The conversation was scanty. John Silence’s grave face did not encourage talk. He wore the expression I knew well⁠—that look of earnest solicitude which meant that his whole being was deeply absorbed and preoccupied. Frightened, I had never seen him, but anxious often⁠—it always moved me to witness it⁠—and he was anxious now.

“On the way back you shall see the laundry building,” Colonel Wragge observed shortly, for he, too, found little to say. “We shall attract less attention then.”

Yet not all the crisp beauty of the morning seemed able to dispel the feelings of uneasy dread that gathered increasingly about our minds as we went.