The paraphernalia around these two was the same as that around Westerling.  Only the atmosphere of the staff was different.  It had a quality of sober and buoyant alertness and fatality of determination rather than rigid confidence.  Otherwise, there was the same medley of typewriters and telegraph instruments, the same types of busy officers and clerks that occupied the Galland house.  To them, at least, war had brought no surprises.  Its routine was as they had anticipated it there in the big division headquarters building, dissociated from the actual experience of the intimate emotions of the front.  Each man was performing the part set for him.  No man knew much of any other man’s part.  Partow alone knew all, and Lanstron was trying to grasp all and praying that Partow’s old body should still feed his mind with energy.  Lanstron was thinner and paler, a new and glittering intensity in his eyes.

A messenger had just brought in two despatches from the telegraph room.  One was from the taciturn press bureau of the Grays which flashed into the Browns’ headquarters from a neutral country at the same time that it flashed around the world to illumine bulletin-boards in every language of civilization.  Day after day the Grays had announced the occupation of fresh positions.  This was the only news that they had permitted egress—­the news which read like the march of victory to the eager world of the press, hastening to quick conclusions.  To-day came the official word that Westerling had established his headquarters on conquered territory.  Proof, this, that five could drive back three; that the weak could not resist the strong!

“Hm-m—­indeed!” exclaimed Partow, lifting his brow into massive, corrugated wrinkles.  “It may affect the stock market, but not the result.”

The other despatch was also out of the land of the Grays, but not by Westerling’s consent or knowledge.  By devious ways it had broken through the censorship of the frontier in cunning cipher.  It told of artillery concentrations three days old; it told only what the aeroplanes had already seen; it told what the Grays had done but nothing of what they intended to do.

When word of Feller’s defection came, Lanstron realized for the first time by Partow’s manner that the old chief of staff, with all his deprecation of the telephone scheme as chimerical, had grounded a hope on it.

“There was the chance that we might know—­so vital to the defence—­what they were going to do before and not after the attack,” he said.

Yet the story of how Feller yielded to the temptation of the automatic had made the nostrils of the old war-horse quiver with a dramatic breath, and instead of the command of a battery of guns, which Lanstron had promised, the chief made it a battalion.  He had drawn down his brows when he heard that Marta had asked that the wire be left intact; he had shot a shrewd, questioning glance at Lanstron and then beat a tattoo on the table and half grinned as he grumbled under his breath: