My brain was still halting, so I turned to Francis. Here again I had to
go back. Francis, rejected on all sides for active service, owing to
what he scornfully used to call "the shirkers' ailment, varicose veins,"
had flatly declined to carry on with his motor business after Dicky had
joined up, although their firm was doing government work. Finally, he
had vanished into the maw of the War Office and all I knew was that he
was "something on the Intelligence." More than this not even _he_ would
tell me, and when he finally disappeared from London, just about the
time that I was popping the parapet with my battalion at Neuve Chapelle,
he left me his London chambers as his only address for letters.

Ah! now it was all coming back--Francis' infrequent letters to me about
nothing at all, then his will, forwarded to me for safe keeping when I
was home on leave last Christmas, and after that, silence. Not another
letter, not a word about him, not a shred of information. He had utterly
vanished.

I remembered my frantic inquiries, my vain visits to the War Office, my
perplexity at the imperturbable silence of the various officials I
importuned for news of my poor brother. Then there was that lunch at the
Bath Club with Sonny Martin of the Heavies and a friend of his, some
kind of staff captain in red tabs. I don't think I heard his name, but I
know he was at the War Office, and presently over our cigars and coffee
I laid before him the mysterious facts about my brother's case.

"Perhaps you knew Francis?" I said in conclusion. "Yes," he replied, "I
know him well." "_Know_ him," I repeated, "_know_ him then ... then you
think ... you have reason to believe he is still alive...?"

Red Tabs cocked his eye at the gilded cornice of the ceiling and blew a