During the afternoon she called up Mr. Travers at his office, and rather
gathered that he did not care to use the telephone during business hours.
"I just wanted to tell you that you need not bother about me any more,"
she said. "I am being sent over and I think everything is all right."
He was greatly relieved. Mrs. Travers had not fully indorsed his
encomiums of the girl. She had felt that no really nice girl would
travel so far on so precarious an errand, particularly when she was
alone. And how could one tell, coming from America, how her sympathies
really lay? She might be of German parentage--the very worst sort,
because they spoke American. It was easy enough to change a name.
Nevertheless, Mr. Travers felt a trifle low in his mind when he hung up
the receiver. He said twice to himself: "Twenty pounds!" And at last
he put four sovereigns in an envelope and sent them to her anonymously
by messenger. Sara Lee guessed whence they came, but she respected the
manner of the gift and did not thank him. It was almost the first gold
money she had ever seen.
She was very carefully searched at the railway station that night and
found that her American Red Cross button, which had come with her dollar
subscription to the association, made the matron inspector rather
kindly inclined. Nevertheless, she took off Sara Lee's shoes, and ran
over the lining of her coat, and quite ruined the maid's packing of the
suitcase.
"You are going to Boulogne?" asked the matron inspector.
Sara Lee did not like to lie.
"Wherever the boat takes me," she said with smile.
The matron smiled too.
"I shouldn't be nervous, miss," she said. "It's a chance, of course,
but they have not done much damage yet."
It was after midnight then, and a cold fog made the station a gloomy
thing of blurred yellow lights and raw chill. A few people moved about,
mostly officers in uniform. Half a dozen men in civilian clothes
eyed her as she passed through the gates; Scotland Yard, but she did not
know. And once she thought she saw Henri, but he walked away into the
shadows and disappeared. The train, looking as absurdly small and light
as all English trains do, was waiting out in the shed. There were no
porters, and Sara Lee carried her own bag.
She felt quite sure she had been mistaken about Henri, for of course
he would have come and carried it for her.