with some difficulty I clambered down from the exultant heights. The
intoxication of the thing was on me--the winter night, the circle of
light in that dreary room, the sudden coming together of two souls from
the ends of the earth, the realization of my wildest hopes, the gilding
and glorifying of all the future. But she had always twice as much
wisdom as me, and we were in the midst of a campaign which had no use
for day-dreaming. I turned my attention to the desk.

It was a flat table with drawers, and at the back a half-circle of more
drawers with a central cupboard. I tilted it up and most of the drawers
slid out, empty of anything but dust. I forced two open with my knife
and they held empty cigar boxes. Only the cupboard remained, and that
appeared to be locked. I wedged a key from my pocket into its keyhole,
but the thing would not budge.

'It's no good,' I said. 'He wouldn't leave anything he valued in a
place like this. That sort of fellow doesn't take risks. If he wanted
to hide something there are a hundred holes in this Chateau which would
puzzle the best detective.'

'Can't you open it?' she asked. 'I've a fancy about that table. He was
sitting here this afternoon and he may be coming back.'

I solved the problem by turning up the escritoire and putting my knee
through the cupboard door. Out of it tumbled a little dark-green
attache case.

'This is getting solemn,' said Mary. 'Is it locked?'

It was, but I took my knife and cut the lock out and spilled the
contents on the table. There were some papers, a newspaper or two, and
a small bag tied with black cord. The last I opened, while Mary looked
over my shoulder. It contained a fine yellowish powder.

'Stand back,' I said harshly. 'For God's sake, stand back and don't
breathe.'

With trembling hands I tied up the bag again, rolled it in a newspaper,
and stuffed it into my pocket. For I remembered a day near Peronne when
a Boche plane had come over in the night and had dropped little bags
like this. Happily they were all collected, and the men who found them
were wise and took them off to the nearest laboratory. They proved to
be full of anthrax germs ...

I remembered how Eaucourt Sainte-Anne stood at the junction of a dozen
roads where all day long troops passed to and from the lines. From such
a vantage ground an enemy could wreck the health of an army ...

I remembered the woman I had seen in the courtyard of this house in the
foggy dusk, an