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“What’s to be done?” I asked.

“I think I can tinker it up; but we’ve got to have more essence to go on with.”

I stared at him in despair: it was a good hour’s walk back to the lines, and we weren’t so sure of getting any gasolene when we got there! But there was no help for it; and as Rechamp was dead lame, no alternative but for me to go.

I opened the ambulance door, gave another look at the motionless man inside and took out a remedy which I handed over to Rechamp with a word of explanation. “You know how to give a hypo? Keep a close eye on him and pop this in if you see a change–not otherwise.”

He nodded. “Do you suppose he’ll die?” he asked below his breath.

“No, I don’t. If we get him to the hospital before morning I think he’ll pull through.”

“Oh, all right.” He unhooked one of the motor lanterns and handed it over to me. “I’ll do my best,” he said as I turned away.

Getting back to the lines through that pitch-black forest, and finding somebody to bring the gasolene back for me was about the weariest job I ever tackled. I couldn’t imagine why it wasn’t daylight when we finally got to the place where I had left the motor. It seemed to me as if I had been gone twelve hours when I finally caught sight of the grey bulk of the car through the thinning darkness.

Rechamp came forward to meet us, and took hold of my arm as I was opening the door of the car. “The man’s dead,” he said.

I had lifted up my pocket-lamp, and its light fell on Rechamp’s face, which was perfectly composed, and seemed less gaunt and drawn than at any time since we had started on our trip.

“Dead? Why–how? What happened? Did you give him the hypodermic?” I stammered, taken aback.

“No time to. He died in a minute.”

“How do you know he did? Were you with him?”

“Of course I was with him,” Rechamp retorted, with a sudden harshness which made me aware that I had grown harsh myself. But I had been almost sure the man wasn’t anywhere near death when I left him. I opened the door of the ambulance and climbed in with my lantern. He didn’t appear to have moved, but he was dead sure enough–had been for two or three hours, by the feel of him. It must have happened not long after I left…. Well, I’m not a doctor, anyhow….

I don’t think Rechamp and I exchanged a word during the rest of that run. But it was my fault and not his if we didn’t. By the mere rub of his sleeve against mine as we sat side by side on the motor I knew he was conscious of no bar between us: he had somehow got back, in the night’s interval, to a state of wholesome stolidity, while I, on the contrary, was tingling all over with exposed nerves.

I was glad enough when we got back to the base at last, and the grim load we carried was lifted out and taken into the hospital. Rechamp waited in the courtyard beside his car, lighting a cigarette in the cold early sunlight; but I followed the bearers and the surgeon into the whitewashed room where the dead man was laid out to be undressed. I had a burning spot at the pit of my stomach while his clothes were ripped off him and the bandages undone: I couldn’t take my eyes from the surgeon’s face. But the surgeon, with a big batch of wounded on his hands, was probably thinking more of the living than the dead; and besides, we were near the front, and the body before him was an enemy’s.

He finished his examination and scribbled something in a note-book. “Death must have taken place nearly five hours ago,” he merely remarked: it was the conclusion I had already come to myself.

“And how about the papers?” the surgeon continued. “You have them, I suppose? This way, please.”

We left the half-stripped body on the blood-stained oil-cloth, and he led me into an office where a functionary sat behind a littered desk.

“The papers? Thank you. You haven’t examined them? Let us see, then.”

I handed over the leather note-case I had thrust into my pocket the evening before, and saw for the first time its silver-edged corners and the coronet in one of them. The official took out the papers and spread them on the desk between us. I watched him absently while he did so.

Suddenly he uttered an exclamation. “Ah–that’s a haul!” he said, and pushed a bit of paper toward me. On it was engraved the name: Oberst Graf Benno von Scharlach….

“A good riddance,” said the surgeon over my shoulder.

I went back to the courtyard and saw Rechamp still smoking his cigarette in the cold sunlight. I don’t suppose I’d been in the hospital ten minutes; but I felt as old as Methuselah.

My friend greeted me with a smile. “Ready for breakfast?” he said, and a little chill ran down my spine…. But I said: “Oh, all right–come along….”

For, after all, I knew there wasn’t a paper of any sort on that man when he was lifted into my ambulance the night before: the French officials attend to their business too carefully for me not to have been sure of that. And there wasn’t the least shred of evidence to prove that he hadn’t died of his wounds during the unlucky delay in the forest; or that Rechamp had known his tank was leaking when we started out from the lines.

“I could do with a cafe complet, couldn’t you?” Rechamp suggested, looking straight at me with his good blue eyes; and arm in arm we started off to hunt for the inn….