THE PAWNS COUNT

CHAPTER I


Mefiez-Vous!

Taisez-Vous!

Les Oreilles Ennemies Vous Ecoutent!

The usual little crowd was waiting in the lobby of a fashionable London
restaurant a few minutes before the popular luncheon hour. Pamela Van
Teyl, a very beautiful American girl, dressed in the extreme of
fashion, which she seemed somehow to justify, directed the attention of
her companions to the notice affixed to the wall facing them.

"Except," she declared, "for you poor dears who have been hurt, that is
the first thing I have seen in England which makes me realise that you
are at war."

The younger of her two escorts, Captain Richard Holderness, who wore
the uniform of a well-known cavalry regiment, glanced at the notice a
little impatiently.

"What rot it seems!" he exclaimed. "We get fed up with that sort of
thing in France. It's always the same at every little railway station
and every little inn. 'Mefiez-vous! Taisez-vous!' They might spare us
over here."

John Lutchester, a tall, clean-shaven man, dressed in civilian clothes,
raised his eyeglass and read out the notice languidly.

"Well, I don't know," he observed. "Some of you Service fellows--not
the Regulars, of course--do gas a good deal when you come back. I don't
suppose you any of you know anything, so it doesn't really matter," he
added, glancing at his watch.

"Army's full of Johnnies, who come from God knows where nowadays,"
Holderness assented gloomily. "No wonder they can't keep their mouths
shut."

"Seems to me you need them all," Miss Pamela Van Teyl remarked with a
smile.