“Get down, you bloody fool!”
He had leapt round and had grabbed the sergeant by the collar, and as the two went flat to the ground, the bomb went off, and about a yard from the front of the projector. Flying debris was in the air and spattered down on our steel helmets, but I was running forward. Mortar was on his feet again as I got to him, and he was shouting to the others to stay put.
“Nothing to get the wind up about,” he shouted. “Just a little mistake that couldn’t happen again if we tried.”
“Get the other gun,” he told the sergeant, who was looking a bit shaky; and then sotto voce to me, “We’d better carry right on with the other gun. It won’t do to let those men think there’s any risk.”
I didn’t ask any questions because that might have given the impression that danger was in the air. But it certainly had been. Even if both men had gone to ground at once, either might have been hit by shrapnel flying sideways. As it was, the sergeant had stood like a stoat-scared rabbit for two valuable seconds, and if Mortar hadn’t yanked him over, heaven knows what might have happened.
Well, the second gun was brought, for the first had a nasty dent or two in the end of its barrel. Mortar took infinite pains in squinting down the barrel of the second gun, and he took a Mills with the pin in and let it slide down from the top to the breach. Then he waved the men to come forward.
“This gun is going to fire all right,” he told them. “What happened with the other one was that a tiny piece of something was in the barrel and we didn’t spot it. Even so, the Mills came out, as you saw, and we had tons of time to get clear. But you don’t want that happening too often, especially when it puts a gun out of action. And it won’t happen if you use elementary care. This is the first time I’ve ever known it happen. Now get back again and you’ll see this gun fire perfectly.”
And it did fire perfectly. When the men gathered round again afterwards, Mortar explained things by saying a leaf must have blown down the barrel and lodged there after he had looked down it. That was a plausible explanation, for it was a gusty day and leaves were scurrying everywhere.
“Just the most elementary care,” he said in his final summary. “That’s all you need. If the barrel’s clear, the gun must fire right. What you saw happen this morning couldn’t happen again in a million years.”
That firing was the concluding item of the morning, and when the men dispersed, Brende and Ferris came across. “What’d you do wrong, sir?” Brende asked.
Mortar’s eyes narrowed. “Wrong be damned! When I looked down the barrel, it was clear.”
“You think it really was a leaf?”
“You heard me,” Mortar told him curtly.
“The trouble is,” I said, “that you can’t examine the actual bomb to see if anything did adhere to it. The bomb’s in a million pieces.”
“But you can examine the barrel, sir,” Brende said. “I’ll take it and have a real good look.”
“No, you don’t,” Mortar said. “I’m the one who’s going to have the real good look.”
As I moved off I saw Mortar and Ferris interchange glances. What I had to do was to report the matter to the Colonel, and at once. He was in a high state of perturbation. The worst possible thing that could have happened, he said. Nothing like accidents for giving a school a bad name. I quietened him down considerably, and I took advantage of the opportunity to tell him that Mortar’s conduct had been more than admirable, and that many a man had got a medal for less than he had done. The only person to criticise was the sergeant, who had momentarily lost his nerve, and he ought to be dropped from the squad.
But the gun had to go back to Ordnance, and a report with it, so we held a local Court of Inquiry. Nothing emerged beyond what you already know, and the cause of the stoppage in the barrel was given just as Mortar had explained it. Nothing whatever had been found in the barrel when he and Ferris had examined it, so whatever had caused the obstruction had come out with the bomb.
That was satisfactory enough, but what I didn’t like was the satisfaction I detected in the Colonel’s manner. Brende or someone must have got at him privately and put in more than a hint of carelessness on Mortar’s part. In a dozen ways I could tell that one more accident, however trivial, when Mortar was in charge, would give the Colonel just the final pretext he wanted to rid the school of one whom he had been induced to consider undesirable.
I was on duty on the Tuesday afternoon, and then off again on the Wednesday morning. I listened to the last part of Ferris’s final lecture on bombing, and then went out with the Course to the practice bombing ground, where, with Mortar as principal judge and three staff sergeants as assessors, the dummy-throwing was to take place on which the merits of the throwers would be noted, and their fitness as bombing instructors when they got back to their units.
The men had already been weeded out, and there were about a hundred of them left. They were lined up in two very open lines facing each other with a distance of a hundred yards between. The sergeants and Mortar stood on the flanks of each line, so as to watch the actions of the particular thrower, and Ferris conducted operations from the middle of the dead ground into which the dummy bombs would be thrown.
He had a voice that carried none too well, and again it was a blustering, cold day, so he moved along the centre of that dead ground, turning each way to make his voice carry. What happened was so sudden and astounding that it is impossible to give any preliminary account. All we knew was that there was a crashing roar of something exploding, turf and dirt went flying in the air, and there was Ferris on the ground.
He was on his feet at once, for instinct had sent him down at the first sound. Then he was calling to everyone to stay put, but I made for him, and Mortar was moving too. As I put on my glasses again, for in the excitement of what had happened I had been up to my old nervous trick of polishing them without being aware of the fact, I saw Ferris stoop and put something in his pocket.
“What on earth’s happened?” I said, when I’d got close enough.
“A live Mills, wasn’t it?” asked Mortar.
“A Mills all right,” Ferris told him grimly.
“But how the devil did it get there?” I wanted to know.
“Do you mind if I speak to the men, sir?” Ferris said.
“By all means,” I told him, and wondered what on earth he was going to say.
He didn’t let them join up over that dead ground, in case there might be another live bomb, but marched one line round the flank and then closed both lines in.
“This is a very bad business,” he told the men. “You see what happened. A Mills went off and it happened to go off about five yards from me or I wouldn’t be here now. There’s only one explanation of how it got there. Some man or men must have been practising throwing, and some bloody fool used live stuff instead of dummies! One of the live bombs was left behind and it didn’t go off although the pin was out, perhaps because the lever stuck in some curious way and then got wedged into the ground. Then just the movement of the ground by my feet was enough to set it off.” He paused and looked over the lines. “Now then, who did it? What men have been out here practising?”
Men looked at each other and then blankly forward.
“Come on,” said Ferris impatiently. “If there was more than one man responsible, everything’s bound to come out. If it was only one man, let him be a man and own up.”
Not a soul stirred. Ferris whispered with me and then I made the announcement. The bomb-throwing would continue on a piece of suitable ground about two hundred yards away, and instead of the usual parade at thirteen-thirty hours, all students would fall in inside the lecture-room.
Then I had to hurry to make yet another report to the Colonel. To my relief he attempted to cast no blame on Ferris, and he didn’t even mention Mortar’s name. At thirteen-thirty hours he harangued the two hundred and fifty men from the platform, but the culprit or culprits made no move. When he had finished, a Home Guard major asked to be
allowed to say something, which was that he would personally guarantee that every man there, other than the culprit, would at once do everything in his power to find out who had been responsible for what might have been a terrible accident. If the man were his own brother, he said, he’d hand him over, and he was confident every man there felt the same.
There were “Hear, hears,” followed by tremendous applause. The Colonel was obviously surprised and almost overwhelmed by that spontaneous display of the school and team spirit which had been the basis of his opening speech on the Sunday. He was content to leave things like that, he said, and there would be no need for a Court of Inquiry. He and I also agreed in private that no report on the occurrence should be made to the War House. Two accidents, however explicable, might be enough to damn the school, and its staff.
I drew into the Mess that evening for a quick one before dinner, and Ferris was there alone. As a matter of fact he was just going out, and we did our talking by the door.
“Do you ever go into the town, sir?” he asked me.
I told him I had been in twice. It was a nice little country town of about four thousand people, and out of bounds to the students except on Sundays.
“Then you know the Greyhound,” he said. “Like to join Mortar and me there after dinner?”
“I’ll walk down with you,” I said.
“You meet us there, sir,” he said. “The private bar at about twenty-one hours.”
“What’s the idea?” I said. “Something confidential?”
In the semi-darkness I could just see his grin. “Only what the lawyers say, sir. You might hear something to your advantage.”
After dinner I took good care to dodge the Colonel, and I was in the private bar of the Greyhound well on time. Mortar and Ferris were already there, and but for a couple of habitués in the other cosy corner, we had the room to ourselves. Mortar insisted on standing the first round.
He drank our healths in amusing but unprintable terms, and then I asked point-blank what was in the wind.
“You do the talking, Ferry,” Mortar ordered.
“It’s like this,” Ferris began. “When we two examined the barrel of that Northover we discovered traces of what we thought was chewing-gum.”
My eyes goggled and my fingers were already at my glasses. “Good God! You mean, some student tried a practical joke!”
Ferris smiled grimly. “Joke—hell!” said Mortar.
“You see, you’ve got to take things in conjunction with what happened to-day,” Ferris said.
“Just a minute,” I told him. “I’m gathering that you two have been throwing dust in everybody’s eyes, and in mine in particular.”
“Why not?” asked Mortar, with his usual amiable indifference.
“You shut up, old-timer,” Ferris told him with the same amiability. “You see, it’s like this, sir. We’ve been putting our heads together, and we don’t like the look of things a bit.” Then he was producing something from his pocket and handing it to me. “This takes a bit of explaining, for instance.”
This was a length of stout twine attachéd to a peg. The base of the peg was dirty, as if it had been in the ground. My fingers went to my horn-rims again.
“This is what I saw you pick up this morning?”
“I wondered if you’d spotted me,” he said. “But you see the idea. That peg was in the ground and the other end of it was attachéd to the lever of a live Mills. The Mills must have been in a carefully prepared hole, with the pin out and the lever just held. I was supposed to kick against the string, which I did, and as I’d been walking towards the Mills, it’d go off just as I got to it.”
I couldn’t say a word for a moment. The whole thing was so simple, and yet so diabolical, that I could only snap my bat eyes. Then I thought of something. “Who knew you would be doing exactly as you did this morning?”
“Everybody,” he said simply. “I’d done the same thing before, and in the same place, when we had elementary throwing. The lines were flagged out. All someone had to do last night was to plant the bomb.”
“Just a minute, Ferry,” cut in Mortar. “You didn’t tell the Major that all this is to be kept under his hat.”
“I get you,” I said. “If you hadn’t said so, I’d have told you the same thing. What we’re handling is dynamite.”
“We looked at it like this,” Ferris said. “The old-timer here and I have got in the way of settling our own grievances without any outside interference, and we’re proposing to deal with this in our own way.”
I stared. “You’re not—”
Ferris smiled. “Oh, no. We’re not going to bump anyone off. We’re only going to let him know where he gets off.”
“Yes, but who?”
“That’s the question,” he told me. “That’s why we decided to put things up to you. Take the Northover. Who put the chewing-gum in the barrel? It was the gun that Brende was demonstrating with.”
I nodded warily.
“And he’s always chewing gum,” went on Ferris. “Just a simple thing, wouldn’t it be, sir, to press down a little wedge along the inside end of the barrel. Anything to discredit Mortar.”
“There’s something else you’ve left out,” Mortar said. “Brende swears blind that the gun was the one Ferry had, but I happen to know he’s a bloody liar.”
“That’s right,” Ferris said. “But there’s something more serious to come yet. Last night at the Mothers’ Meeting”—the half-hour Advice Bureau, he meant—“a man asked Mortar what he’d do if a Mills fell outside the barrel, and Mortar, like the bloody fool he is, said he’d have time to chuck the bomb clear, but he wouldn’t ever advise the bloke to do the same thing. Brende was listening, and he brought the matter up with you later, didn’t he, old-timer?”
“That’s right,” Mortar said. “Threw his ruddy weight about and talked about the Colonel not liking it. I said he could ruddy well lump it.”
“Let’s get down to brass tacks,” I said. “What’s being suggested is that Brende stuck the chewing-gum in, and handed over the gun as clear. He hoped the bomb would fall where it did, and he knew you’d try that damn-silly stunt, Mortar. To put it bluntly, there was a deliberate attempt at murder.”
“I wouldn’t go as far as that,” Mortar said. “All the same, I might have got a tidy shaking up.”
“And the implication is,” I said to Ferris, “that the same person fixed this morning’s Mills where it would give you a nasty shaking up. I prefer not to say, where it would have blown you to blazes.”
“There’s something in that, sir,” Ferris said, as if the idea had only just struck him. “The trouble is that grenades are common enough. They’re an issue to the Home Guard. I don’t mean that the students were fools enough to bring any live stuff with them, but the local Home Guard have ’em. If someone didn’t get pally with them and lift a bomb, then the same somebody was pally enough with old Store to lift one from the magazine. Store swears every one of his is accounted for, but you never know.”
“He and Brende are friendly?”
Ferris shrugged his shoulders. “They’re the only two Warrant Officers here, and they mess together, so to speak.”
Another round of drinks came along and I thought things over for a bit. Then I had to put a pertinent question and insist on an answer. If the two discovered the culprit—a better term than murderer—then just what action did they propose to take?
The two hemmed and hawed for a minute, then Ferris spoke for both. “All we’d do, sir, would be to tell him we knew what we knew. Then we’d give him the tip to resign his job and clear out. If he didn’t, we’d warn him privately that two could play at accidents.”
I did some more hard thinking. “Look here,” I said at last. “This is an ultimatum on my part. You two are to promise to take no further step at all without my knowledge and sanction. Either you promise me that or I’ll spill all the beans to the Colonel, and we’ll thresh everything out at a Court of Inquiry.”
Well, to cut the story short, they promised, and we had another round to seal the bargain. When I started back to the school alone, with the other two to follow later, I was none too happy about my part in that argument, though it seemed the best thing I could have done. While I did not resent being manoeuvred into a false position, I had no doubt that I was in that position. I was acting behind the Colonel’s back, and yet even then I could see good reasons for keeping my mouth shut. The Colonel was biased, there was no doubt about that, and in many ways Mortar and Ferris could not be blamed for playing a lone, unorthodox hand against those responsible for that bias.
As for the actual attempts to get rid of Mortar and Ferris, I had no doubt that each should be bluntly classed as an attempt at murder, and dastardly, underhand attempts they were. It was a poor consolation, too, to think that the two would in future be on guard against any new attempts of the kind. Excuses of flying leaves and over-keen students couldn’t always be found, and if there were any third accident I made up my mind that I would withdraw my pledge and insist on an exhaustive inquiry, even if it meant going over the Colonel’s head and appealing, as was my right, to the War Office.
On the Thursday afternoon the notebooks began to come in and I was extremely busy, even if my three lectures had been given. It was now our idea to rush those notebooks through so that the students could get them back before leaving, and save work and postage. Everybody was then to lend a hand in drawing up the brief report that would be sent to the unit of each student. That meant a lot of work for the staff, with a new Course arriving on the Sunday afternoon.
I saw little of Mortar and Ferris, and neither sent me a word about those disclosures made at the Greyhound. Friday night came, and the last dinner, and then Saturday morning with all its bustle. A special train would be leaving Peakridge at twelve-fifteen hours, so there was a rush to get the students off. At ten-thirty hours the Colonel gave his final talk, and he wanted me on the platform in support. I must say he spoke exceedingly well. He was not going to hold it against the Course, he said, that one of their number had endangered a valuable life and had not been man enough to come forward and confess. He preferred to think of that first Course as a kind of first-born, and he would always remember them with affection.
The Case of the Fighting Soldier: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 7