Unhappily, the K. M. put his hand in his inside coat pocket and, with intense surprise, as though he had performed a conjuring trick, produced a paper that creaked and crinkled.
"You come with me," commanded Scotland Yard, "before you lose it again."
Two nights later, between the acts at a theatre, I met a young old friend. Twenty years before we had made a trip through Central America and Venezuela. To my surprise, for I had known him in other wars, he was not in khaki, but in white waistcoat and lawn tie and tail-coat. He looked as though he had on his hand nothing more serious than money and time. I complained that we had not met since the war.
"It's a chance, our meeting to-night," he said, "for I start for Cairo in the morning. I left the Dardanelles last Wednesday and arrived here only to-day."
"Wednesday!" I exclaimed. "How could you do it?"
"Torpedo-boat from Moudros to Malta," he explained, "transport to Marseilles, troop train to Calais, and there our people shot me across the Channel on a hospital ship. Then I got a special to town."
"You _are_ a swell!" I gasped. "What's your rank?"
It was not yet nine-thirty. The anti-treating law would not let me give him a drink, but I led him to where one was. For he had restored my faith. He had replaced on his pedestal my favorite character in fiction.
On returning to London for the fourth time since the war began, but after an absence of months, one finds her much nearer to the field of operations. A year ago her citizens enjoyed the confidence that comes from living on an island. Compared with Paris, where at Claye the enemy was within fifteen miles, and, at the Forest of Montmorency, within ten miles, London seemed as far removed from the front as Montreal. Since then, so many of her men have left for the front and not returned, so many German air-ships have visited her, and inhumanly assassinated her children and women, that she seems a part of it. A year ago an officer entering a restaurant was conscious of his uniform. To-day, anywhere in London, a man out of uniform, or not wearing a khaki armlet, is as conspicuous as a scarlet letter-box. A year ago the lamps had been so darkened that it was not easy to find the keyhole to your street door. Now you are in luck if you find the street. Nor does that mean you have lingered long at dinner. For after nine-thirty nowhere in London can you buy a drink, not at your hotel, not even at your club. At nine-thirty the waiter whisks your drink off the table. What happens to it after that, only the waiter knows.