The train chugged on into the dusk, stopping for no apparent reason every ten minutes, as is the habit of military trains behind all battle-fronts. In normal times the journey from Brussels to Ghent would not have taken more than an hour, but it was past ten when they reached Alost, which was only about half-way, and everybody was ordered out as the train was going no further, having reached rail-head.
Gregory was now within sound of the guns again and the principal activity seemed to be to the south, although he had only a vague idea as to the position of the constantly-changing front. As far as he had been able to gather, the British had put up a magnificent show during the last eight days and had been forced back only to about thirty miles south and west of Brussels, but, although they were heavily outnumbered, the greatest hammer-blows of the Germans were not being directed against them. The enemy's maximum effort, after they had reached the coast, had been directed against the French in the Rethel area, south of the Maginot Line, and in the extreme north against the Belgians. The Belgians were said to have been standing well, but on the previous night the Germans had forced them back and captured Ghent, so it seemed that the B.E.F. who were holding the line of the Scheldt were now in some danger of being outflanked both from the north and from the south; but that was as far as he could assess the position.
Outside the station there were a number of military cars and going up to one of them which had only two officers in it he asked its occupants if they could give him a lift in the direction of Ghent. They said that they were going there and would be happy to oblige the Herr Oberst, so he got in and they moved off into the long line of German mechanised vehicles which for many days now had been streaming without cessation towards the west.
The officer who was driving took every advantage that he could in slipping past slower vehicles and long columns of marching infantry, but even so, their pace was appallingly slow. Gregory swapped cigarettes and stories with his two companions but he was burning with impatience to get to Ghent. Erika would not be there any longer as the Germans had entered the town the previous night, but once he reached Ghent he felt confident that he would be able to secure fresh tidings of her.
Twice on their way they had to pull up and take shelter in the nearest ditch, as the R.A.F. were strafing the German lines of communication; and for minutes at a time bombs whined, crashed and thudded a few hundred yards away on or near the road. In each case the raids caused further delay as wrecked tanks, lorries and guns had to be hauled from the road afterwards and the casualties collected before the column could move on again; but shortly after midnight they reached their destination.
The sound of the guns was much louder now as a night bombardment was taking place only a few miles away. Gregory thanked the two officers who had given him a lift and left them in the Butter Market to hurry to the Hotel de la Poste. Ghent had suffered severely from German air-raids and in several parts of the city fires were still burning, but to his relief he found the hotel undamaged. There were no civilian guests in it, but it was crowded with German officers snatching a hasty meal and a drink before going forward to join their regiments or turning in for a few hours' sleep, and it looked as though the over-worked staff would be kept up all night.
After some little delay Gregory succeeded in getting hold of the manager. He recalled Erika perfectly and said that he had not been able to accommodate her in the hotel, but had secured a room for her near the University, at Number 17 Rue des Foulons; he had, however, seen nothing of her since. Carrying his suitcase, Gregory then picked his way through streets littered with broken glass, tiles and rubble round to the Rue des Foulons and finding Number 17, after some difficulty, hammered on the door.
It was opened to him almost immediately by an elderly, bespectacled man who looked like a University professor. Although it was getting on for one o'clock in the morning he and his wife were still up, as a few days before their only daughter had been seriously wounded in an air-raid and they were watching by the poor girl's bedside while she hovered between life and death.
Having described Erika, Gregory asked for news of her, and the owner of the house said at once that the beautiful Norwegian lady had occupied their spare room by arrangement with the hotel from the afternoon of Tuesday the 14th until midday on the previous Thursday, when she had left in a great hurry.
He and his wife had been out at the time and although it was possible that the lady had left a message with his daughter, there was no means of knowing if that was so, as she had been wounded little more than an hour afterwards and had been unconscious ever since.
Gregory had naturally expected that Erika would have left another note for him to say for what town she was making, but if she had had to get out in a great hurry it was possible that she had not known herself where she would next be able to take up her quarters with a reasonable chance of keeping out of the clutches of the enemy for some days. It then occurred to him that she might have considered it unwise to leave any written message for him with these people but had left some indication of her general intentions which would be plain to him; so he asked politely if he might see the room that she had occupied.
The professorial-looking Belgian nodded and, his shoulders bowed from weariness, led Gregory upstairs to a pleasantly-furnished bedroom at the back of the house. It was just as Erika had left it since, with a dying daughter on their hands, the people of the house had been much too occupied to make the bed or tidy things up.
Gregory would have liked to have buried his face in the pillow where Erika's lovely head had rested, but he was too self-conscious to do so in the presence of the Belgian. Perhaps it was his imagination, but he thought that he could just catch the faintest lingering breath of the perfume that she used in the room, which seemed to bring her very close to him and, recalling his recent despair, he felt that Fate had dealt a little harshly with him in allowing him to pass through Ghent with Peachie Fostoun on Friday the 17th when, had he only known that Erika had already taken up her quarters there, he would have been spared those nine days in Brussels and an infinity of misery.
The householder recalled him to the present by asking if, having seen the room, he was satisfied.
Gregory shook his head and, stepping forward, began to open all the drawers in the handsome old chests one after another; but there was nothing in any of them.
For the next ten minutes he poked around, looking behind pictures and in cupboards, still hoping that he would find some indication as to where Erika had made for; but he could see nothing at all in the room which might hold a clue until his eye fell upon a pack of patience cards lying on a small side-table.
They were Erika's and he knew that during his absences from her she often played patience far into the night to keep her mind off her anxieties; so it seemed strange that she should have forgotten to pack them. At the second glance he noticed that although the cards were in a neat stack the top one was torn clean in half. That could hardly have been an accident, with a sudden rising sense of excitement he felt that Erika must have left the little pack of cards there with the top one deliberately torn across to attract his attention to some message that they held.