"He must have left a will of some kind," said Lord Eskerley.
"He made one before he went to France," I replied; "but that has been invalidated by his marriage. It doesn't really matter; because everything—the baronetcy, Baronrigg, and so on—will pass automatically to the child."
"Still, you know what lawyers are when a man dies intestate! There will be nothing left worth scraping up if we don't provide something of a documentary nature for them to bite on. Didn't they find anything in his pockets, when they—found him?"
"Nothing but his cigarette-case, and Marjorie's last letter."
We were standing in the outer library of Lord Eskerley's great house in Curzon Street. It was a bright morning in May, and the sun, streaming between the heavy window-curtains, made the rest of the room look more than usually funereal by comparison. At one end, double doors opened into his lordship's sanctum sanctorum, where few but the faithful Meadows ever presumed to track him. At the other yawned a great empty fireplace, with a curiously carved mantelpiece, over which hung Millais' radiant portrait of Lady Eskerley as a bride.
Beside the fire-place stood the secretary's own particular writing-table. To the wall just above it was fixed an incongruously modern-looking telephone switch-board. Lord Eskerley's eye fell on this; and he was off in a moment down one of his usual by-paths.
"Private wire, and so on!" he explained. "Meadows had it put in. He just pushes a few buttons, and puts a plug in a hole; and I can telephone not only to the outside world but direct to the office, or the War Cabinet, or to my own bathroom. Wonderful invention! Wonderful fellow! It's the devil, though, when he goes out for a walk: I'm no good at it myself. I tried to ring up the P.M. the other day, and found myself breathing private and confidential war secrets to my own laundry-maid. By the way, have you looked through those things yet? You may find what you want there."
He pointed to the corner of the room, where a mud-stained, sun-bleached Wolseley valise of green Willesden canvas lay rolled and strapped. It had once been Roy's, and had arrived the previous day, forwarded to me as next-of-kin, bearing that pitiful designation: "Deceased Officers Effects."
"I will go through it this morning," I said, "and report. Eric is coming along; he'll help me. By the way, how is Marjorie to-day? Eric is sure to want to know."
"Why should he want to know—eh? Why this solicitude?"
"I don't know. He always does. Why shouldn't he take an interest in her, like the rest of us?"
But plainly my old friend was not quite satisfied.
"To take an interest in a beautiful young widow is right and proper," he said—"especially if you happen to be an eligible D.S.O. But not too premature an interest, please! Bethune is a gallant soldier; but fine feeling never was his forte." Suddenly the old man blazed up. "Good God! Has he realised that the poor child doesn't even know she is a widow?"
That Eric should be taking, or ever have taken, a more than fatherly interest in Marjorie was news to me. I am not very perceptive in these matters; but the possibility of such a thing explained a good deal to me—Eric's persistent dislike of Roy, for instance. Still, I had no desire to pursue the topic; and switched accordingly.
"I am afraid she will have to be told now," I said. "It's in the paper this morning. People will be writing to condole, and so on."
"I know," said Lord Eskerley. "I shall tell her myself—this afternoon." He shook his white head sorrowfully. "It will be pretty awful, though: a woman ought to do it really." He glanced up at the portrait of his long dead wife. "We will give her one more morning, poor little soul! Hark!"
The door into the hall stood open; so, apparently, did the door of Marjorie's room, on the first floor above us. As we stood, we could hear her voice uplifted in a somewhat exaggerated apostrophe to her own son; also that self-satisfied infant's gurgling reception of the same. Mother and son, by the way, had been in the house for more than three weeks, having been conveyed thither from a nursing home in Kensington, where, thanks to the timely warning of a flamboyant but attractive young person named Liss Lyle, we had been constrained to look for them. Miss Lyle was now our constant visitor, and had completely enmeshed the hitherto impregnable Meadows.
"Extraordinary gibberish, baby talk!" remarked Lord Eskerley. "Primeval, of course, and quite unaltered through the ages." Then, suddenly:
"Poor child, she's had a hard time! Three years of exhausting self-imposed drudgery—then maternity! And now she has to be told that she's a widow. My God, Alan, how I hate Wilhelm sometimes! And he once dined in this house!"
"What is the news, by the way?" I asked.
"Good, decidedly good! I think we have the Boche cold at last. Internally Germany is on her last legs. Only one thing could have braced her up—a spectacular success last March. As things turned out, that enterprise went off at half-cock—though it gave us a most salutary scare. Now our morale is returning: Foch has the situation well in hand. I fancy he will encourage the enemy to attack a little longer: then, when he has blown a few more swollen salients in our line, come right back at him and puncture them one by one. That and the arrival of the Americans—they are splendid troops, I hear, and are being rushed over at the rate of three hundred thousand a month now—should put the last nail into the Teutonic coffin." The old man paused, and sighed. "Not before it was time, though! Our casualties passed the three million mark the other day, Alan! Still, our tribulations of the past three months may have been worth while. They have taught us two things: firstly, that this blundering, flat-footed old country of ours retains its ancient staying-power; secondly, never to be too cocksure about winning until you have won! What time is he coming?"
"Eleven o'clock," I replied, concluding that this lightning reference was to Eric.
"Umph! I have to be at Downing Street at twelve. Meanwhile, I shall be in my own inner chamber if you want me. Good-bye! There are cigarettes in that box. Poor little girl!"
The double doors closed, and I was left alone.
I unstrapped Roy's valise without much difficulty—my comminuted collar-bone was mending nicely, though I had been warned that I might never be able to wield a salmon-rod again—and emptied out its jumbled contents on to the floor. At the same moment Eric was announced.
"Come along," I said, "and get that new tin arm of yours to work. Sort out everything in the shape of papers from that mess, and let us go through them."
"Are we looking for anything in particular?" asked Eric, reluctantly setting to work. He always hated drudgery.
"Roy's will."
Eric nodded; and laid a heap of documents on the table. There was a tattered sheaf of battalion orders; an old field dispatch book, a number of maps; and a bundle of letters.
"I fancy the letters are from Marjorie," I said. "We need not bother to read them."
"How is she, by the way?" asked Eric, looking up.
"Getting along, I believe."
"One would like to show her any little kindness that is possible," Eric continued. "One has sent her flowers, of course, and so on. Is there anything else? I wonder if she would like to see me? It would probably do her good."
It was the old touch. I smiled despite myself.
"I wouldn't suggest it at present, if I were you," I said. "She is to have some news broken to her this afternoon."
"You mean—?"
I nodded.
"It's in the paper this morning," I said. "The War Office telegram we could keep from her; but not that."
Eric was silent, and began to turn over the papers.
"These maps had better go back to Ordnance," he remarked. "They ought to have been taken out at Battalion Headquarters, by rights. Some of these old Orders are interesting: they have a musty flavour now. Listen to this":
The C.O. has observed that N.C.O.'s and Men are falling into the habit of washing their gas-helmets.
"Do you remember those noisome old flannel jelly-bags, Alan?"
"I do! They were abolished, as far as I can remember, about the middle of nineteen sixteen."
"Yes, that's right. They were about as much use as the sick headache which they produced."
Officers Commanding Companies will see that this practice is discontinued at once. Helmets so washed are entirely useless against a gas attack.
"Still," I commented, "if you wore them unwashed you died whether there was a gas attack on or not; so altogether, I don't blame the washers!"
"Hallo," continued Eric; "here's a billet-doux from Corps Headquarters."
"What is it?"
Eric grinned.
"Mules, Brief Notes on the Treatment of. They do manage to think of things on Olympus!..."
The mule is much more dainty about what he drinks than about what he eats.
"I think that's true: my last consignment ate seventeen nose-bags and three pack-saddles in a single night."
The mule is not really of a vicious disposition; he is only shy and nervous, and is very responsive to petting—
"So am I, for that matter! But let's get on, Eric. Here's a field despatch book. It has been lying in a puddle, I fancy: these carbon duplicates have run a bit. Never mind! I don't suppose there is anything of importance inside it."
"The only legible despatch is the last one," said Eric, turning over the pages. "A pretty stately epistle, too! Listen!"
To O.C. 7th Battalion, the Grampian Regiment.
Sir,—Reference your FZ/357, in which it is stated that the one hundred picks and shovels which this Battalion was directed to hand over to yours on the 16th inst. were handed over deficient five picks and four shovels; I am to inform you that an N.C.O. was duly sent in charge of the picks and shovels in a G.S. Waggon to Bluepoint Farm at seven a.m. on that date, and there handed over the full number of picks and shovels to an N.C.O. of your Battalion, who counted them and gave a receipt for same, a copy of which I now enclose.
Your obedient servant,
R. T. C. Birnie, Lieut.,
For Lt.-Col. Commanding
2nd Battalion, Royal Covenanters.
"That fairly puts it across the Grampian Regiment!" was Eric's verdict. "I congratulate you!"
"It was Roy who was responsible," I said. "He got me out of a nasty mess with the C.R.E. by producing that receipt. He was a grand adjutant, bless him!"
Eric continued to turn over the leaves of the despatch book.
"There is nothing in the shape of a will or testament here," he said at last. "No; wait a minute; there's something in the pocket of the flap."
He held the pocket open, and shook out its contents on to the table cloth—two faded slips of pinkish paper.
"These don't look very promising," he said. "Field telegraph despatches!"
He unfolded the first slip, smoothed it out, and read aloud:
The expression "Dud" will no longer be employed in Official Correspondence.
He laughed. "There's Staff work for you!"
"Eric—!" I began suddenly. Some inward monitor had jerked an alarm-cord in my brain. Where had I heard that message before? And in conjunction with what? I leaned across the table and stretched out my hand; but already Eric had unfolded the second despatch, and was smoothing it out with the wrist of his artificial arm. I noticed that a covering slip was pinned to the despatch.
Passed to you, read Eric—for immediate compliance, please.—J. E. F.
"That was old Forrester, the Brigade Major. It sounds quite urgent; I wonder what it is all about."
"Eric—!" I said again. Then, suddenly, I held my peace. Who was I, to interfere with God?
"Hallo," continued Eric—"here's my name!"
Lieutenant-Colonel E. F. B. Bethune, D.S.O., Commanding Second Battalion Royal Covenanters—
He stopped suddenly—as I knew he would. I looked up, and watched his face go white, as he read the message to the end. I saw him re-read it, again and again. Then he examined the date, and hour of despatch. Then came a long, deathly silence.
At last he lifted his face to me—the face of a man suddenly aged. He pushed the pink slip in my direction.
"Have you ever seen that before?" he asked, in a hoarse voice.
I read the message mechanically through, though I knew it by heart. It said:
Lt.-Col E. F. B. Bethune, D.S.O., Commanding Second Battalion, Royal Covenanters, will return home forthwith, and report to War Office.