"Your house, Madame," I suggested craftily, with a view to
reconnoissance, "is, of course, full?"
She heaved a sigh.
"It is war-time, Monsieur," she lamented. "None travel now. Yet why
should I mourn, since I make enough to keep me till the war is ended
and my man comes home? There are those who eat here daily at the noon
hour--the cure, the mayor, the mayor's secretary, sometimes the notary
of the town, as well. And to-night I have two guests, monsieur and the
young lady--the nurse who goes to the hospital at Carrefonds with the
great new remedy for burns and scars. _Au revoir, Monsieur_. In one
little moment I will send the hot water, and in half an hour monsieur
shall dine."
I closed the door behind her and flung down my bag, fuming. So Miss
Falconer was a nurse, carrying a panacea to the wounded, doubtless a
specimen of the sensational new remedy just recognized by the medical
authorities, of which the one newspaper I had glanced through in Paris
had been full. The masquerade was too preposterous to gain an instant's
credence. It gave me, as the French say, furiously to think; it resolved
all doubts.
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