War and the Weird Part 10

"Hum!" he remarked after an instant, "dead, did you say? He's as dead as a doornail ... anyway, it's nothing to do with us! If ever a soul went straight to h.e.l.l," he muttered to himself, "it was that red devil's."

IV

THE STORY OF A SPY

Donald McNab, private (and distinguished ornament) of the London Regiment, leaned his elbows on the little oak table in the bar of the "Three Nuns," and eyed me with withering contempt. From a corner of the settle I stared--with a wholly unsuccessful attempt to look unconcerned--at a quaint old painting of Sergeant Broughton who first taught Englishmen to box scientifically. When the great are really wrathful it ill becomes pigmy people to jabber or argue. So I waited with bent head and respectful silence to which the pa.s.sing moods of such an erratic genius are ent.i.tled.

When McNab and I had met an hour or so before we had been on the most friendly terms. We had both ordered our pint of beer, filled our pipes, and retired to a corner in the bar parlour feeling at peace with the world--barring of course the German Empire and their allied forces.

Everything, in fact, made for peace and goodwill between us; yet, because I had spoken with some levity about our incomplete spy system, McNab's wrath had come down on my head like the proverbial "hundred of bricks."

"It seems strange," I had remarked to him, "that the Huns can always forestall our most carefully-prepared plans through their almost perfect spy system. Our fellows must be dead stupid at the game. Why aren't these German vipers ever nabbed?"

"Dead stupid!" McNab had exclaimed, after gazing at me for a minute in dazed stupefaction at my unspeakable temerity in challenging the proficiency of the British Army. "Get under your Blanco pot!"

Now, when McNab used this picturesque term to me I knew that there was a storm brewing. He only used the expression when he wished to be particularly "cutting," and I received his reproof with, I hope, a correct realisation of my own insignificance.

The old world had rolled along for another twenty minutes ere McNab shifted his legs, cleared his throat, and interfered with what was left in his tankard.

"I wonder," he said musingly to himself, "if these poor yobs over here will ever know the true 'istory of this bloomin' war?" Then back came a smile to his face and he shook his head, indicating, perhaps, that he had answered the question to his complete satisfaction. The joyousness at the thought of some of those unrecorded slices of military history caused my friend to drop again into a contemplative mood, and he started humming a little tune under his breath:

h.e.l.lo! h.e.l.lo! who's your lady friend?

Who's the little girlie by your side?

I've seen you with a girl or two, Oh, oh, oh, I AM surprised at you!

h.e.l.lo! h.e.l.lo! what's your little game?

Don't you think it's time your ways to mend?

That's not the gal I saw you with at Brighton, Oh, oh, oh, who's your lady friend?

"If it is not a rude question," I ventured, after another few moments, "did you ever see the capture of a German spy over in France, Mr.

McNab?"

"Who are you getting at ... trying to pull my leg?" he demanded, with increased suspicion.

"Come, come," I laughed, "let us agree to differ about our--er--inferior spy system."

"Superior," he insisted.

I surrendered before the gleam of his eye. Fool that I had been, ever to have imagined that I could conquer McNab's steely glance!

"Superior then, if you prefer it."

McNab's eyes, which had glared with indignation, lost their fire and a.s.sumed their normal expression of calm and relentless despotism, and the red flag of agitated displeasure disappeared from his tanned face.

He seized with alacrity the olive branch (also another tankard of beer) which I held out to him.

"The history of the British Army," he observed as he blew at his ale "'minds me of a married soldier's letter to his wife. The most interesting parts are all left out ... do you get me?"

McNab tilted his hat at a perilous angle on one side of his head, and thrust his hands deep into his pockets.

"Touching upon some of those unwritten exploits of the Army," I darkly hinted: "I'll bet I can find a brilliant historiographer not a hundred miles away from the 'Three Nuns' who could dictate a few of 'em that would fairly make the _Daily Mail_ turn green with envy--eh, McNab?"

"I know the brilliant bloke you mean," my friend conceded modestly, "though calling me 'orrible names like that would brand you as a sw.a.n.ker or a gentleman wot had left his manners in the hall in any barrack room from here to Hindustan. When we were resting at Quality Street near Loos, for example"--he paused a moment, and with a playful dig from his banana-like thumb nearly knocked me on the floor--"why, name of a dog!

There you have a case in point!"

"A case of a sw.a.n.ker?"

"A case of one of those spies. We caught the perisher. Begad, we did!"

McNab put the red-hot end of a cigarette into his mouth, stammered with wrath in a medley of international profanity at the unexpected warmth, and would not be comforted till his favourite barmaid had placed a slice of cooling lemon on his tongue.

"My first introduction to the entertaining sport of spy tracking," he mumbled, "was at Loos, where I was sent with several hundred other chaps to help push the Huns out of the Hohenzollern Redoubt. At the present moment, as you know (or ought to by this time), I am a military genius 'ighly thought of at the War Office, a strategist Kitchener has his eye on, and a model soldier quoted every day by my colonel as a shining light to the regiment. But of course you must remember that a few months ago I was practically a yob at the game, and now of the fame (and the extreme shyness that seems to come with it) of my later avatar.

"We took over some temporary billets at a shady little spot not far behind the British trenches which was then known as 'Quality Street,'"

he continued, "and, as I not unreasonably supposed that the smartest and most intelligent bloke in the regiment would be sent to 'elp the colonel, I requested the Dog's Leg (Anglice--lance-corporal) to point out his abode to me.

"'Ask the Quarter Bloke over along in the end cottage, old sport,' he said with a grin, 'he'll be most 'appy, I've no doubt to personally conduct to the old pot-an-pan, and while you're there just ask him to let you have that jug of defaulters' extra milk for me.' It was a 'wheeze' among the boys to send a poor innocent bloke off for this milk. The point of the 'wheeze' is in the fact that as defaulters are chaps doing jankers (Anglice--punishment) they are hardly likely to get any extra milk dished out to them. I did not see the joke at first; but on application to that autocratic beggar--Quartermaster King was his tally--he fully explained things to me in that witheringly sarcastic manner peculiar to sergeant-majors and quarter-blokes.

"'Defaulter's milk?' echoed he. 'Why, you lop-eared leper, you've got corpuscular fool wrote as plain as a motor lorry number all over your ugly face. If I wasn't sure that you was not more of a born idiot than a ruddy knave, etc., etc., etc., I would have you slick in mush before your feet could touch the ground!'

"Much crest-fallen, and terribly mortified, I returned to the cottage which had been selected to shelter me n.o.ble self, only to be met there with a volley of derisive laughter, repeated demands for the jug of Defaulter's milk, and questions about the quarter bloke's health.

"'A cat may look at a _King_,' said the Dog's Leg, and fell backwards out of the open window at his own joke, breaking 'is collar bone. One should never forget, at every time, as the Scriptures say, that pride allus goes before a fall, and that all the King's 'orses and all the King's men can't not even pick 'im up again!"

My murmured compliments on his amazing aptness in the knowledge of Holy Writ were checked by a sudden discovery that my best silver cigarette case had vanished from the table.

"Which of you civilians has stole the gentleman's silver case?"

This question, uttered not in the friendliest possible terms, was addressed to a young gentleman with a very pimply face, and kaleidoscopic coloured socks, of the genus Slacker, who had suddenly found the painting of Sergeant Broughton an object of absorbing interest.

This inquiry meeting with no response from the Slimy Slacker, (to use McNab's expressive name for him), he gave utterance to a sigh of resignation.

"I believe, sir," suggested an old gentleman who was warming his toes at the fire, "that you deposited the gentleman's cigarette case--er--inadvertently in your own pocket!"

"Why, strike me crimson!" cried McNab, diving his beef-steakish hands into his tunic pockets. "Why, so I did! I'm the biggest giddy fool at that kind of wheeze that ever lived. It's a knock-out, ain't it? Never mind--'_honi soit qui mal y_ eighteen pence,' as the French poet bloke said!

"It so happened that on the very next day our old man's servant went sick, and in spite of my extreme youth and innocence, I was selected from the crowd to fill the vacant billet. And then it was that the Colonel realised that fate had dropped a heaven-sent blessing on his knees in the shape of a--well, in the shape of an ingenious bloke like me. He lifted up his voice in thanksgiving for that the British Army held warriors so wise, and then looked up his whiskey and cigars.

"At one end of Quality Street there stood a Y.M.C.A. hut. On the next day when I pushed the door of this Bun-Wallah's paradise open, the first person I saw was old Tommy--Tommy wot had fought up and down the G.o.dforsaken veldt with me for three years on end, Tommy who had always the knack of droppin' out of the blue from nowhere.

"'Well, 'ere's a go!' he cried dropping half a cup of boiling coffee down another chap's neck, as 'is smile broadened, 'it's a 'ell of a time since I struck you.'

"I saw the dawn of recognition on his ugly mug; and I could have guessed to a word the joyful expressions of welcome that were springing to his lips."

McNab paused.

"Quite so," I prompted, seeing the change that took place in my friend's face.