.'

'That's very nice of you,' she said. 'Anything that's no use, and you don't want, I can have. What's that page you're keeping ?'

'I wish I knew.'

'May I see it?'

She was sitting straight up, with a curious distant dignity.

He looked at her. In his mind was a nebulous puzzlement that he could not bring into sharp focus. She had not asked for terms then, nor did she go on to ask for them, but he didn't seem to have enough attention to spare for that.

He moved the paper a little, and she read it over his arm.

' 'The twenty-fifth of August—Opening of the Hospital of Memory——' '

' 'The Hostel of Memory, at Neuilly,' ' he said. 'I've heard something about it. It's an old chateau converted into a sort of Old Soldiers' Home, endowed by the French gov­ernment for disabled veterans of the Great War to end their days in in reasonably pleasant surroundings.'

' 'By Monsieur Chaulage,' ' she read. 'Isn't he the presi­dent, or the premier, or something?'

He nodded, and a recollection struck him like a deadened blow.

'And tomorrow is the twenty-fifth of August,' he said.

She stared at him with wide expressionless eyes. There was nothing definable that her eyes could have expressed. She was as nonplussed as himself. They gazed at one another in the barren communion of hopeless bewilderment, knowing that here was something that might make their blood run cold if they could understand it, and yet not know­ing what to fear.

Presently she looked at the sheet again.

'What's the rest of it?' She leaned over further to peer at the spidery scrawl across the corner. ' 'Remember the——' What is it, Simon? It looks like 'Rinksty.' '

'You're as good a