On the Channel boat ... but perhaps it is fairer to all parties to omit that part.

At Boulogne I became inextricably mixed up with the Customs’ people; Geraldine meanwhile got inevitably associated with George Nesbitt.  She would, of course.  Indeed, when at last I scrambled to the Paris train, with the cord of my pyjamas trailing from my kit-bag, there was Geraldine installed in George’s special carriage, very sympathetically studying George’s passport, wherein all Foreign Powers, great, small and medium-sized, were invited in red ink to regard George as It.

George informed me that, being a King’s Messenger, he was afraid he dare not trust me, as a mere member of the public, to travel in the same carriage as the Diplomatic Bag.  I said I must stay with them and keep an eye on Geraldine.  George said that he would do that.  In that case, I said, I would stay and keep an eye on the Diplomatic Bag.  Geraldine being at one end of the carriage and the bag being at the other end George could not very well keep an eye on both.  The possibility of George’s eyes wandering apart when he was off his guard made a fleeting impression on Geraldine in my favour.  I stayed.

George then set about to make the most of himself.  Geraldine abetted.  Geraldine is a terror.  I became more determined than ever to marry her, George and the KING notwithstanding.  George however got going.  “For a plain fellow like myself” (he knows how confoundedly handsome he is) “it has been some little satisfaction to be selected as a Special Courier.”

I explained the method of selection as I guessed it.  “He forced his way into the F.O. and in an obsequious tone, which you and I, Geraldine, would be ashamed to adopt, begged for the favour of a bag to carry with him.  If the KING had known about it he would rather have sent his messages by post.”

“The general public,” said George to Geraldine, “is apt to be very noisy and tiresome on railway journeys, is it not?”

Geraldine acquiesced.  She doesn’t often do that, but when she does it is extremely pleasant for the acquiescee.  I pressed on with my explanation desperately.  “I can hear poor old George pleading in a broken voice that he had to get to Paris and dared not go by himself.  So they listened to his sad story and gave him a bag to see him through, and it isn’t George who is taking the bag to Paris, but the bag which is taking George.”  To prevent him arguing I told Geraldine that you can tell a real K.M. by his Silver Greyhound badge, which he’ll show you if you doubt him, just as you can tell a stockbroker by his pearl tie-pin, which you can see for yourself.  This put George on his mettle.

“To think that to me are entrusted messages which may alter the map of Europe and change the history of the world!  But I mustn’t let my conceit run away with me, must I?” Positively I believe Geraldine at that began to play with the idea of doing what George said he mustn’t let his conceit do.  Anyhow I had half-an-hour to myself while she listened to the inner histories of European Courts and flirted with the Bearer of Despatches.  I was left gazing at the bag.