"Is there anything I can do for you? Halkett and I became the very best of friends. I should be very glad of the opportunity to do anything for his friends—" he hesitated, smiled again—"or for any British officer."
"I’m Gray," said the man on the bed, in a weak voice.
"I think Halkett was expecting somebody named Gray the first night he spent at the Saïs inn. Was it you?"
"I know what it was," said Gray quietly. "How much did Halkett tell you?"
"Very little, Mr. Gray. I understood that you were to come to Saïs on a motor cycle, carrying with you a very important paper. Halkett waited day after day. He seemed to be under a very great strain. All he said to me was that something serious must have happened to you, because the paper you carried was necessary to supplement the one he carried."
"Yes. But somehow or other he got possession of the paper you had in your charge—or a copy of it."
Gray’s youthful face quivered with excitement.
"A messenger came. Halkett was alone. The messenger pretended to come from you, and he gained Halkett’s confidence by giving him the paper you carried, or a copy of it.
"The moment Halkett was off his guard, the fellow knocked him insensible, and would have robbed him of both papers if a young girl—a Miss Wildresse—had not tackled the fellow, and held him off with magnificent pluck until I came in and found what was going on. Then the fellow cleared out—got clean away, I regret to say. That is how the thing happened. I’m very glad to be able to reassure you, Mr. Gray."
"Thanks, awfully. It’s been hell not to know. You see, I was hurt; the beggars got me. I’ve been lying in a cottage down the road a bit—I don’t know where. I was badly knocked out—knocked silly, you know—fever and all that.... I woke up the other day. Couldn’t get the people to stir—tried to make ’em hunt up Halkett. They were just stupid—kind, but stupid. Finally one of their kiddies, who comes to school here, told Sister Eila that there was a sick _Anglais_ in his daddy’s cottage—" He looked up at her as he spoke and she smiled. "—And Sister Eila, being all kinds of an angel of mercy, came all the way there to investigate.... And she wheeled me back here in a _charette_! What do you think of that, Mr. Warner?"