by Sapper
“Do.” Jesson gave a violent start, for the voice came from just behind his shoulder. Like the hunter he was, Dick Staunton had moved without a sound, and now stood directly between Jesson and the door. “But don’t go yet. I want to tell you a story that may amuse you. Have some tea.”
“Er – won’t it keep till some other time, Major? I’m rather anxious to see about my kit.”
“Let the kit keep. Sit down and have some tea.”
“What the devil has come over you, Dickie?” The Adjutant was looking frankly amazed. “You aren’t generally so loquacious.”
“That’s why tonight my little whim must be honoured,” answered Staunton with a slight smile. “Sit down, please, Jesson. It’s quite an amusing little yarn, and I would like your opinion on it.”
“No hope for you, old boy. Dickie has turned into a social success.” The Adjutant laughed and lit a cigarette, and once again became immersed in his paper.
To the casual observer the scene was a very normal one. Four men in a dug-out, yarning and reading; while outside the occasional whine of a shell, the dirty deeds of a Stokes gun, the noises of the trenches filled the air. Nothing unusual, nothing out of the way except – something, an indefinable something. As the Sapper said afterwards there must have been something tangible in the atmosphere – else why did his pulses quicken. He glanced at the Adjutant sitting opposite him engrossed in his book; he looked at Staunton across the table – Staunton, with a slight smile on his lips – and his eyes fixed on Jesson. He looked at Jesson beside him – Jesson, whom he had met that morning for the first time. And all he noticed about Jesson was that his left knee twitched ceaselessly…
He ran over in his mind the day’s work. He had met him at about eleven that morning, wandering along the line support with an officer in the Loamshires whom he knew well, who had hailed him and introduced Jesson.
“A recruit – a new recruit,” he had said, “for your atrocious trade. He’s just left old pimple-faced Charlie, who was writing returns in triplicate as usual.”
Now pimple-faced Charlie was his own Major, who habitually did write returns in triplicate; wherefore, after a few remarks of a casual nature in which he elicited the fact that Jesson was a mining engineer and had suddenly been ordered while waiting at the base to join the 940th Tunnelling Company, he took him in tow and showed him round the mine galleries.
Mining work was very active in the sector. Four or five small mines and one big one were going up in the near future, so the tour of inspection had been a long one. That his companion was not new to the game was obvious from the outset; and his pertinent inquiries anent cross-cuts, listening galleries, and the whole of the work in hand had shown that he was keen as well. Altogether a promising recruit, he had mused: quite a find – keen and able, two qualities which unfortunately do not go hand in hand quite as often as one would like. And now Staunton and this find of his were facing one another in silence across the plank table of the dug-out; Jesson, with an expression of polite indifference as befitted a subaltern compelled to listen to a senior officer’s story which he didn’t want to hear; Staunton, with an enigmatic smile. Then of a sudden Staunton spoke.
“Have you ever studied the question of the importance of matters of detail, Jesson?” he remarked quietly to the impassive figure facing him across the table.
“I can’t say that I have, sir,” answered the other, politely stifling a yawn.
“You should. A most interesting study. My story concerns points of detail. The imperative thing is to be able to sort out the vital points from all the others; then piece them together, and arrive at the right answer.”
“It must be very easy to be led astray, I should imagine; and arrive at the – er – wrong one.” Jesson concealed a smile, and waited for the Major to continue.
“Yes and no. It’s all a matter of practice.” Staunton’s imperturbable voice was as quiet as ever. “And anyway, it’s only in peace time that it matters very much whether one is right or wrong. Nowadays! Well – à la guerre comme à la guerre.” He smiled gently. “But my story. I want you, as an impartial observer, just arrived, with an unbiased mind, to tell me if you think my joining up of two or three points of detail is a sound one. Both these officers know the points of detail, so your opinion will be more valuable than theirs.
“A few nights ago our battalion had one of those unfortunate little contretemps that so often happen in war. A subaltern of ours, John Brinton by name, went out on patrol, and never returned. An exhaustive search in No Man’s Land failed to discover his body; so we were reluctantly compelled to conclude that he was in German hands; whether alive or dead we don’t know. There we have the first fact in my case. Now for the second.
“Two nights after that another of our subalterns was killed in a way which struck me as peculiar. I will not weary you with all the various little points that led me to believe that the bullet which killed him did not come from the trenches opposite; I will merely say that his position, his height, and the depth of the trench were the most obvious. And granted that my conclusions were correct, strange as it might appear at first sight, his death must have been caused at close quarters, possibly in the trench itself.”
“Good Lord!” muttered the Adjutant, who was now listening with interest. “What do you mean?”
“Two facts, you see,” went on Staunton quietly. “And they would have remained unconnected in my mind – Brinton’s capture and Dixon’s death – but for a small point of detail. Dixon’s jacket was without the left regimental badge when his body was found. His servant knows he had them both earlier in the day. On the contrary, Brinton had lost his left regimental badge for some time. Am I interesting you?”
“Profoundly, thank you, sir.” The man opposite smiled amiably.
“I’m glad of that; it’s an interesting problem. You see the significance of that small point about the badge, the way in which it connects very intimately Brinton’s capture and Dixon’s death. So intimately, in fact, does it connect them, that one is almost tempted to assume that the man who killed Dixon was the man in possession of Brinton’s uniform. Are you with me so far?”
“The evidence seems a trifle slight,” remarked Jesson.
“Quite true; the evidence is very slight. But then, it often is. Everything up to date turns on the question of the badge. Let me reconstruct a possible – only possible, mark you – story, based on the supposition that my badge theory is correct. A German who speaks English perfectly is given a nice warm uniform taken from a captured British officer. Then he is told to go over to the British lines and see what he can find out. He comes one night; perfectly easy; no trouble; until walking along the front line he meets another officer – alone: an officer of the same regiment as that whose uniform he is wearing. Unavoidable; in fact, less likely, to raise suspicion with the frequent changes that occur if he goes to the same regiment than if he went to another. But something happens; either the other officer’s suspicions are aroused, or the German does not wish to be recognised again by him. The trench is quiet; an occasional rifle is going off, so he does the bold thing. He shoots him from point-blank range – probably with a Colt. As he stands there with the dead officer in front of him, waiting, listening hard, wondering if he has been heard, he sees the two badges on the officer’s coat. So, being a cool hand, he takes off the left one, puts it on his own coat, and disappears for a time. Quite easy; especially when the trenches are old German ones.”
“Really, Major, you seem to have made a speciality of detective fiction. As you said, I suppose your theory is possible.”
Jesson spoke casually, but his eyes for the first time left the face of the man opposite him and roved towards the door. For the first time a sudden ghastly suspicion of the truth entered the Sapper’s brain; and even as it did so he noticed that Staunton’s revolver – the cleansing finished – pointed steadily at Jesson’s chest.
“I am glad you think it possible. To render it probable we must go a bit
farther. The essence of all detective stories is the final clue that catches the criminal, isn’t it?” The revolver moved an inch or two into prominence.
“Good Lord, Dickie! Is that gun of yours loaded?” cried the Adjutant in alarm. For the first time he also seemed to become aware that something unusual was happening, and he suddenly stood up. “What the devil is it, Major? What have you got that gun on him for?”
“For fun, dear boy, for fun. It’s part of the atmosphere. We’ve got to the point, haven’t we, where – in my story, of course – the German dressed in Brinton’s uniform comes into the English lines. Now what sort of a man would they send in this part of the line, where mining activity is great? I continue the theory, you see; that’s all.”
He looked at Jesson, who made no reply; though without cessation he moistened his lips with his tongue.
“A miner.” The Adjutant’s voice cut in. “Go on, for God’s sake.”
“Precisely – a miner. The second point of detail; and two points of detail are a strange coincidence – nothing more. Only – there is a third.”
“And three are a moral certainty, as you’ve often said.” The Adjutant once again bent across the table and spoke softly. “Are you fooling, Dickie – are you fooling? If so, the joke has gone far enough.”
But the Sapper’s eyes were fixed on a leg that twitched, and they wandered now and then to a neck where – even in the dim light of a candle – he could see a pulse throbbing – throbbing.
“It’s not a joke,” he said, and his mouth was dry. “What is the third point of detail, Dickie?”
“Yes, what is the third point of detail, sir?” Jesson’s voice was steady as a rock. “I am very interested in your problem.” He raised his hands from the table and stretched them in front of him. Not a finger quivered, and with a sublime insolence he examined his nails.
To the Sapper there occurred suddenly those lines of Kipling,
“For there is neither East nor West, border nor
breed nor birth,
When two strong men come face to face though
they come from the ends of the earth.”
He knew now; he realised the man beside him was a German; he knew that the sentence of death was very near. What the clue was that had given the man away he hardly thought about – in fact, he hardly cared. All he knew was that death was waiting for the man beside him, and that his hands were steady as a rock.
Quietly Staunton leant forward and undid Jesson’s mackintosh. Then he sat back and with his finger he pointed at a spot above his left breast-pocket. “You have never been out to the front, you say; your coat is a new one by Jones & Jones; and yet – until recently – you have been wearing the ribbon of a medal. What medal, Jesson, what medal? It shows up, that clean patch in the light. John Brinton went to Jones & Jones; and John Brinton had a Military Cross.”
For a full minute the two men looked into one another’s eyes – deep down, and read the things that are written underneath, be a man English or German. Then suddenly Jesson smiled slightly and spoke.
“You are a clever man, Major Staunton. When will the rifle practice take place?
Thus it ended, the play of which John Brinton’s disappearance formed the prologue. But before the curtain rang down on the epilogue the German told them one or two little things: that John Brinton was alive and well; that the existence of Ginger Stretton, to whom he had alluded so glibly, had only become known to him from a letter in Brinton’s coat; that the peculiarities of pimple-faced Charlie had been forced on him by his guide before they met the Sapper.
“In fact,” as the Adjutant remarked, “the fellow was almost too good a sportsman to–” But that’s the epilogue.
A file of men; a watery sun just starting its day’s work; a raw, chilly morning. In front – a man: a man with a white disc of paper pinned over the heart.
A word of command; a pushing forward of safety catches; a volley; a finish.
Chapter 3
My Lady of the Jasmine
The Kid staggered wearily along the road through the blinding rain. Dodging between the endless stream of traffic, which moved slowly in both directions, now stopping for ten minutes, now jolting forward again for a couple of hundred yards, he walked on towards where he thought his battalion was. The last Staff officer he had seen had told him that, as far as he knew, they had pulled out to rest in some dug-outs about four miles farther on – dug-outs which had only recently been taken from the Germans. To start with he had got on to a lorry, but when darkness fell, and the total progression had been one mile, he decided to walk and save time. Occasionally the lights of a car shone in his face, as its infuriated occupant broke every rule of the Somme roads by double banking; that is, trying to pass the vehicles in front. But at last the traffic wore thinner as the road approached the front line, and an hour and a half after he had left the lorry, it stopped altogether, save for pack-mules and squelching men. The rain still sogged down, and – ye gods! the Kid was tired. Away into the night there stretched a path of slippery duckboards, threading its way between shell holes half filled with water. Men loomed up out of the darkness and went past him, slipping and sliding, cursing below their breath. A shower of sparks shot up into the air from a dug-out on his right, and a great lobbing flare away in the distance lit up the scene for a second or two with a ghostly radiance. It showed the Kid the only other near occupant of the reclaimed territory at the moment: a mule, whose four hoofs stuck stiffly out of a shell hole – pointing at him, motionless. With a shudder he moved on along the duck-walk. After all he was but a kid, and he was almighty tired.
For three days he seemed to have been on the run without closing his eyes. First the battalion had gone over the top; then they had worked like slaves consolidating what they’d won; afterwards he had been sent for because of his knowledge of French and German to go back to Divisional Headquarters; and then he had come back to find the battalion had moved. And any who may have tried walking five or six miles by night in heavy rain to an unknown destination along some of the roads east of Albert, will bear out that it is a wearisome performance. When to these facts is added the further information that the age of the boy was only eighteen, it will be conceded that the breaking-point was not far off.
Now I have emphasised the physical condition of the Kid, as he was known to all and sundry, because I think it may have a bearing on the story I am going to relate. I am no expert in “ologies” and other things dealing with so-called spiritualistic revelations. I might even say, in fact, that I am profoundly sceptical of them all, though to say so may reveal my abysmal ignorance. So be it; my thumbs are crossed. This is not a controversial treatise on spiritualism, and all that appertains thereto. One thing, however, I will say – in my ignorance, of course. Until some of the great thinkers of the world have beaten down the jungle of facts beyond our ken, and made a track – be it never so narrow – free from knaves and charlatans, it is ill advised for Mrs Smith or Lady de Smythe to believe that Signor Macaroni – neé Jones – will reveal to them the secrets of the infinite for two pounds. He may; on the other hand, he may not. That the secrets are there, who but a fool can doubt; it is only Signor Macaroni’s power of disinterested revelation that causes my unworthy scepticism.
And so let us come back to the Kid, and the strange thing that happened in a recently captured German dug-out on the night of which I have been writing. It was just as he had decided – rain or no rain – to lie down and sleep in the mud and filth – anywhere, anything, so long as he could sleep – that suddenly out of the darkness ahead he heard the Adjutant’s voice, and knew that he had found the battalion. With almost a sob of thankfulness at the unexpected finish of his worries, he hailed him.
“Hallo! is that you, Kid?” The Adjutant loomed out of the darkness. “We thought you were lost for good. Are you cooked?”
“I’m just about done in,” answered the boy. “Where is B Company?”
“I’ll show you. It’s the hell of
a place to find even by day; but you’ve got ‘some’ dug-out. Beer, and tables, and beds; in fact, it’s the first dug-out I’ve seen that in any way resembles the descriptions one reads in the papers.”
“Well, as long as I can get to sleep, old man, I don’t care a damn if it’s the Ritz or a pigsty.” The Kid plucked his foot from a mud-hole, and squelched on behind the Adjutant.
Now much has been written about German dug-outs – their size, their comfort, the revolving bookcases, the four-poster beds. Special mention has frequently been made of cellars full of rare old vintages, and of concreted buttery hatches; of lifts to take stout officers to the ground, and of portable derricks to sling even stouter ones into their scented valises. In fact, such stress has been laid upon these things by people of great knowledge, that I understand an opinion is prevalent amongst some earnest thinkers at home that when a high German officer wishes to surrender he first sends up two dozen of light beer on the lift to placate his capturers, rapidly following himself with a corkscrew. This may or may not be so; personally, I have had no such gratifying experience. But then, personally, I have generally been hard put to it to recognise the dug-outs of reality from the dug-outs of the daily papers. Most of them are much the same as any ordinary, vulgar English dug-out; many are worse; but one or two undoubtedly are very good. In places where the nature of the ground has lent itself to deep work, and the lines have been stagnant for many moons, the Huns have carried out excellent work for the suitable housing of their officers. And it was down the entrance of one of these few and far between abodes that the Kid ultimately staggered, with the blessed feeling in his mind of rest at last. Round a table in the centre sat the other officers of B Company, discussing the remains of an excellent German repast. As he came in they all looked up.