I was staying in Canterbury with Norah for the weekend, and I heard all about it.  He did seem to have been rather funny.  He had begun with a scheme for taking out a Red Cross Motor Field Ambulance which he proposed to command in person.  He had offered himself with his convoy first to the War Office, then to the Admiralty, then to the War Office again, and the War Office and the Admiralty kicked him out.  Then he had gone round to each of the Red Cross Societies in turn, the American included.  And they had all got their own schemes for Motor Field Ambulances, and didn’t want his.  What they did want was his subscriptions and his powerful pen to support their schemes.  And Jevons had said, “Damn my powerful pen!” to every one of them.  As for subscriptions, he subscribed enormously to his own Motor Ambulance Corps.  He had actually raised his unit, found his volunteers, his surgeons, his chauffeurs and his stretcher-bearers, he had bought and equipped a Motor Ambulance car, the one he had proposed to go with himself.  And they took his subscriptions and his Ambulance Car and his volunteers; but they wouldn’t take him; no, not at any price.  They put one of his surgeons at the head of the thing instead of him and sent it out without him, and Jimmy had to see it go.  But when they proposed that Jimmy should use his powerful pen to maintain it in the field, he swore that he would use it to expose the whole system.  And when he found that the responsibility for rejecting his services rested with the War Office, he went down to the War Office and complained, and to the Admiralty and complained, and to the Home Office and complained.  After that he seems to have visited all the Embassies in turn—­the American, the French, the Belgian, and I suppose the Russian and the Japanese.

When I asked the Thesigers what he was doing now they said they didn’t know.  They hadn’t heard of him and his activities for quite a fortnight, and they didn’t bother about him.  They were too much wrapped up in Bertie and in Reggie, even if they hadn’t been too busy—­every one of them up to their necks in work for the Army or the hospitals.  They admitted that he had sent them large subscriptions.

It seemed to me, as far as I could make out, that Viola hadn’t seen or heard of him since she had left Amershott.  She was too busy and too much wrapped in Reggie to bother about him either; at least, it looked like it.  She seems to have known in a vague way that he had talked about going to the front, but I didn’t believe she thought he would ever get there.

And he had lain low for a fortnight.

When we had got back to London at noon on Tuesday, which was the end of Jimmy’s fortnight, I found a wire from Amershott waiting for me.  It had been sent that morning.  It said:  “Leaving to-morrow.  Must see you urgent business.  Can you come down this evening.  JEVONS.”

I knew that he wouldn’t send a wire like that without good reason; so I went.