It was a first-class chance to get inside
those rooms, to use my eyes, to sound this affair a little, to learn
whether these men were the girl's pursuers. As army officers they could
scarcely be her accomplices. Would they forestall me by arresting her,
by taking her back to Paris? It was astonishing how distasteful I found
the idea of that.
I told madame that I thought I knew, now, who the gentlemen were. I
climbed the west staircase with determination and knocked on the door of
the first room that had a light. A voice from within, vaguely familiar,
bade me enter, I did so immediately and closed the door.
Through an inner entrance I saw three men grouped about a table in
the next room, all smoking cigarettes, all clad in horizon blue. They
glanced up at me for a moment, and then, politely, they looked away. But
a fourth man, who had stood beside them, came striding out to meet me,
and I confronted Mr. John Van Blarcom face to face.
Officers fresh from the trenches have told me that one can lose through
sheer accustomedness all horror at the grim sights of warfare, all
consciousness of ear-splitting noises, all interest in gas and shrapnel
and bursting shells.
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