Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

TWENTY-THREE AND A HALF HOURS’ LEAVE

MARY ROBERTS RINEHART

IN THE ELEVATOR SHE SAID OUT OF A CLEAR SKY: “YOU’LL HAVE TO TAKE THAT RAINCOAT OFF, OF COURSE.”

TWENTY-THREE AND A HALF HOURS’ LEAVE

BY

MARY ROBERTS RINEHART

AUTHOR OF “K,” “BAB,” “THE AMAZING INTERLUDE,” ETC.

ILLUSTRATED BY

MAY WILSON PRESTON

NEW YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Copyright, 1918,

By George H. Doran Company

Copyright, 1918,

By The Curtis Publishing Company

Printed in the United States of America

ILLUSTRATIONS

TWENTY-THREE AND A HALF HOURS’ LEAVE

I

The Headquarters Troop were preparing to leave camp and move towards the East, where at an Atlantic port they would take ship and the third step toward saving democracy. Now the Headquarters Troop are a cavalry organisation, their particular function being, so far as the lay mind can grasp it, to form a circle round the general and keep shells from falling on him. Not that this close affiliation gives them any right to friendly relations with that aloof and powerful personage.

“It just gives him a few more to yell at that can’t yell back,” grumbled the stable sergeant. He had been made stable sergeant because he had been a motorcycle racer. By the same process of careful selection the chief mechanic had once kept a livery stable.

The barracks hummed day and night. By day boxes were packed, containing the military equipment of horses and men in wartime. By night tired noncoms pored over pay rolls and lists, and wrote, between naps on the table, such thrilling literature as this:

“Sergeant Gray: fr. D. to Awol. 10 A. M., 6–1–’18.

“Sergeant Gray: fr. Awol. to arrest, pp. 2. Memo. Hdq. Camp 6–1–’18 to 6–2–’18.”

Which means, interpreted, that Sergeant Gray was absent without leave from duty at ten A. M. on the first of June, 1918, and that on his return he was placed under arrest, said arrest lasting from the first to the second of June.

On the last night in camp, at a pine table in a tiny office cut off from the lower squad room, Sergeant Gray made the above record against his own fair name, and sitting back surveyed it grimly. It was two A. M. Across from him the second mess sergeant was dealing in cans and pounds and swearing about a missing cleaver.

“Did you ever think,” reflected Sergeant Gray, leaning back in his chair and tastefully drawing a girl’s face on his left thumb-nail, “that the time would come when you’d be planning bran muffins for the Old Man’s breakfast? What’s a bran muffin, anyhow?”

“Horse feed.”

“Ever eat one?”

“No. Stop talking, won’t you?”

Sergeant Gray leaned back and stretched his long arms high above his head.

“I’ve got to talk,” he observed. “If I don’t I’ll go to sleep. Lay you two dollars to one I’m asleep before you are.”

“Go to the devil!” said the second mess sergeant peevishly.

“Never had breakfast with the Old Man, did you?” inquired Sergeant Gray, beginning on his forefinger with another girl’s face.

There was no reply to his question. The second mess sergeant was completely immersed in beans.

“Think the Old Man likes me,” went on Sergeant Gray meditatively. “It’s about a week now since he told me I was a disgrace to the uniform. How’d I know I was going to sneeze in his horse’s ear just as he was climbing on?”

“Suffering snakes!” cried the second mess sergeant. “Go to bed! You’re delirious.”

Sergeant Gray put a dimple in the girl’s cheek and surveyed it critically.

“Yep. The old boy’s crazy about me,” he ruminated aloud. “Asked me the other day if I thought I’d fight the Germans as hard as I fought work.”

“Probably be asking you to breakfast,” observed the second mess sergeant, beginning on a new sheet. “He’s in the habit of having noncoms to eat with him.”

The subtlety of this passed over Sergeant Gray’s head. He was carefully adding a small ear to his drawing, an ear which resembled an interrogation point. But a seed had been dropped on the fertile soil of his mind. He finished, yawned again and grinned.

“All right,” he said. “C’est la guerre, as the old boy says. I’ll lay you two dollars to one I eat breakfast with him within a month.” His imagination grew with the thought. “Wait! I’ll eat bran muffins with him at breakfast within a month. How’s that?”

“It’s simple damn foolishness,” observed the second mess sergeant. “I’ll take you if you’ll go to bed and lemme alone.”

“‘Lemme,’” observed Sergeant Gray, “is probably Princeton. In Harvard we——”

But the second mess sergeant had picked up the inkwell and was fingering it purposefully.

“All right, dear old thing,” said Sergeant Gray.

And he rose, stretching his more than six feet to the uttermost. Then he made his way through the rows of beds to the sergeant’s corner, and removing his blouse, his breeches, his shoes and his puttees was ready for sleep. His last waking thought was of his wager.

“A bran muffin with the Old Man!” he chuckled. “A bran muffin! A——”

Something heavy landed on his chest with a great thump, and after turning round once or twice settled itself there for the remainder of the night. Lying on his back, so as to give his dog the only possible berth on the tiny bed, Sergeant Gray, all-American athlete and prime young devil of the Headquarters Troop, went fast asleep.

Reveille the next morning, however, found him grouchy. He kicked the dog off his legs, to which the animal had retired, and reaching under his pillow brought out his whistle. He blew a shrill blast on it. The lower squad room groaned, turned over, closed its eyes. He blew again.

“Roll out!” he yelled in stentorian tones. “R-r-roll out, you dirty horsemen!”

Then he closed his eyes again and went peacefully to sleep. He dreamed that the general was carrying a plate of bran muffins to his bedside, and behind him was a pretty girl with coffee and an ear like an interrogation point. He wakened to find breakfast over and the cook in a bad temper.

“Be a sport, Watt,” he pleaded. “Just a cup of coffee, anyhow.”

“I fed your dog for you. That’s all you get.”

“I can’t eat the dog.”

“Go on out,” said the cook. “This ain’t the Waldorf-Astoria. Nor Childs’ neither.”

“Some day, on the field of honor,” said Sergeant Gray, “you will lie wounded, Watt. You will beg for a cup of water, and I shall refuse it, saying——”

“Give him something to get rid of him,” the cook instructed his helper.

And Sergeant Gray was fed. As he drank his coffee he reflected as to his wager of the night before. It appealed to his sporting instinct but not to his reason. He had exactly as much chance to eat a bran muffin with the general as he had to sign peace terms with the Kaiser.

He drank his tepid coffee and surveyed his finger nails disconsolately. The faces had only partially disappeared during his morning’s ablution.

“This is the life, Watt!” he said to the cook. “Wine, women and song, eh?”

But the cook was cutting his finger nails, preparatory to morning inspection.

Now the ink pictures on Sergeant Gray’s finger nails had a certain significance. They bore, to be exact, a certain faint resemblance to a young lady whose photograph was now concealed against inspection in the sergeant’s condiment can. The young lady in question had three days before wired the sergeant to this effect:

“Married Bud Palmer yesterday. Please wish me happiness.”

To which, concealing a deep hurt, the sergeant had replied: “Praying earnestly for you both.”

He was, then, womanless. No one loved him. He was going to war, and no one would mourn him—except the family, of course. The effect of the tepid coffee on his empty stomach was merely to confirm his morning unhappiness. No one loved him and he had made a fool bet that by now was all over the troop.

At mess he knew what he stood committed to. “Please pass the bran muffins,” came loudly to his ears. And scraps of conversation like this:

“But you see, dear old thing, I didn’t know your horse was going to stick his head under my nose when I sneezed.”

Or:

“But, my dear general, the weakness of the division lies in your staff. Now, if I were doing it——”

By one o’clock in the afternoon the troop were ready to move. And Sergeant Gray went into the town. There he tried on a new uniform—and the story of Sergeant Gray’s new uniform is the story of the bran muffins.

It was really a beautiful uniform. Almost it took away the sting of that telegram; almost it obliterated the memory of the wager. It spread over his broad shoulders and hugged his slim waist. The breeches were full above and close below. For the first time he felt every inch a soldier.

He carried the old uniform back to camp and gave it to the cook.

“Here, Watt!” he said. “You’ve been grumbling about clothes. Cut the chevrons off it, and it’s yours.”

“Well, look who’s here!” said Watt admiringly. “Thought you fellows had to wear issue stuff.”

“Laws are for slaves, Watt.”

“Keep it nice,” observed the cook gracelessly. “You’ll need it for that breakfast with the general.”

“Wait and see,” said Sergeant Gray jauntily, but with no hope in his heart.

The new uniform was the cause of much invidious comment. Most of it resembled the cook’s. But Sergeant Gray was busy. To pass inspection he was obliged to borrow from the neighbouring beds, left unguarded, certain articles in which he was deficient, namely: Undershirt, cotton, one; socks, light wool, pairs, two; underbreeches, cotton, pairs, one.

Thus miscellaneously assembled he passed inspection. He drew a deep breath, however, when no notice was taken of the new and forbidden uniform and when the photograph of Mrs. Bud Palmer still lay rolled up and undiscovered in his condiment can.

During the afternoon he wandered over to the depot brigade and left his dog there with a lieutenant who had promised to look after him. The sense of depression and impending doom had overtaken him again. He stopped at the post exchange and bought a dozen doughnuts, which he carried with him in a paper bag.

“Might feed him one of these now and then,” he suggested. “He’s going to miss me like the devil. He’s a nice mutt.” His voice was a trifle husky.

“Not fond of bran muffins, I suppose?”

The lieutenant’s voice was impersonal. Sergeant Gray eyed him suspiciously, but his eyes were on the dog.

“Don’t know. Never tried them,” he said, and walked off with great dignity.

So that was it, eh? It was all over the division already. Well, he’d show them! He’d——

The general, on horseback and followed by his aids, went by. Sergeant Gray stopped and rigidly saluted, but the general’s eyes and his mind were far away. Sergeant Gray looked after him with bitterness in his heart. Just at that moment he hated the Army. He hated the general. Most of all he hated to the depths of his soul those smug young officers who were the general’s aids-de-camp, and who ate with him, and swanked in and out of Headquarters, and ordered horses from the troop stables whenever they wanted them, and brought in their muddy automobiles to be cleaned, and sat with their feet on the general’s desk in his absence and smoked his cigarettes.

However, he cheered somewhat during the evening. They were ready to move. No more drill on hot and dusty parade grounds. No more long hikes. No more digging and shoveling and pushing of wagon trains out of the mud. No more infantry range, where a chap in the pit waved a red flag every time dust in a fellow’s eyes caused a miss, and the men round hissed “Raspberry!” No more bayonet school, where one jabbed a bunch of green branches representing the enemy, and asked breathlessly how it liked it. “War’s hell, you know, old top,” he had been wont to say, and had given the bunch another poke for luck.

Before, ahead, loomed the port of embarkation. The one imminent question of the barracks was—leave. Were they to have leave or were they not? To Sergeant Gray the matter was of grave importance. Leave meant a call on Mrs. Bud Palmer the faithless, in the new uniform, and the ceremonious returning to her of the photograph in the condiment can. Then it meant finding a nice girl—he was rather vague here—and going to the theatre and supper afterward, and perhaps to a roof garden still later.

“I’ll show her,” he muttered between his teeth. But the her was Mrs. Palmer.

In their preparations for departure the wager slipped from the minds of the troop. At two-thirty in the morning they went ostensibly on a hike, in full marching order, which meant extremely full—for a cavalry troop dismounted must carry their own equipment and a part that normally belongs on the horse. Went on a hike, not to return.

“Everything on me but the kitchen stove,” grumbled Sergeant Gray, and edged gingerly through the doorway to join the line outside. With extreme caution, because only the entire balance of the division and the people in three near-by towns knew that they were moving, they made their way to a railway siding and there entrained.

It was dawn when the cars moved out. Sergeant Gray had secured a window seat, and kept it in spite of heroic efforts to oust him. All round was his equipment, packed tight, his saddlebags, his blanket roll, his rifle and bandoleer, a dozen oranges in a paper sack, as many doughnuts. Over and round him, leaning out of his window at the imminent danger of their lives, were the supply sergeant, the second mess sergeant, the stable sergeant and two corporals.

“Not crowded, are you, general?” asked the stable sergeant politely.

The title stuck. He was general to the entire troop after that: behind his back, to the enlisted men; to his face and very, very politely, to the other noncoms.

“Oh, go to hell!” they finally tortured out of him; and they retired, grinning, until some wit or other would walk down the aisle, salute gravely and say: “Wish to report that bran muffins are on the way, sir.”

And as the train moved out the car took up that message of the artillery when a gun is fired. “On the way!” they yelled. “On the way! Bran muffin Number One on the way.”

“Been pretty busy, haven’t you?” he asked when at last the train had settled down to comparative quiet and the second mess sergeant was beside him.

“Not half as busy as you’ll have to be if you’re going to make good.”

However, the troop’s attention, fickle as the love of the mob, turned at last away from him and focused on the coloured porter. They insisted that he was of draft age, and that it was the custom anyhow to take the train crew to France with the troops it carried. They suggested craps, and on his protesting that he had no money they forced him to turn his pockets out, at the point of a revolver. And boylike, having bullied him until he was pale, they loaded him with cigarettes, candy, fruit and abuse.

The Headquarters Troop had a train of their own. Up behind the engine was the baggage car, turned into a kitchen with field ranges set up and the cooks already at work. Behind was the long line of tourist sleepers, each with its grinning but slightly apprehensive porter. And at the rear, where general officers of importance are always kept in war, was a Pullman containing the divisional staff.

When breakfast, served from the baggage car, was being carried down the aisles the train pulled into a tunnel and stopped. It was a very hot day, and in through the open windows rolled black and choking clouds of smoke. The troop coughed and cursed; but a moment later they burst into wild whoops of joy. The engine had pulled on a hundred yards or so, leaving the staff car in the tunnel.

The windows were full of jeering boys, eyes bent eagerly toward the rear. The end of the tunnel belched smoke like an iron furnace, and into it the joyous whoops of the troop penetrated like the maniacal yells of demons.

The general, who had just buttered a bran muffin, looked up and scowled. He took a bite of the muffin, but he was eating smoke.

“What the——” he sputtered. “Get this car moved on, somebody!” he shouted.

The staff sat still and pretended it was not present.

“Woof, woof!” said the general in a furious cough. “Listen to those—woof, woof!—young devils! Move this train on, somebody! What have I got a staff for anyhow?”

The train stood still and conversation languished. There are only two things to be done when a general is angry: One is to get behind the furniture and pretend one is not there; the other is to distract his mind. The general’s ire growing and the car remaining in the tunnel, an aide whom the general called Tommy when no one was near ventured to speak.

“Rather an amusing story going round, sir,” he said. “Woof! One of the sergeants in the Headquarters Troop has made a wager—woof!—woof, sir!—sir—that he——”

“I don’t want to hear anything about the Headquarters Troop,” snarled the general. “Woof! Bunch of second-story workers!”

The aide subsided. But somewhat later, when the car had moved on and the general was smoking an excellent cigar, the general said: “What was the wager, Tommy?”

“I believe, sir, it is to the effect that within a month this fellow will breakfast with you, sir. To be exact, will eat a bran muffin with you.”

The general exhaled a large mouthful of smoke.

“C’est la guerre!” he said. He had been studying French for two weeks. “C’est la guerre, Tommy. Queer things happen these days. But I think it unlikely. Very, very unlikely.”

II

Sergeant Gray was extremely contented. He sat back in his seat and alternately nibbled doughnuts and puffed at a cigarette. Before him, stretched as far as the limitations permitted, were two long and well-breeched legs, ending in tan shoes listed by the supply sergeant as “Shoes, field, pair, size 11 EE.”

He had surreptitiously taken out Mrs. Bud Palmer’s photograph and decided that her face was shallow. And after a moment’s hesitation he had decided not to waste any part of his precious leave in returning it. So he had torn it into bits and thrown it out of the window. Then he had taken a piece of paper and, writing on it “This space to let,” had placed it in the condiment can and put the can back in his saddlebags.

The reason of his content was that leave was now assured. At eleven o’clock that morning the general’s field secretary had typed on a shaky field machine that stood on an equally unsteady tripod the order that at the port of embarkation twenty per cent of the men would be allowed each day some twenty-three and a half hours’ leave.

Wild cheers in each car had followed the reading of the order. Wild cheers and wild plans. Sergeant Gray dreamed, doughnut in one hand and cigarette in the other. Twenty-three and a half hours! A lot could happen in twenty-three and a half hours. His dreams were general rather than concrete. Girls, theatres and food comprised them. No particular girl, no particular theatre, no particular food. He would call up some of the fellows from college, and they would have sisters. And when he had gone to the other side they would write to him.

He had no sentimental affiliations now. He had put all his eggs in one basket and the basket had been stolen.

“Lucky I’m not dependent on eggs for food!” he mused and, mistaking the hand in which he held the doughnut, bit vigorously into his cigarette.

Nevertheless his spirits grew lower as the day went on. It had occurred to him that all the fellows he had counted on for sisters would be in the Army, like himself. He cut off girls from his list, on that discovery; but food and theatres remained. He reflected rather defiantly that he could have a good time without girls; and then considered that a chap who lied to himself was in the class with a fellow who cheated at solitaire.

The day was hot. Kindly women at stations passed in sandwiches and coffee, and the troop, with the eternal appetite of twenty-odd, gorged themselves and cheered in overhanging pyramids from the windows. The corporals on guard between the cars slept on seats improvised of saddlebags, and between naps rolled cigarettes. And the noncoms in their corner inveigled the porter to a game of craps, and took from him his week’s accumulation of tips.

At the end of the game Sergeant Gray took out his money and counted it.

“Looks like you’d be able to give the Old Man a right good breakfast,” observed the stable sergeant.

“Oh, it’s to be his breakfast,” said Sergeant Gray recklessly.

“It is, is it?” The stable sergeant regarded him with admiration. “Want to bet on it?”

“Just as you like,” was the cool answer.

“Look here,” said the stable sergeant, aware of an audience. “I’ll lay you five to one you don’t breakfast with him at all; ten to one you don’t do it on his invitation, and”—he hesitated for effect—“twenty to one you don’t do it within a week.”

“Good!” said Sergeant Gray, and laid some bills on his knee. “I’d wager I could pull the Crown Prince’s nose at those odds. Then if I do breakfast with him within a week on his invitation you’ll owe me a hundred and seventy-five dollars.”

“I wish my money was as safe in the bank.” But the stable sergeant was vaguely uncomfortable. Those college chaps had a way of putting things over. He went out on the platform and stared uneasily at the flying scenery.

Sergeant Gray folded his new uniform under the mattress of his berth that night. It was bad for the collar, but he did it lest worse befall it. He suspected the troop of jealous designs on it. But he could not fold himself away so easily, and lay diagonally, with two Number Eleven Double E feet in the aisle. At four in the morning he wakened, the cause being a dream that he had for some hours been walking in a puddle and needed to change his shoes.

Still only half awake, he looked at his feet, to perceive that some wag had neatly blackened them with shoe polish from the porter’s closet. He immediately reached under his pillow for his whistle and blew a shrill blast on it, followed by a stentorian roar.

“Roll out, you dirty horsemen! R-r-roll out!” he yelled.

Still half asleep, they roused at the familiar sounds. Grunting and protesting they sat up. From the berth over him a corporal swung down two long bare legs and sat on the edge, yawning. Then somebody looked at a watch. There would have been a small riot, but the men were too sleepy and too relieved. They tumbled back, and Sergeant Gray lay on his pillow and grinned vindictively.

He did not go to sleep at once. He lay there and thought of his wager, and cursed himself for a fool. Then he dismissed that and thought of his twenty-three and a half hours’ leave. If only there were a girl—a nice girl. He did not want the sort of girl a fellow picked up in the streets. He wanted a real girl, the sort a fellow could write to later on.

Little quickenings of romance stirred in his heart. A pretty girl, preferably small. He liked them little, with pointed chins. They had a way, the little girls with pointed chins, of looking up at a fellow——

He wakened at seven. The troop were still sleeping, but from the baggage car ahead there floated back an odor of frying bacon, and on the platform of a station outside—for the train had stopped—the general was taking an airing.

Sergeant Gray blew his whistle. “R-r-roll out!” he yelled. “R-r-roll out, you blooming sons of guns!”

And, to emphasize his authority, he lifted a strong and muscular pair of legs and raised the upper berth, in which the corporal still slept. Smothered sounds from above convincing him that his efforts had been successful he dropped the upper berth with a jerk.

“R-r-roll out, up there!” he yelled; and whistle in hand he lay back to the succulent enjoyment of an orange.

Across from him the stable sergeant had turned on his back for another nap. Through the curtains, opened against the heat, Gray could see that young gentleman’s broad chest rising and falling slowly. The temptation and destiny were too strong for him. He bounced an orange on it, only to see it rebound through the window and to hear a deafening roar. The stable sergeant sat up, a hand on his chest and fire in his eyes. He blinked into the distorted face of the general, outside the window. The general was holding a hand to his left ear.

“Who threw that orange?” demanded the general.

“Wh-what orange, sir?”

“Don’t lie to me. It came out of this window.”

“I was asleep, sir. Something struck me on the chest. I didn’t see it, sir!”

Behind his curtains Sergeant Gray had been struggling into his trousers. He emerged now, slightly pale but determined.

“I threw it, sir,” he explained. “I had no idea—it bounced, sir.”

The general surveyed him grimly.

“It’s a curious thing, sergeant,” he said, “that when there is any deviltry going on in the Headquarters Troop I find you at the bottom of it. Report to me in my car at eight o’clock.”

Then he stalked away.

Down the car a sonorous bass spoke from behind a curtain: “The commanding general presents his compliments to Sergeant Gray, and will Sergeant Gray breakfast with him in his private car at eight o’clock?”

Sergeant Gray dressed hastily. There was the bitterness of despair in his heart, for he knew what was coming. He would have no twenty-three and a half hours’ leave, no theatres, no decent food, no girl. And over his head still that idiotic bet.

“Oh, hell!” he muttered, and started back.

The general was still in a very bad temper, and his left ear was swollen and purple. He lost no time in the attack—he believed in striking swiftly and hard—and he read off, from an excellent memory, the tale of Sergeant Gray’s various sins of commission. But he did not go so far as he meant to go, at that. In the first place, Gray was an excellent noncom, and in the second place there was something in the boy’s upstanding figure and clear if worried eyes that, coupled with another of the excellent cigars, inclined him to leniency.

“But remember this, Gray,” he finished severely, “I don’t usually meddle with these things. But I’ve got my eye on you. One more infraction of discipline, and you’ll lose your stripes.”

“Yes, sir,” said Sergeant Gray.

He was intolerably virtuous all that day.

Late that afternoon they detrained two miles from the new camp, and marched along, singing lustily songs that sound better than they look in print, and joyously stretching legs too long confined. It mattered nothing to them that the temporary camp was untidy and badly drained; that the general passing in a limousine was reading an order that meant an emergency abroad, into which they were to be thrown at once; that a certain percentage of them would never come back; and that a certain other percentage would return, never again to tramp the open road or to see the blue sky overhead.

But a girl in a little car trailing in the dust behind the staff cars thought of those things, and almost ran over the company goat, Eloise, because of tears.

“Darned little idiot!” murmured Sergeant Gray, and gave his last doughnut to Eloise.

There was no thrill, no increase over the regular seventy-six beats a minute of his heart to tell him that love had just passed by in a pink hat.

Until eighty-thirty that night Sergeant Gray was obnoxiously virtuous. He had met an English noncom in the camp, and was studiously endeavouring to copy that gentleman’s carriage and dignity. And the attraction of the new surroundings had turned the attention of the troop from him and his wager to other things. A discovery, too, of certain conditions in the barracks distracted them.

“A week here,” growled the second mess sergeant, “and we’ll all have to be dipped.”

“Might as well get used to it, old son,” said Sergeant Gray, and hummed a little ditty to the effect that “They are wild, simply wild, over me.”

But with the falling of darkness the high spirits of the crowd broke loose. That night there was a battle royal in the barracks. The lower squad room, which housed among others the N. C. O.’s, decided to raid the two upper squad rooms. Word of this having been passed up, the upper squad rooms were prepared. At the top of the stairs were stationed the fire buckets, filled to the top, and a pile of coal stolen from the kitchen and secretly conveyed to the upper floor by means of baskets, a window and a rope.

Twice the lower squad reached the top of the staircase, amid wild yells and much splashing of water. The hall and stairs were running small rivers. Coals, recklessly flung down, were salvaged like hand grenades by the attacking force and thrown back again.

The noise penetrated to august quarters, and the sentry at the door, placed there for just such an emergency, having been infected with the mad desire to fight, and being at that moment in the act of climbing the coal rope to attack the enemy from the rear, an officer with a flash was at the door before he was seen.

Followed instantaneous quiet with the only sound the dripping of water down the stairs. Followed the silent retreat of the warriors to beds, into which they crept fully dressed. The officer moved through the lower squad room. It was extremely quiet save for an occasional deep-throated snore. The officer smiled grimly and went away.

And in the darkness Sergeant Gray sat up and felt of his right eye.

In the early dawn, hearing the cook stirring, he went across to the mess hall, a strange figure in his undergarments, with one eye closed and a bruise on his forehead as big as an egg. The cook eyed him angrily, and addressed him without regard to his dignity as a sergeant.

“Some o’ you fellows get busy and bring back that coal you took last night,” he said. “I got something else to do.”

“Look here, Watt,” said Sergeant Gray appealingly, “I’ll get the coal for you all right. But give me a piece of raw beefsteak, won’t you? Look at this eye.”

“Pleased to see it,” said the cook with a vindictive glare.

“Forget it, Watt. I’ll get your coal. See here, I’ve got leave to-morrow, and I want to go to the city.”

“Well, you can go, for all of me.”

“I want,” said Sergeant Gray plaintively, “to get my picture taken. I want to send it to my mother.”

Suddenly the cook laughed. He leaned over the big serving counter and laughed until he was weak.

“Picture!” he said. “My word! She’ll think the Germans have had you! Say, give me one, will you?”

He went to the refrigerator, however, and brought out a piece of raw beef.

It should have warned Sergeant Gray, lying sulkily on his cot through that bright spring day, the beef over his eye and attracting a multitude of flies, that no one else had suffered visible injury. The boys came and went blithely, each intent on his own affairs. United action had cleaned up the hallway and the stairs. But Sergeant Gray, picked out as Fate’s victim, lay and dozed and struck at flies and—waited.

By night the swelling had gone, but a deep bluish shadow encircled the right eye. Frequent consultation of his shaving mirror told him that he would have the mark for days, but at least he could see. That was something. He got up after dusk and dressed in the new uniform. Then he wandered about the camp.

He felt very lonely. Most of his intimates were on leave. Round the camp the men lounged negligently. Some one with a mandolin was strumming it, and from the theatre, where a movie show was going on, came the rattle of clapping hands. Sergeant Gray hesitated at the door, then he moved on.

What he wanted was some one to talk to, a girl preferably. He wandered past division headquarters, where the chief of staff stood inside a window rolling a cigarette; past the bull pen, surrounded by its fifteen feet of barbed wire and its military police.

At the edge of the camp he halted. From there one could see a brilliance reflected in the sky—the lights of the port of embarkation, ten miles away.

Sergeant Gray sighed and sat down on the road near an automobile. And somebody spoke to him.

“Can I take you anywhere?” asked the voice.

It was young and feminine. Something that had been aching in Sergeant Gray’s deep chest suddenly stopped aching and leaped.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere in particular.”

“I just thought”—explained the voice—“I’m waiting for the—for a relative and I might as well be taking people to the street-car line. The taxis have stopped.”

A car leaving the camp threw its lights on her. She was small and young and had a pointed chin. Sergeant Gray got up.

“It’s awfully good of you,” he said. “If it isn’t too much trouble I’ll go to the end of the line.”

“Get in,” she said briefly.

Sergeant Gray sat back in the little car and drew a long breath.

“It’s rather small for you, isn’t it?” asked the girl, throwing in the clutch. “My brother has to fold up too. He’s in France,” she added. “That’s why I like to do things for the soldiers here. It’s like doing something for him.”

Sergeant Gray pondered this. He considered it rather an unusual thing for a girl to have thought of. He considered that she was as nice as she was pretty. He also considered that she drove well. Sergeant Gray, who in his leisure hours practiced running a motorcycle with the side car in the air, paid her tribute of approval.

“We’ll be over soon,” he said with a touch of pride.

“You’d better not tell anybody that.”

“Why? I rather think our being here tells the story.”

“Well, a lot of people would like to know just when you’re going. They hang round the men and offer them rides in cars, and the men get to talking, and pretty soon they’ve told all they know.”

“They’d better not try it on me.”

“You almost told me a moment ago.”

Sergeant Gray sat quiet and a trifle hurt.

“I am only warning you,” said the girl. “There are spies simply everywhere. I can’t do much, and that’s my way of doing something. That and being a sort of taxi,” she added.

They were in a town now, and by the lamps he saw just how pretty she was.

“Thanks awfully for warning me,” he said rather humbly. “A fellow gets to think that all this spy talk is—just talk.”

“Well, it isn’t,” said the girl briefly but with the air of one who knew.

The sergeant eyed her askance.

“That sounds as though you knew something.”

“Perhaps I do. Though of course one doesn’t really know these things. One suspects.”

“Naturally one does.”

She glanced at him, but his face was grave.

“What I would like to know,” he proceeded, “is what one does when one suspects.”

“I am afraid you are trying to be funny,” she observed coldly, and brought the car to a standstill. “Here’s your car line.”

He hesitated. Then he made a wild resolve.

“I see it,” he said agreeably. “Thanks awfully for bringing me. We can go back now.”

She stared at him.

“You are not going anywhere?”

“Why, no,” he said, trying not to look conscious. “I said that I’d like to go to the end of the car line.”

“You’re there.”

“I only wanted to look at it.”

“Very well. Get out and look at it. I don’t think you’ll find it unusual in any way.”

“Look here,” he said humbly. “I’m awfully sorry. I was just hungry to talk to some one, and when you offered——”

“I have done exactly as I offered. You will please get out!”

He got out slowly. He was overcome with wretchedness and guilt, but her pointed chin was held high and her face was obstinate.

“Thank you very much,” said Sergeant Gray, and turning drearily commenced his lonely walk back to camp.

He could hear her behind him backing and turning in the narrow street. He plodded on, cursing himself. If he had had any sense and had got out and let her think he was going somewhere——

The lights of the car were close behind him now. When they were abreast he heard the grinding of the brakes as it stopped.

“I don’t want to be disagreeable,” said the girl, beside him. “I suppose you did want some one to talk to. I’ll take you back if you like.”

“I’d better not bother you any more.”

Suddenly she laughed. In the light from a street lamp she had caught her first real glimpse of his face.

“Wherever did you get that eye?” she demanded.

“Fighting,” he said shortly. “We had a roughhouse at the barracks last night.”

“I should think you were going to have enough trouble soon without getting beaten up like that,” she said with a touch of severity. “Well, are you going to get in?”

He got in. She had been rather reserved coming down, but now she was more talkative. His little remark about being hungry for some one to talk to had struck home. Her brother had said something like that once. They must get hungry for girls, nice girls.

So now she chattered and she drew from the tall boy beside her something about himself. It was not particularly hard to do. Sergeant Gray opened up like a flower in the sun. He explained, for instance, that he was to have a commission when he was twenty-one.

“Unless,” he admitted, “I’m in too bad with the Old Man.”

“The Old Man?”

“The general,” explained Sergeant Gray, unaware that the young lady was sitting very straight. “He’s hell—he’s strong for discipline, and all that. And—well, every now and then I slip up on something, and he gets me. It’s always me he gets,” he finished plaintively and ungrammatically.

“But you shouldn’t do things that are wrong.”

Sergeant Gray pondered this amazing statement.

“Perhaps you’re right,” he acknowledged. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“You might try being terribly well behaved for—well, for twenty-four hours.”

“Do you want me to?”

“It’s entirely a matter of your own good,” she said rather coldly.

“I’ll do it!” said Sergeant Gray rashly. “Not a misstep for twenty-four hours. How’s that?”

“It sounds well.”

“The truth is,” confided Sergeant Gray, “I’ve got to be good. He’s watching. He told me so.”

“And if you’re not——”

“Shot against a brick wall probably.” He grinned cheerfully. “Think of that hanging over a fellow, and twenty-three and a half hours’ leave to-morrow.”

“I hope,” she said in the motherly tone she assumed now and then, “that you are going to be awfully careful to-morrow.”

“Did you ever see a cat crossing a wet gutter? Well, that’s me to-morrow. This is no time to take any chances.”

At which probably those particular gods that had Sergeant Gray in their keeping laughed behind their hands.

The girl stopped the car at the camp, and the plaything of destiny descended.

“Thank you, awfully,” observed the said plaything with a considerable amount of warmth in his voice. “I—perhaps I shall not see you again.”

“I was just thinking—what time does your leave commence to-morrow?”

“At ten-thirty”—hopefully.

“I might pick you up then and take you to the trolley.”

“Honestly, would you?” he asked delightedly. “You know, I—really, I can’t tell you how grateful I would be.”

“I love to make the taxi men wriggle,” was her rather unsatisfactory reply. “I’ll be here, then. Good night.”

Sergeant Gray saluted and went away. To all appearances he was a rather overgrown young man trudging through the mud of a not too-tidy camp to a barracks that needed carbolising. Actually he was a sublimated being favoured of heaven and floating in a rosy cloud of dreams.

“Halt!” said a guard, and threw his rifle to port arms. “Who’s there?”

“Sergeant of the Headquarters Troop,” said the superman.

“Where’s your pass?”

The superman presented it, and the guard inspected it closely—the attitude of the M. P. being that all men are Germans unless proved otherwise.

“Thoroughly satisfactory?” inquired the superman.

The M. P. grunted.

The sergeant approached him and lowered his voice confidentially.

“Tell you something,” he volunteered: “I’m not the same chap who went out on that pass.”

“What d’you mean you’re not?”

“It’s like this, old son. But first of all let me ask you something.” He glanced about cautiously. “Man to man, old son—do you believe in love at first sight?”

“Last fellow who tried being funny round here,” said the guard grimly, “had a chance to laugh himself to death in the bull pen.”

“No heart!” sighed the sergeant, moving on, still on air. “No soul! No imagination! Good night, my sad and lonely friend. Good night!”

He moved on, singing in a very deep bass:

“Oh, promise me that some day you and I

May take our love te tum, te tum, te tum.”

The chief of staff, who had also discovered that his quarters needed fumigation, raised from an uneasy pillow and groaned disgustedly.

“Stop that noise out there!” he bawled through the window beside him.

The superman recognised neither the voice nor the new quarters of the staff.

“Minion,” he said, halting and addressing the window, “hast never loved?”

Then he moved on, still in a roseate cloud the exact shade of a certain pink hat.

“That we may take our love and faith renew,

And find the hollows where those violets grew-w-w——”

His voice died away, swallowed up in distance and the night.

When he went into the lower squad room a sort of chant greeted him from the beds: “Where, oh where’s the sergeant been?”

And the reply shouted lustily: “Out getting measured for a shave.”

He undressed quietly, and salvaging the piece of beefsteak from under his pillow got into bed and placed it carefully over his eye.

III

But tragedy had marked Sergeant Gray for its own. At reveille he rolled over, yawned and without lifting himself reached up to the pocket of his blouse and retrieved his whistle.

He blew it and shouted as usual: “R-r-roll out, you dirty horsemen! R-r-roll out!”

Then, arms under his head, he lay and dreamed. Round the day to come he wove little fantasies of the new uniform, and money in his pocket, and twenty-three and a half hours’ leave, and—the girl in the little car. His pass he had already secured through the top sergeant. It had been, with others on the pass list, O.K’d by the captain and re-O.K’d by the military police. At ten-thirty that morning Sergeant Gray would be a free man.

He made a huge breakfast, and careful inspection showed the eye greatly improved. And he whistled blithely while laying out his things for the official inspection, comparing his belongings carefully with a list in his hand. Nothing was to go wrong that day, nothing mar the perfection of it or curtail his leave.

But he failed to count the camp quartermaster; and that Destiny, which had taken him in hand forty-eight hours ago, was making of him her toy.

Now camp quartermasters are but human. They have their good days and their bad, and sometimes it rather gets on their nerves, the eternal examining and determining, for instance, that every man of perhaps thirty thousand possesses in perfect condition: