He had a room in the Domhof Hotel, and invited me to drink a whiskey with him there one evening. When I sat on the edge of the bed while he dispensed the drink, I noticed on his dressing-table a large photograph of a girl in evening dress--a wonderfully pretty girl, I thought. He caught my glance, and after a moment’s hesitation and a visible blush, said: “My wife.... We were married before I came out, two years ago exactly.” He put his hand into the breast-pocket of his tunic and pulling out a pocket-book, opened it with a snap, and showed me another photograph. “That’s a better one of her.” I congratulated him, but without listening to my words he asked me rather awkwardly whether I could pull any strings for him to get “demobbed.” “It’s all a question of ‘pull,’” he said, “and I’m not good at that kind of thing. But I want to get home.” “Everybody does,” I said. “Yes, I know, and of course I want to play the game, and all that. But the fact is, my wife--she’s only a kid, you know--is rather hipped with my long absence. She’s been trying to keep herself merry and bright, and all that, with the usual kind of war-work. You know--charity bazaars, fancy-dress balls for the wounded, Red Cross work, and all that. Very plucky, too. But the fact is, some of her letters lately have been rather--well--rather below par--you know--rather chippy and all that. The fact is, old man, she’s been too much alone, and anything you can do in the way of a pull at the War Office----” I told him bluntly that I had as much influence at the War Office as the charwoman in Room M.I. 8, or any other old room--not so much--and he was damped, and apologised for troubling me. However, I promised to write to the one High Bird with whom I had a slight acquaintance, and this cheered him up considerably. I stayed chatting for some time--the usual small-talk--and it was only when I said good-night that he broached another subject which interested me a good deal. “I’m getting a bit worried about Wickham Brand,” he remarked in a casual kind of way. “How’s that?” I gathered from Harding’s vague, disjointed sentences that Brand was falling into the clutches of a German hussy. He had seen them together at the Opera--they had met as if by accident--and one evening he had seen them together down by the Rhine outside Cologne. He was bound to admit the girl was remarkably good-looking, and that made her all the more dangerous. He hated to mention this, as it seemed like scandal-mongering about “one of the best,” but he was frightfully disturbed by the thought that Brand, of all men, should fall a victim to the wiles of a “lady Hun.” He knew Brand’s people at home--Sir Amyas Brand, the Member of Parliament, and his mother, who was a daughter of the Harringtons.