"It is the uniform, and the dirt perhaps, and the very poor light," said the Frenchman apologetically.
"But you--pardon, monsieur, I mean the other of the three--I did not see him; and monsieur will perhaps understand that I am deeply interested in the rest of the story."
The third man did not answer. A sort of momentary, weird and breathless silence had settled on the thicket, on all around, on the night, save only for the whining of some oncoming thing through the air. Whine ... whine ... _whine_. The nerves, tautened, loosened, were jangling things. The third man raised his rifle. And somewhere the whining shell burst. And in the thicket a minor crash; a flash, gone on the instant, eye-blinding.
"I think he was done in anyway," said the third man calmly. "It was as well to make sure."
"Monsieur," said the Frenchman, "I have always heard that you were incomparable. I salute you! As you said, you had not forgotten. We can speak at ease now. The rest of the story--"
"Come to me in London--after the war," he said, "and I will tell it to you. And perhaps there will be--other things to talk about."
"I shall be honoured," said the Frenchman. "We three! I begin to understand now. A house should not be divided against itself. Is it not so? We should go far! It is fate to-night that--"
"My Gawd!" The first man began to laugh--a cracked, jarring laugh. "After the war, the blinking war--after _hell_! There ain't no end, there ain't no--"
And then a flare hung again in the heavens, and in the thicket three men sat huddled against the tree trunks, torn, ragged and dishevelled men, but they were not staring into each others' faces now; they were staring, their eyes magnetically attracted, at a spot on the ground where a man, a man murdered, should be lying.
The East End being, as it were, more akin to the technique and the mechanics of the thing, applauded the craftsmanship; the West End, a little grimly on the part of the men, and with a loquacity not wholly free from nervousness on the part of the women, wondered who would be next.
"The cove as is runnin' that show," said the East End, with its tongue delightedly in its cheek, "knows 'is wye abaht. Wish I was 'im!"
"The police are nincompoops!" said the outraged masculine West End. "Absolutely!"