“Mr. Burton,” Tish called, “do you mind hiding that tire until morning? We found it and it is ours. But it’s unnecessary to excite suspicion at any time.”
I am not certain that Mr. Burton’s theory is right, but even if it is I contend that war is war and justifies certain practices hardly to be condoned in times of peace.
Briefly, he has always maintained that Tish being desperate and arguing that the C. in C.—which is military for commander-in-chief—was able to secure tires whenever necessary—that Tish had deliberately unfastened a spare tire from the rear of General Pershing’s automobile; not of course actually salvaging it, but leaving it in a position where on the car’s getting into motion it would fall off and could then be salvaged.
I do not know. I do know, however, that Tish retired very early to her bed in the ambulance. As Aggie was heating water for a bath, having found a sheltered horse trough behind a broken wall, I took Mr. Burton for a walk through the town in an endeavor to bring him to a more cheerful frame of mind. He was still very low-spirited, but he offered no confidences until we approachedthe only undestroyed building in sight. He stopped then and suggested turning back.
“It’s a Y hut,” he said. “We’ll be about as welcome there as a skunk at a garden party.”
I reprimanded him for this, as I had found no evidence of any jealousy between the two great welfare organizations. But when I persisted in advancing he said: “Well, you might as well know it. She’s there. I saw her through a window.”
“What has that got to do with my getting a bottle of vanilla extract there if they have one?”
“Oh, she’ll have one probably; she uses it for fudge! I’m not going there, and that’s flat.”
“I thought you had forgotten her.”
“I have!” he said savagely. “The way you forget the toothache. But I don’t go round boring a hole in a tooth to get it again. Look here, Miss Lizzie, do you know what she was doing when I saw her? She was dropping six lumps of sugar into a cup of something for that—that parent she’s gone bugs about.”
“That’s what she’s here for.”
“Oh, it is, is it?” he snarled. “Well, she wasn’t doing it for the fellow with a cauliflower ear who was standing beside him. There was a line of about twenty fellows there putting in their own sugar, all right.”
“I’ll tell you this, Mr. Burton,” I said in a serious tone, “sometimes I think things are just as well as they are. You haven’t a disposition for marriage. I don’t believe you’ll make her happy, even if you do get her.”
“Oh, I’ll not get her,” he retorted roughly. “As a matter of fact, I don’t want her. I’m cured. I’m as cured as a ham. She can feed sugar to the whole blamed Army, as far as I’m concerned. And after that she can go home and feed sugar to his five kids, and give ’em colic and sit up at night and——”
I left him still muttering and went into the Y hut. Hilda gave a little scream of joy when she saw me and ran round the counter, which was a plank on two barrels, and kissed me. I must say she was a nice little thing.
“Isn’t France small after all?” she demanded. “And do you know I’ve seen your nephew—or is it Miss Tish’s? He’s just too dear! We had a long talk here only a day or two ago, and I was telling about you three, and suddenly he said: ‘Wait a minute. You’ve mentioned no names, but I’ll bet my tin hat my Aunt Tish was one of them!’ Isn’t that amazing?”
Well, I thought it was, and I took a cup of her coffee. But it was poor stuff, and right then and there I made a kettleful and showed her how.But I noticed she grew rather quiet after a while.
At last she said: “You—I don’t suppose you’ve seen that Mr. Burton anywhere, have you?”
“We saw something of him in Paris,” I replied, and glanced out the window. He was standing across what had once been the street, and if ever I’ve seen hungry eyes in a human being he had them.
“He was so awfully touchy, Miss Lizzie,” she said. “And then I was never sure—— Why do you suppose he isn’t fighting? Not that it’s any affair of mine, but I used to wonder.”
“He’s got a milk leg,” I said, and set the coffee kettle off.
“A milk leg! A milk—— Oh, how ridiculous! How—— Why, Miss Lizzie, how can he?”
“Don’t ask me. They get ’em sometimes too. They’re very painful. My cousin, Nancy Lee McMasters, had one after her third child and——”
I am sorry to say that here she began to laugh. She laughed all over the hut, really, and when she had stood up and held to the plank and laughed she sat down on a box of condensed milk and laughed again. I am a truthful woman, and I had thought it was time she knew the facts, but I saw at once that I had make a mistake. Andwhen I looked out the window Mr. Burton had gone.
I remained there with her for some time, but as any mention of Mr. Burton only started her off again we discussed other matters.
She said Charlie Sands was in the Intelligence Department at the Front, and that when he left he was about to, as she termed it, pull off a raid.
“He’s gone to bring me a German as a souvenir; and that Captain Weber—you remember him—he is going to bring me another,” she cried. “He gave me my choice and I took an officer, with a nice upcurled mustache and——”
“And five children?”
“Five children? Whatever do you mean, Miss Lizzie?”
“I understand that Captain Weber has five. I didn’t know but that you had a special preference for them that way.”
“Why, Miss Lizzie!” she said in a strained voice. “I don’t believe it. He’s never said——”
I was washing out her dish towels by that time, for she wasn’t much of a housekeeper, I’ll say that, though as pretty as a picture, and I never looked up. She walked round the hut, humming to herself to show how calm she was, but I noticed that when her broom fell over she kicked at it.
Finally she said: “I don’t know why you think I was interested in Captain Weber. He was amusing, that’s all; and I like fighting men—the bravest are the tenderest, you know. I—if you ever happen on Mr. Burton you might tell him I’m here. It’s interesting, but I get lonely sometimes. I don’t see a soul I really care to talk to.”
Well, I promised I would, and as Mr. Burton had gone I went back alone. Tish was asleep with a hot stone under her cheek, from which I judged she’d had neuralgia, and Aggie was nowhere in sight. But round the corner an ammunition train of trucks had come in and I suddenly remembered Aggie and her horse trough. Unfortunately I had not asked her where it was.
I roused Tish but her neuralgia had ruffled her usual placid temper, and she said that if Aggie was caught in a horse trough let her sit in it. If she could take a bath in a pint of water Aggie could, instead of hunting up luxuries. She then went to sleep again, leaving me in an anxious frame of mind.
Mr. Burton was not round, and at last I started out alone with a flashlight, but as we were short of batteries I was too sparing of it and stepped down accidentally into a six-foot cellar, jarring my spine badly. When I got out at last it was very late, and though there were soldiers allround I did not like to ask them to assist me in my search, as I had every reason to believe that our dear Aggie had sought cleanliness in her nightgown.
It was, I believe, fully 2A. M.when I finally discovered her behind a wall, where a number of our boys were playing a game with a lantern and dice—a game which consisted apparently of coaxing the inanimate objects with all sorts of endearing terms. They got up when they saw me, but I observed that I was merely taking a walk, and wandered as nonchalantly as I was able into the inclosure.
At first all was dark and silent. Then I heard the trickle of running water, and a moment later a sneeze. The lost was found!
“Aggie!” I said sternly.
“Hush, for Heaven’s sake! They’ll hear you.”
“Where are you?”
“B-b-behind the trough,” she said, her teeth chattering. “Run and get my bathrobe, Lizzie. Those d-d-dratted boys have been there for an hour.”
Well, I had brought it with me, and she had her slippers; and we started back. I must say that Aggie was a strange figure, however, and one of the boys said after we had passed: “Well, fellows, war’s hell, all right.”
“If you saw it too I feel better,” said another. “I thought maybe this frog liquor was doing things to me.”
Aggie, however, was sneezing and did not hear.
I come now to that part of my narrative which relates to Charlie Sands’ raid and the results which followed it. I felt a certain anxiety about telling Tish of the dangerous work in which he was engaged, and waited until her morning tea had fortified her. She was, I remember, sitting on a rock directing Mr. Burton, who was changing a tire.
“A raid?” she said. “What sort of a raid?”
“To capture Germans, Tish.”
“A lot of chance he’ll have!” she said with a sniff. “What does he know about raids? And you’d think to hear you talk, Lizzie, that pulling Germans out of a trench was as easy as letting a dog out after a neighbor’s cat. It’s like Pershing and all the rest of them,” she added bitterly, “to take a left-handed newspaper man, who can’t shut his right eye to shoot with the left, and start him off alone to take the whole German Army.”
“He wouldn’t go alone,” said Mr. Burton.
“Certainly not!” Tish retorted. “I know him, and you don’t, Mr. Burton. He’ll not go alone. Of course not! He’ll pick out a lot of men whoplay good bridge, or went to college with him, or belong to his fraternity, or can sing, or some such reason, and——”
Here to my great surprise she flung down one of our two last remaining teacups and retired precipitately into the ruins. Not for us to witness her majestic grief. Rachel—or was it Naomi?—mourning for her children.
However, in a short time she reappeared and stated that she was sick of fooling round on back roads, and that we would now go directly to the Front.
“We’ll never pull it off,” Mr. Burton said to me in an undertone.
“She has never failed, Mr. Burton,” I reminded him gravely.
Before we started Mr. Burton saw Hilda, but he came back looking morose and savage. He came directly to me.
“Look me over,” he said. “Do I look queer or anything?”
“Not at all,” I replied.
“Look again. I don’t seem to be dying on my feet, do I? Anything wan about me? I don’t totter with feebleness, do I?”
“You look as strong as a horse,” I said somewhat acidly.
“Then I wish to thunder you’d tell me,” hestormed, “why that girl—that—well, you know who I mean—why the deuce she should first giggle all over the place when she sees me, and then baby me like an idiot child? ‘Here’s a chair,’ she’d say, and ‘Do be careful of yourself’; and when I recovered from that enough to stand up like a man and ask for a cup of coffee she said I ought to take soup; it was strengthening!”
Fortunately Tish gave the signal to start just then, and we moved out. Hilda was standing in her doorway when we passed, and I thought she looked rather forlorn. She blew kisses to us, but Mr. Burton only saluted stiffly and looked away. I have often considered that to the uninitiated the ways of love are very strange.
It was when we were out of the village that he turned to me with a strange look in his eyes.
“She doesn’t care for Weber after all,” he said. “Didn’t I tell you the minute she found she could have him she wouldn’t want him? Do you think I’d marry a girl like that?”
“She’s a nice little thing,” I replied. “But you’re perfectly right—she’s no housekeeper.”
“No housekeeper!” he said in a tone of astonishment. “That’s the cleanest hut in France. And let me tell you I’ve had the only cup of coffee——”
He broke off and fell into a fit of abstraction.Somewhat later he looked up and said: “I’ll never see her again, Miss Lizzie.”
“Why?”
“Because I told her I wouldn’t come back until I could bring her a German officer as a souvenir. Some idiot had told her he was going to, and, of course, I told her if she was collecting them I’d get her one. A fat chance I have too! I don’t know what made me do it. I’m only surprised I didn’t make it the Crown Prince while I was at it.”
But how soon were our thoughts to turn from soft thoughts of love to graver matters!
Tish, as I have said before, has a strange gift of foresight that amounts almost to prophecy.
I have never known her, for instance, to put a pink bow on an afghan and then have the subsequent development turn out to be a boy, or vice versa. And the very day before Mr. Ostermaier fell and sprained his ankle she had picked up a roller chair at an auction sale, and in twenty minutes he was in it.
At noon we stopped at a crossroads and distributed to some passing troops our usual cigarettes and chocolate. We also fried a number of doughnuts, and were given three cheers by various companies as they passed. It was when our labors were over that Tish perceived a brokenmachine gun abandoned by the roadside, and spent some time examining it.
“One never knows,” she said, “what bits of knowledge may one day be useful.”
Mr. Burton explained the mechanism to her.
“I’d be firing one of these things now,” he said gloomily, “if it were not for that devilish piece of American ingenuity, the shower bath.”
“Good gracious!” Aggie said.
“Fact. I got into a machine-gun school, but one day in a shower one of the officers perceived my—er—affliction, badly swollen from a hike, and reported me.”
Tish was strongly inclined to tow the machine gun behind us and eventually have it repaired, but Mr. Burton said it was not worth the trouble, and shortly afterward we turned off the main road into a lane, seeking a place for our luncheon. Tish drove as usual, but she continued to lament the gun.
“I feel keenly,” she said, “the necessity of being fully armed against any emergency. And I feel, too, that it is my solemn duty to salvage such weapons as come my way at any and all times.”
I called to her just then, but she was driving while looking over her shoulder at Mr. Burton, and it was too late to avoid the goat. We wentover it and it lay behind us in the road quite still.
“You’ve killed it, Tish,” I said.
“Not at all,” she retorted. “It has probably only fainted. As I was saying, I feel that with our near approach to the lines we should be armed to the teeth with modern engines of destruction, and should also know how to use them.”
We were then in a very attractive valley, and Tish descending observed that if it were not for the noise of falling shells and so on it would have been a charming place to picnic.
She then instructed Aggie and me to prepare a luncheon of beef croquettes and floating island, and asked Mr. Burton to accompany her back to the car.
As I was sitting on the running board beating eggs for a meringue at the time I could not avoid overhearing the conversation.
First Mr. Burton, acting under orders, lifted the false bottom, and then he whistled and observed: “Great Cæsar’s ghost! Looks as though there is going to be hell up Sixth Street, doesn’t it?”
“I’ll ask you not to be vulgar, Mr. Burton.”
“But—look here, Miss Tish. We’ll be jailed for this, you know. You may be able to get away with the C. in C.’s tires, but you can’t steal ahundred or so grenades without somebody missing them. Besides, what the—what the dickens are you going to do with them? If it had been eggs now, or oranges—but grenades!”
“They may be useful,” Tish replied in her cryptic manner. “Forearmed is forewarned, Mr. Burton. What is this white pin for?”
I believe she then pulled the pin, for I heard Mr. Burton yell, and a second later there was a loud explosion.
I sat still, unable to move, and then I heard Mr. Burton say in a furious voice: “If I hadn’t grabbed that thing and thrown it you’d have been explaining this salvage system of yours to your Maker before this, Miss Carberry. Upon my word, if I hadn’t known you’d blow up the whole outfit the moment I was gone I’d have left before this. I’ve got nerves if you haven’t.”
“That was an over-arm pitch you gave it,” was Tish’s sole reply. “I had always understood that grenades were thrown in a different manner.”
I distinctly heard his groan.
“You’ll have about as much use for grenades as I have for pink eye,” he said almost savagely. “I don’t like to criticize, Miss Tish, and I must say I think to this point we’ve made good. But when I see you stocking up with grenades instead of cigarettes, and giving every indicationof being headed for the Rhine, I feel that it is time to ask what next?”
“Have you any complaint about the last few weeks?” Tish inquired coldly.
“Well, if we continue to leave a trail of depredations behind us—— It’s bad enough to have a certain person think I’m a slacker, but if she gets the idea that I’m a first-class second-story worker I’m done, that’s all.”
Fortunately Aggie announced luncheon just then.
Every incident of that luncheon is fixed clearly in my mind, because of what came after it. We had indeed penetrated close to the Front, as was shown by the number of shells which fell in it while we ate. The dirt from one, in fact, quite spoiled the floating island, and we were compelled to open a can of peaches to replace it. It was while we were drinking our after-dinner coffee that Tish voiced the philosophy which upheld her.
“When my hour comes it will come,” she said calmly. “Viewed from that standpoint the attempts of the enemy to disturb us become amusing—nothing more.”
“Exactly,” said Mr. Burton, skimming some dust from the last explosion out of his coffee cup. “Amusing is the word. Funny, I call it. Funny as a crutch. Why, look who’s here!”
There was a young officer riding up the valley rapidly. I remember Tish taking a look at him and then saying quickly: “Lizzie, go and close the floor of the ambulance. Don’t run. I’ll explain later.”
Well, the officer rode up and jumped off his horse and saluted.
“Some of our fellows said you were trapped here, Miss Carberry,” he said. “I didn’t believe it at first. It’s a bad place. We’ll have to get you out somehow.”
“I’m not anxious to get out.”
“But,” he said, and stared at all of us—“you are—— Do you know that our trenches are just beyond this hill?”
“I wish you’d tell the Germans that; they seem to think they are in this valley.”
He laughed a little and said: “They ought to make you a general, Miss Carberry.” He then said to Mr. Burton: “I’d like to speak to you for a moment.”
Looking back I believe that Tish had a premonition of trouble then, for during their conversation aside she got out her knitting, always with her an indication of perturbation or of deep thought, and she spoke rather sharply to Aggie about rinsing the luncheon dishes more thoroughly. Aggie said afterward that she herselfhad felt at that time that peculiar itching in the palms of her hands which always with her presages bad news.
“If he asks about those grenades, Lizzie, you can reply. Say you don’t know anything about them. That’s the truth.”
“I know where they are,” I said with some acidity. “And what’s more, I know I’m not going to ride a foot in that ambulance with that concentrated extract of hell under my feet.”
“Lizzie——”
She began sternly, but just then the two men came back, and the officer’s face was uncomfortable.
“I—from your demeanor,” he said, “and—er—the fact that you haven’t mentioned it I rather gather that you have not heard the er—the news, Miss Carberry.”
“I didn’t see the morning papers,” Tish said with the dry wit so characteristic of her.
“You have a nephew, I understand, at the Front?”
Tish’s face suddenly grew set and stern.
“Have—or had?” she asked in a terrible voice.
“Oh, it’s not so bad as all that. In fact, he’s a lot safer just now than you are, for instance. But it’s rather unfortunate in a way too. He has been captured by the enemy.”
Aggie ran to her then with the blackberry cordial, but Tish waved her away.
“A prisoner!” she said. “A nephew of mine has allowed himself to be captured by the Germans? It is incredible!”
“Lots of us are doing it,” he said. “It’s no disgrace. In fact, it’s a mark of courage. A fellow goes farther than he ought to, and the first thing he knows he’s got a belt of bayonet points, and it is a time for discretion.”
“Leave me, please,” Tish said majestically. “I am ashamed. I am humbled. I must think.”
Shortly after that she called us back and said: “I have come to this conclusion: The situation is unbearable and must be rectified. Do you know where he is enduring this shameful captivity?”
“I wouldn’t take it too hard, Miss Tish,” said the officer. “He’s very comfortable, as we happen to know. One of our runners got back at dawn this morning. He said he left your nephew in the church at V——, playing pinochle with the German C. O. The runner was hidden in the cellar under the church, and he said the C. O. had lost all his money and his Iron Cross, and was going to hold Captain Sands until he could win them back.”
He then urged her, the moment night fell, toretire from our dangerous position, and to feel no anxiety whatever.
“If I know him,” were his parting words, “he’ll pick that German as clean as a chicken. Pinochle will win the war,” he added and rode away.
During the remainder of the afternoon Tish sat by herself, knitting and thinking. It was undoubtedly then that she formed the plan which in its execution has brought us so much hateful publicity, yet without which the town of V—— might still be in German hands.
We knew, of course, that Tish’s fine brain was working on the problem of rescuing Charlie Sands; and Mr. Burton was on the whole rather keen about it.
“I’ve got to get a German officer some way,” he said. “She’s probably planning now to see Von Hindenburg about Sands. She generally aims high, I’ve discovered. And in that case I rather fancy myself taking the old chap back to Hilda as a souvenir.” He then reflected and scowled. “But she’d be flirting with him in ten minutes, damn her!” he added.
Tish refused both sympathy and conversation during the afternoon.
On Aggie’s offering her both she merely said: “Go away and leave me alone, for Heaven’s sake. He is perfectly safe. I only hope he took his toothbrush, that’s all.”
It is a proof of Tish’s gift of concentration that she thought out her plan so thoroughly under the circumstances, for the valley was shelled all that afternoon. We found an abandoned battery position and the three of us took refuge in it,leaving Tish outside knitting calmly. It was a poor place, but by taking in our folding table and chairs we made it fairly comfortable, and Mr. Burton taught us a most interesting game of cards, in which one formed pairs and various combinations, and counted with coffee beans. If one had four of any one kind one took all the beans.
It was dusk when Tish appeared in the doorway, and we noticed that she wore a look of grim determination.
“I have been to the top of the hill,” she said, “and I believe that I know now the terrain thoroughly. In case my first plan fails we may be compelled to desperate measures—but I find my present situation intolerable. Never before has a member of my family been taken by an enemy. We die, but we do not surrender.”
“You can speak for your own family, then,” Aggie said. “I’ve got a family, too, but it’s got sense enough to surrender when necessary. And if you think Libby Prison was any treat to my grandfather——”
Tish ignored her.
“It is my intention,” she went on, “to appeal to the general of his division to rescue my nephew and thus wipe out the stain on the family honor. Failing that, I am prepared to go to any length.”Here she eyed Aggie coldly. “It is no time for craven spirits,” she said. “We may be arrested and court-martialed for being so near the Front, to say nothing of what may eventuate in case of a refusal. I intend to leave no stone unturned, but I think it only fair to ask for a vote of confidence. Those in the affirmative will please signify by saying ‘aye.’”
“Aye,” I said stoutly. I would not fail my dear Tish in such a crisis. Aggie followed me a moment later, but feebly, and Mr. Burton said: “I don’t like the idea any more than I do my right eye. Why bother with the general? I’m for going to V—— and breaking up the pinochle game, and bringing home the bacon in the shape of a Hun or two.”
However, I have reason to think that he was joking, and that subsequent events startled him considerably, for I remember that when it was all over and we were in safety once again he kept saying over and over in a dazed voice: “Well, can you beat it? Can you beat it?”
In some way Tish had heard, from a battery on the hill, I think, that headquarters was at the foot of the hill on the other side. She made her plans accordingly.
“As soon as darkness has fallen,” she said to Mr. Burton, “we three women shall visit the commandingofficer and there make our plea—without you, as it will be necessary to use all the softening feminine influence possible. One of two things will then occur: Either he will rescue my nephew or—I shall.”
“Now see here, Miss Tish,” he protested, “you’re not going to leave me out of it altogether, are you? You wouldn’t break my heart, would you? Besides, you’ll need me. I’m a specialist at rescuing nephews. I—I’ve rescued thousands of nephews in my time.”
Well, she’d marked out a place that would have been a crossroads if the German shells had left any road, and she said if she failed with the C. O. he was to meet us there, with two baskets of cigarettes for the men in the trenches.
“Cigarettes!” he said. “What help will they be against the enemy? Unless you mean to wait until they’ve smoked themselves to death.”
“Underneath the cigarettes,” Tish went on calmly, “you will have a number of grenades. If only we could repair that machine gun!” she reflected. “I dare say I can salvage an automatic rifle or two,” she finished; “though large-sized firecrackers would do. The real thing is to make a noise.”
“We might get some paper bags and burst them,” suggested Mr. Burton; “and if you feelthat music would add to the martial effect I can play fairly well on a comb.”
It was perhaps nine o’clock when we reached the crest of the hill, and had Tish not thoughtfully brought her wire cutters along I do not believe we would have succeeded in reaching headquarters. We got there finally, however, and it was in a cellar and—though I do not care to reflect on our gallant army—not as tidy as it should have been. Mr. Burton having remained behind temporarily the three of us made our way to the entrance, and Tish was almost bayoneted by a sentry there, who was nervous because of a number of shells falling in the vicinity.
“Take that thing away!” she said with superb scorn, pointing to the bayonet. “I don’t want a hole in the only uniform I’ve got, young man. Watch your head, Lizzie!”
“The saints protect us!” said the sentry. “Women! Three women!”
Tish and I went down the muddy incline into the cellar, and two officers who were sitting there playing cribbage looked at us and then stood up with a surprised expression.
Tish had assumed a most lofty attitude, and picking out the general with an unfailing eye she saluted and said: “Only the most urgent matters would excuse my intrusion, sir. I——”
Unfortunately at that moment Aggie slipped and slid into the room feet first in a sitting posture. She brought up rather dazed against the table, and for a moment both officers were too surprised to offer her any assistance. Tish and I picked her up, and she fell to sneezing violently, so that it was some time before the conversation was resumed. It was the general who resumed it.
“This is very flattering,” he said in a cold voice, “but if you ladies will explain how you got here I’ll make it interesting for somebody.”
Suddenly the colonel who was with him said: “Suffering Crimus! It can’t be! And yet—it certainly is!”
We looked at him, and it was the colonel who had been so interested in Charlie Sands at the training camp. We all shook hands with him, and he offered us chairs, and said to the general: “These are the ladies I have told you about, sir, with the nephew. You may recall the helpful suggestions sent to the Secretary of War and forwarded back to me by the General Staff. I have always wanted to explain about those dish towels, ladies. You see, you happened on us at a bad time. Our dish towels had come, but though neatly hemmed they lacked the small tapein the corner by which to hang them up. I therefore——”
“Oh, keep still!” said the general in an angry tone. “Now, what brings you women here?”
“My nephew has been taken prisoner,” Tish said coldly. “I want to know merely whether you propose to do anything about it or intend to sit here in comfort and do nothing.”
He became quite red in the face at this allusion to the cribbage board, et cetera, and at first seemed unable to speak.
“Quietly, man,” said the colonel. “Remember your blood pressure.”
“Damn my blood pressure!” said the general in a thick tone.
I must refuse to relate the conversation that followed—hardly conversation, indeed, as at the end the general did all the talking.
At last, however, he paused for breath, and Tish said very quietly: “Then I am to understand that you refuse to do anything about my nephew?”
“Who is your nephew?”
“Charlie Sands.”
“And who’s Charlie Sands?”
“My nephew,” said Tish.
He said nothing to this, but shouted abruptlyin a loud voice: “Orderly! Raise that curtain and let some air into this rat hole.”
Then he turned to the colonel and said: “Thompson, you’re younger than I am. I’ve got a family, and my blood pressure’s high. I’m going out to make a tour of the observation posts.”
“Coward!” said the colonel to him in a low tone.
The colonel was very pleasant to us when the other man had gone. The general was his brother-in-law, he said, and rather nervous because they hadn’t had a decent meal for a week.
“The only thing that settles his nerves is cribbage,” he explained. “It helps his morale. Now—let us think about getting you back to safety. I’d offer you our humble hospitality, but somebody got in here today and stole the duckboard I’ve been sleeping on, and I can’t offer you the general’s cellar door. He’s devoted to it.”
“What if we refuse to go back?” Tish demanded. “We’ve taken a risky trip for a purpose, and I don’t give up easily, young man. I’m inclined to sit here until that general promises to do something.”
His face changed.
“Oh, now see here,” he said in an appealing voice, “you aren’t going to make things difficultfor me, are you? There’s a regulation against this sort of thing.”
“We are welfare workers,” Tish said calmly. “Behind us there stand the entire American people. If kept from the front trenches while trying to serve our boys there are ways of informing the people through the press.”
“It’s exactly the press I fear,” he said in a sad voice. “Think of the results to you three, and to me.”
“What results?” Tish demanded impatiently. “I’m not doing anything I’m ashamed of.”
He was abstractedly moving the cribbage pins about.
“It’s like this,” he said: “Not very far behind the lines there are a lot of newspaper correspondents, and lately there hasn’t been much news. But perhaps I’d better explain my own position. I am engaged to a lovely girl at home. I write to her every day, but I have been conscious recently that in her replies to me there has been an element of—shall I say suspicion? No, that is not the word. Anxiety—of anxiety, lest I shall fall in love with some charming Red Cross or Y. M. C. A. girl. Nothing could be further from my thoughts, but you can see my situation. Three feminine visitors at nightfall; news-hungry correspondents;all the rest of it. Scandal, dear ladies! And absolute ruin to my hopes!”
“Bosh!” said Tish. But I could see that she was uncomfortable. “If there’s trouble I’ll send her our birth certificates. Besides, I thought you said the general was your brother-in-law?”
Aggie says he changed color at that but he said hastily: “By marriage, madam, only by marriage. By that I mean—I—he—the general is married to my brother.”
“Really!” said Tish. “How unusual!”
She said afterward that she saw at once then that we were only wasting time, and that neither one of them would move hand or foot to get Charlie Sands back. Aggie had been scraping her skirt with a table knife, and was now fairly tidy, so Tish prepared to depart.
“On thinking it over,” she said, “I realize that I am confronting a situation which requires brains rather than brute force. I shall therefore attend to it myself. Good night, colonel. I hope you find another duckboard. And—if you are writing home present my compliments to the general’s husband. Come, Aggie.”
At the top of the incline I looked back. The colonel was staring after us and wiping his forehead with a khaki handkerchief.
“You see,” Tish said bitterly, “that is the sortof help one gets from the Army.” She drew a deep breath and looked in the general direction of the trenches. “One thing is sure and certain—I’m not going back until I’ve found out whether Charlie Sands is still in that town over there or whether he has been taken away so we’ll have to get at him from Switzerland.”
Aggie gave a low moan at this, and Tish eyed her witheringly.
“Don’t be an idiot, Aggie!” she observed. “I haven’t asked you to go—or Lizzie either. I’d be likely,” she added, “to get through our lines unseen and into the very midst of the German Army—with one of you sneezing with hay fever and the other one panting like a locomotive from too much flesh.”
“Tish——” I began firmly. But she waved her hand in silence and demanded Aggie’s flashlight. She then led the way behind the ruins of a wall and took a bundle of papers from under her jacket.
“If the Army won’t help us we have a right to help ourselves,” she observed. And I perceived with a certain trepidation that the papers were some that had been lying on the table at headquarters.
“‘Memorandum,’” Tish read the top one. “‘Write home. Order boots. Send to BritishCommissary for Scotch whisky. Insect powder!’ Wouldn’t you know,” she said bitterly, “that that general would have to make a memorandum about writing home?”
Underneath, however, there was an aeroplane picture of the Front and V——, and also a map. Both of these she studied carefully until several bullets found their way to our vicinity, and a sentry ran up and was very rude about the light. On receiving a box of cigarettes, however, he became quite friendly.
“Haven’t had a pill for a week,” he said. “Got to a point now where we steal the hay from the battery horses and roll it up in leaves from my Bible. But it isn’t really satisfying.”
Tish gave him a brief lecture on thus mutilating his best friend, but he said that he only used the unimportant pages. “You know,” he explained—“somebody begat somebody else, and that sort of thing. You haven’t any more fags about you, have you?” he asked wistfully. “I’ll be sandbagged and robbed if I go back without any for the other fellows.”
“We can bring some,” Tish suggested, “and you might show us to the trenches. I particularly wish to give some to the men in the most advanced positions.”
“You’re on,” he said cheerfully. “Bring thelife savers, and we’ll see that you get forward all right.”
Tish reflected.
“Suppose,” she said at last—“suppose that we wish to be able on returning to our native land to state that we have not only been to our advanced positions but have even made a short excursion into the debatable territory—that is, into what is commonly known as No Man’s Land?”
“All of you?” he asked doubtfully.
“All of us.”
He then considered and said: “How many cigarettes have you got?”
“About a hundred packages,” Tish replied. “Say, five to you, and the rest used where considered most efficacious.”
“Every man has his price,” he observed. “That’s mine. I’m taking a chance, but I’ve seen you round, so I know you’re not spies. And if you get an extra helmet out there you might give me one. I’ve been here six months and I’ve never seen one, on a German or off. I let a woman reporter through last week,” he added, “and d’you think she thanked me? No. She gave me hell because the Germans had a raid that night and nearly got her. I’m a soldier, not a prophet.”
Tish left us immediately to go back to Mr.Burton, and Aggie clutched at my arm in a frenzy of anxiety.
“She’s going to do it, Lizzie!” she said with her teeth chattering. “She’s going to V—— to rescue Charlie Sands, and we’ll all be caught, and—Lizzie, I feel that I shall never see home again.”
“Well, if you ask me, I don’t think you will,” I said as calmly as possible. Aggie put her head on my shoulder and wept between sneezes.
“I know I’m weak, Lizzie,” she moaned, “but I’m frightened, and I’m not afraid to say so. You’d think she only had to shoo those Germans like a lot of chickens. I love Tish, but if she’d only sprain her ankle or something!”
However, Tish came back soon, bringing Mr. Burton with her and two baskets with cigarettes on top and grenades below, and also our revolvers and a supply of extra cartridges. She had not explained her plan to Mr. Burton, so we sat down behind the wall and she told him. He seemed quite willing and cheerful.
“Certainly,” he said. “It is all quite clear. We simply go into No Man’s Land for souvenirs, and they pass us. Perfectly natural, of course. We then continue to advance to the German lines, and then commit suicide. I’ve been thinking of doing it for some time anyhow, and this way has an element of the dramatic that appeals tome.” I have learned since that he felt that the only thing to do was to humor Tish, and that he was convinced that about a hundred yards in No Man’s Land would hurt no one, and, as he expressed it, clear the air. How little he knew our dear Tish!
As it is not my intention to implicate any of those brave boys who sought to give us merely the innocent pleasure of visiting the strip of land between the two armies I shall draw a veil over our excursion through the trenches that night, where we were met everywhere with acclaim and gratitude, and finally assisted out of the trenches by means of a ladder. As it was quite dark the grenades in the basket entirely escaped notice, and we found ourselves at last headed toward the German lines, and fully armed, though looking, as Mr. Burton observed, like a picnic party.
He persisted in making humorous sallies such as: “Did any one remember the pepper and salt?” and “I hope somebody brought pickles. What’s a picnic without pickles?”
I regret to say that we were fired on by some of our own soldiers who didn’t understand the situation, shortly after this, and that the bottle of blackberry cordial which I was carrying was broken to fragments.
“If they hit this market basket there’ll be a little excitement,” Mr. Burton said. He then stopped and said that a joke was a joke, but there was such a thing as carrying it too far, and that we’d better look for a helmet or two and then go back.
“The Germans are just on the other side of that wood,” he whispered; “and they don’t know a joke when they see one.”
“I thought, Mr. Burton, you promised to take Hilda a German officer,” Tish said scornfully.
“I did,” he agreed. “I did indeed. But now I think of it, I didn’t promise her a live one. The more I consider the matter the more I am sure that no stipulation was made as to the conditions of delivery. I——”
But when he saw Tish continuing to advance he became very serious, and even suggested that if we would only go back he would himself advance as far as possible and endeavor to reach V——.
Just what Tish’s reply would have been I do not know, as at that moment Aggie stumbled and fell into a deep shell hole full of water. We heard the splash and waited for her voice, as we were uncertain of her exact position.
But what was our surprise on hearing a deepmasculine voice say: “Hands up, you dirty swine!”
“Let go of me,” came in piteous accents from Aggie.
There was then complete silence, until the other voice said: “Well, I’ll be damned!” It then said: “Bill, Bill!”
“Here,” said still another voice, a short distance away, in a sort of loud whisper.
“There’s a mermaid in my pool,” said the first voice. “Did you draw anything?”
“Lucky devil,” said the other voice. “I’m drawing about eight feet of water, that’s all.”
Tish then advanced in the direction of the voices and said: “Aggie, are you all right?”
“I’m half drowned. And there’s a man here.”
The first voice then said in an aggrieved manner: “This is my puddle, you know, lady. And if my revolver wasn’t wet through I’m afraid there would be one mermaid less, or whatever you are.”
The Germans at that moment sent up one of their white lights, which resemble certain of our Fourth of July pieces, which float a long time and give the effect of full moonlight.
“Down,” said Mr. Burton, and we all fell flat on our faces. Before doing so, however, we had a short glimpse of Aggie’s head and anotherabove the water in the shell hole, and realized that her position was very uncomfortable.
When the light died away the two men emerged, and with some difficulty dragged her out. It was while this was going on that Tish caught my arm and whispered: “Lizzie, I have heard that voice before.”
Well, it had a familiar sound to me also, and when he addressed the other man as Grogan I suddenly remembered. It was the man we had thrown from the ambulance in Paris the night Tish salvaged it! I told Tish in a whisper, and she remembered the incident clearly.
“You sure gave me a scare,” he said to Aggie. “For if you were a German I was gone, and if you were an officer of the A. E. F. I was gone more. Bill and I just slipped out to take a look round the town behind those woods, account of our captain being a prisoner there.”
“Who is your captain?” Tish asked.
“Name’s Weber. We pulled off a raid last night, and he and a fellow named Sands got grabbed.”
“Weber?” said Mr. Burton, forgetting to whisper.
“You—you don’t mean Captain Weber?” I asked after a sickening pause.
“That’s the man.”
“Oh, dear!” said Aggie.
Suddenly Mr. Burton stopped and put down the basket of grenades.
“I’m damned if I’m going to rescue him!” he said firmly. “Now look here, Miss Tish, I hate to disappoint you, but I’ve got private reasons for leaving Weber exactly where he is.
“I don’t wish him any harm, but if they’d take him and put him to road mending for three or four years I’d be a happier man. And as far as I’m concerned, I’m going to give them the chance.”
The two men had stood listening, and now Bill spoke:
“Am I to understand that this is a rescue party?” he said. “Seeing the basket I thought it was a picnic. I just want to say this: If you have any idea of going to V——, and as we were going in that direction ourselves, we might combine. My friend here and I were over last night, and we know how to get into the town.”
“Very well,” Tish agreed after a moment’s hesitation. “I have no objection. It must be distinctly understood, however, that I am in charge. Captain Sands is my nephew.”
Another light went up just then, and I perceived that he was staring at her.
“My—my word!” he gasped.
We then fell on our faces, and while lying there I heard him whispering to Bill. He then said to Tish: “I believe, lady, that we have met before.”
“Very possibly,” Tish said calmly. “In the course of my welfare work I have met many of our brave men.”
“I wouldn’t call it exactly welfare work you were doing when I saw you.”
“No?” said Tish.
“You may be interested to know that if you hadn’t stolen that ambulance——”
“Salvaged.”
“——salvaged that ambulance I would now be in safety in Paris, instead of—— Not that I’d exchange,” he added. “I wouldn’t have missed this excursion for a good bit. But they made it so darned unpleasant for me that I enlisted.”
The starlight having now died we rose and prepared to advance. Mr. Burton, however, was very difficult and tried to get Tish to promise to leave Captain Weber if we found him.
“It’s the only bit of luck I’ve had since I left home, Miss Tish,” he said.
Tish, however, ignored him, and with the help of our new allies briefly sketched a plan of campaign.
I make no pretensions to military knowledge,but I shall try to explain the situation at V——, as our dear Tish learned it from the general’s papers and the two soldiers. The real German position—a military term meaning location and not attitude—was behind the town, but they kept enough soldiers in it to hold it, and in case of an attack they filled it up with great rapidity. So far the church tower remained standing, as the Allies wished on taking the town to use it to look out from and observe any unfriendly actions on the part of the Germans.
“If only,” Tish said, “we could have repaired that machine gun and brought it the affair would be extremely simple. It has from the beginning been my intention to give the impression of an attack in force.”
She then considered for a short time, and finally suggested that the two soldiers return to the allied Front and attempt to secure two automatic rifles.
“And it might be as well,” she added, “to take Miss Aggie with you. She is wet through, and will undoubtedly before long have a return of her hay fever, which with her has no season. A sneeze at a critical time might easily ruin us.”
Aggie, however, absolutely refused to return, and said that by holding her nostrils closed and her mouth open she could, if she felt the paroxysmcoming on, sneeze almost noiselessly. She said also that though not related to her by blood Charlie Sands was as dear as her own, and that if turned back she would go to V—— alone and, if captured, at least suffer imprisonment with him.
Tish was quite touched, I could see, and on the two men departing to attempt the salvage of the required weapons she assisted me in wringing out Aggie’s clothing and in making her as comfortable as possible.
We waited for some time, eating chocolate to restore our strength, and attempting to comfort Mr. Burton, who was very surly.
“It has been my trouble all my life,” he observed bitterly, “not to leave well enough alone. I hadn’t any hope of the success of this expedition before, but now I know you’ll pull it off. You’ll get Sands and you’ll get Weber and send him back—to—well, you understand. It’s just my luck. I’m not complaining, but if I’m killed and he isn’t I’m going to haunt that Y hut and make it darned unpleasant for both of them.”
Tish reproved him for debasing the future life to such purposes, but he was firm.
“If you think I’m going to stand round and be walked through and sat on, and all the indignities that ghosts must suffer, without gettingback,” he said gloomily, “you can think again, Miss Tish!”
When the two men returned Tish gave them a brief talking-to.
“First of all,” she said, “there must be no mistake as to who is in command of this expedition. If we succeed it will be by finesse rather than force, and that is distinctly a feminine quality. Second, there is to be no unnecessary fighting. We are here to secure my nephew, not the German Army.”
The man we had bumped off the step of the ambulance, whose name proved to be Jim, said at once that that last sentence had relieved his mind greatly. A few prisoners wouldn’t put them out seriously, but the Allies were feeding more than they could afford already.
“But a few won’t matter,” he added. “Say, a dozen or so. They won’t kick on that.”
I have never learned where Tish learned her strategy—unless from the papers she took from the general’s cellar.
Military experts have always considered the plan masterly, I believe, and have lauded the mobility of a small force and the greater element of surprise possible, as demonstrated by the incidents which followed.
Briefly Tish adhered to her plan of making the attack seem a large one, by spreading the party over a large area and having it make as much noise as possible.
“By firing from one spot, and then running rapidly either to right or left, and firing again,” she said, “those who have only revolvers may easily appear to be several persons instead of one.”
She then arranged that the two automatic rifles attack the town from in front, but widely separated, while Aggie and myself, endeavoring to be a platoon—or perhaps she said regiment—would advance from the left. On the right Mr. Burton was to move forward in force, firing his revolver and throwing grenades in different directions. Of her own plans she said nothing.
“Forward, the Suicide Club!” said Mr. Burton with that strange sarcasm which had marked him during the last hour.
I have since reflected that certain kinds of men seem to take love very unpleasantly. Aggie, however, maintains that the deeper the love the greater the misery, and that Mr. Wiggins once sent back a muffler she had made for him on seeing her conversing with the janitor of the church about dust in her pew.
In a short time we had passed through thewood and the remainder of the excursion was very slow, owing to being obliged to crawl on our hands and knees. We could now see the church tower, and Tish gave the signal to separate. The men left us at once, but for a short time Tish was near me, as I could tell by an irritated exclamation from her when she became entangled in the enemy’s barbed wire. But soon I realized that she had gone. Looking back I believe it was just before we met the Germans who were out laying wire, but I am not quite certain. There were about ten of the enemy, and they almost stepped on Aggie. She said afterward that she was so alarmed that she sneezed, but that having buried her entire face in a mudhole they did not hear her. We lay quite still for some time, and when they had gone and we could move again Tish had disappeared.
However, we obeyed orders and went on moving steadily to the left, and before long we were able to make out the ruins of V—— directly before us. They were apparently empty and silent, and concealing ourselves behind a fallen wall we waited for the automatic rifles to give the signal. Aggie had taken cold from her wetting, and could hardly speak.
“I’b sure they’ve taked Tish,” were her first words.
“Not alive,” I said grimly.
“Lizzie! Oh, by dear Tish!”
“If you’ve got to worry,” I said rather tartly, “worry about the Germans. It wouldn’t surprise me a particle to see her bring in the lot.”
Well, the attack started just then and Aggie and I got our revolvers and began shooting as rapidly as possible, firing from the end of the village, and with Mr. Burton’s grenades from one side and our revolvers from the other it made a tremendous noise. Aggie and I did our best, I know, to appear to be a large number, firing and then moving to a new point and firing again. I must say from the way those Germans ran toward their own lines behind the town I was not surprised at the rapidity of the final retreat which ended the war. As Aggie said later, we were not there to kill them unless necessary, but they ran so fast at times it was difficult to avoid hitting them. They fairly ran into the bullets.
In a very short time there was not one in sight, but we kept on firing for a trifle longer, and then made for the church, meeting the two privates on the way. When we arrived Mr. Burton was already there and had unfastened a large bolt on the outside of the door. We crowded in, and somebody closed the door and we had a moment to breathe.
“Well, here we are,” said Mr. Burton in a quite cheerful tone. “And not a casualty among us—or the Germans either, I fancy, save those that died of heart disease. Are we all here, by the way?”
He then struck a match, and my heart sank.
“Tish!” I cried. “Tish is not here!”
It was then that a voice from the far end of the church said: “Suffering snakes! I’m delirious, Weber! I knew that beer would get me. I thought I heard——”
Some one was hammering at the door with a revolver, and we heard Tish’s dear voice outside saying: “Keep your hands up!Lizzie!”
Mr. Burton opened the door and Tish backed in, followed by a figure that was muttering in German. She had both her revolvers pointed at it, and she said: “Close the door, somebody, and get a light. I think it’s a general.”
Well, Charlie Sands was coming with a candle stuck in the neck of a bottle, and he seemed extremely surprised. He kept stumbling over things and saying “Wake me, Weber,” until he had put a hand on my arm.
“It’s real,” he said then. “It’s a real arm. Therefore it is, it must be. And yet——”
“Stop driveling,” Tish said sharply, “and tieup this general or whatever he is. I don’t trust him. He’s got a mean eye.”
It has been the opinion of military experts that the reason the enemy had apparently lost its morale and failed to make a counter attack at once was the early loss of this officer. In fact, a prisoner taken later I believe told the story that V—— had been attacked and captured by an entire division, without artillery preparation, and that he himself had seen the commanding officer killed by a shell. But the truth was that Tish, having fallen into an empty trench a moment or so before I missed her, had after recovering from the shock and surprise followed the trench for some distance, finding that she could advance more rapidly than by crawling on the surface.
She had in this manner happened on a dugout where a German officer was sitting at a table with a lighted candle marking the corners of certain playing cards with the point of a pin. He seemed to be in a very bad humor, and was muttering to himself. She waited in the darkness until he had finished, and had shoved the cards into his pocket. When he had extinguished the candle he started back along the trench toward the village, and Tish merely put her two revolvers to his back and captured him.
I pass over the touching reunion between Tishand her beloved nephew. He seemed profoundly affected, and moving out of the candlelight gave way to emotion that fairly shook him. It was when he returned wiping his eyes that he recognized the German officer. He became exceedingly grave at once.
“I trust you understand,” he said to him, “that this—er—surprise party is no reflection on your hospitality. And I am glad to point out also that the pinochle game is not necessarily broken up. It can continue until you are moved back behind the Allied lines. I may not,” he added, “be able to offer you a church, because if I do say it you people have been wasteful as to churches. But almost any place in our trenches is entirely safe.”
He then looked round the group again and said: “Don’t tell me Aunt Aggie has missed this! I couldn’t bear it.”
“Aggie!” I cried. “Where is Aggie?”
It was then that the painful truth dawned on us. Aggie had not entered the church. She was still outside, perhaps wandering alone among a cruel and relentless foe. It was a terrible moment.
I can still see the white and anxious faces round the candle, and Tish’s insistence that a search be organized at once to find her. Mr. Burton went out immediately, and returned soonafter to say that she was not in sight, and that the retiring Germans were sending up signal rockets and were probably going to rush the town at once.
We held a short council of war then, but there was nothing to do but to retire, having accomplished our purpose. Even Tish felt this, and said that it was a rule of war that the many should not suffer for the few; also that she didn’t propose losing a night’s sleep to rescue Charlie Sands and then have him retaken again, as might happen any minute.
We put out the candle and left the church, and not a moment too soon, for a shell dropped through the roof behind us, and more followed it at once. I was very uneasy, especially as I was quite sure that between explosions I could hear Aggie’s voice far away calling Tish.
We retired slowly, taking our prisoner with us, and turning round to fire toward the enemy now and then. We also called Aggie by name at intervals, but she did not appear. And when we reached the very edge of the town the Germans were at the opposite end of it, and we were obliged to accelerate our pace until lost in the Stygian darkness of the wood.
It was there that I felt Tish’s hand on my arm.
“I’m going back,” she said in a low tone.“Driveling idiot that she is, I cannot think of her hiding somewhere and sneezing herself into captivity. I am going back, Lizzie.”
“Then I go too,” I said firmly. “I guess if she’s your responsibility she’s mine too.”
Well, she didn’t want me any more than she wanted the measles, but the time was coming when she could thank her lucky stars I was there. However, she said nothing, but I heard her suggesting that we separate, every man for himself, except the prisoner, and work back to our own side the best way we could.
With her customary thoughtfulness, however, she held a short conversation with Mr. Burton first. I have not mentioned Captain Weber, I believe, since our first entrance into the church, but he was with us, and I had observed Mr. Burton eyeing him with unfriendly eyes. Indeed, I am quite convinced that the accident of our leaving the church without the captain, and finding him left behind and bolted in, was no accident at all.
Tish merely told Mr. Burton that the prisoner was his, and that if he chose and could manage to present him to Hilda he might as well do it.
“She’s welcome to him,” she said.
“He’s not my prisoner.”
“He is now; I give him to you.”
Finding him obdurate, however, she resorted to argument.
“It doesn’t invalidate an engagement,” she said rather brusquely, “for a man to borrow the money for an engagement ring. If it did there would be fewer engagements. If you want to borrow a German prisoner for the same purpose the principle is the same.”
He seemed to be weakening.
“I’d like to do it—if only to see her face,” he said slowly. “Not but what it’s a risk. He’s a good-looking devil.”
In the end, however, he agreed, and the last we saw of them he was driving the German ahead, with a grenade in one hand and his revolver in the other, and looking happier than he had looked for days.
Almost immediately after that I felt Tish’s hand on my arm. We turned and went back toward V——.
Military experts have been rather puzzled by our statement that the Germans did not reënter V—— that night, but remained just outside, and that we reached the church again without so much as a how-do-you-do from any of them. I believe the general impression is that they feared a trap. I think they are rather annoyed to learn that there was a period of several hours duringwhich they might safely have taken the town; in fact, the irritable general who was married to the colonel’s brother was most unpleasant about it. When everything was over he came to Paris to see us, and he was most unpleasant.
“If you wanted to take the damned town, why didn’t you say so?” he roared. “You came in with a long story about a nephew, but it’s my plain conviction, madam, that you were flying for higher game than your nephew from the start.”
Tish merely smiled coldly.
“Perhaps,” she said in a cryptic manner. “But, of course, in these days of war one must be very careful. It is difficult to tell whom to trust.”
As he became very red at that she gently reminded him of his blood pressure, but he only hammered on the table and said:
“Another thing, madam. God knows I don’t begrudge you the falderals they’ve been pinning on you, but it seems to me more than a coincidence that your celebrated strategy followed closely the lines of a memorandum, madam, that was missing from my table after your departure.”
“My dear man,” Tish replied urbanely, “there is a little military word I must remind you of—salvage. As one of your own staff explained it to me one perceives an object necessary to certain operations. If on saluting that object it fails toreturn the salute I believe the next step is to capture it. Am I not right?”