My first feeling was one of immense relief, especially at the last words.  I read the letter a dozen times to make sure I had its meaning.  A flash of suspicion crossed my mind that it might be a fake, principally because there was no mention of Peter, who had figured large in the other missives.  But why should Peter be mentioned when he wasn’t on in this piece?  The signature convinced me.  Ordinarily Blenkiron signed himself in full with a fine commercial flourish.  But when I was at the Front he had got into the habit of making a kind of hieroglyphic of his surname to me and sticking J.S. after it in a bracket.  That was how this letter was signed, and it was sure proof it was all right.

I spent that day and the next in wild spirits.  Peter spotted what was on, though I did not tell him for fear of making him envious.  I had to be extra kind to him, for I could see that he ached to have a hand in the business.  Indeed he asked shyly if I couldn’t fit him in, and I had to lie about it and say it was only another of my aimless circumnavigations of the Pink Chalet.

‘Try and find something where I can help,’ he pleaded.  ’I’m pretty strong still, though I’m lame, and I can shoot a bit.’

I declared that he would be used in time, that Blenkiron had promised he would be used, but for the life of me I couldn’t see how.

At nine o’clock on the evening appointed I was on the lake opposite the house, close in under the shore, making my way to the rendezvous.  It was a coal-black night, for though the air was clear the stars were shining with little light, and the moon had not yet risen.  With a premonition that I might be long away from food, I had brought some slabs of chocolate, and my pistol and torch were in my pocket.  It was bitter cold, but I had ceased to mind weather, and I wore my one suit and no overcoat.

The house was like a tomb for silence.  There was no crack of light anywhere, and none of those smells of smoke and food which proclaim habitation.  It was an eerie job scrambling up the steep bank east of the place, to where the flat of the garden started, in a darkness so great that I had to grope my way like a blind man.

I found the little door by feeling along the edge of the building.  Then I stepped into an adjacent clump of laurels to wait on my companion.  He was there before me.

‘Say,’ I heard a rich Middle West voice whisper, ’are you Joseph Zimmer?  I’m not shouting any names, but I guess you are the guy I was told to meet here.’

‘Mr Donne?’ I whispered back.

’The same,’he replied.  ‘Shake.’

I gripped a gloved and mittened hand which drew me towards the door.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I Lie on a Hard Bed

The journalist from Kansas City was a man of action.  He wasted no words in introducing himself or unfolding his plan of campaign.  ’You’ve got to follow me, mister, and not deviate one inch from my tracks.  The explaining part will come later.  There’s big business in this shack tonight.’  He unlocked the little door with scarcely a sound, slid the crust of snow from his boots, and preceded me into a passage as black as a cellar.  The door swung smoothly behind us, and after the sharp out-of-doors the air smelt stuffy as the inside of a safe.