No Man's Land Part 13

"Hullo! what's happened?" A voice behind him made him turn round.

"That you, d.i.c.k? Poor little Jerry Dixon been shot through the parapet--that's what's happened." He got down and stood at the bottom of the trench beside the second-in-command. "The three top layers there are only one bag thick." Once again his language became heated.

"Steady, old man," d.i.c.k Staunton puffed steadily at his pipe, and looked at the body lying beside them. "Were you with him when he was. .h.i.t?"

"No. Came round visiting the sentries and found him lying there dead."

"Oh!" He switched on his torch and continued smoking in silence.

Suddenly he bent forward and peered closely at the shattered head.

"Give me a hand for a minute. I want to turn the boy over."

Faintly surprised, he did as he was bid.

In silence they turned the body over, and again there was silence while Staunton carefully examined the spot where the bullet had entered.

"Strange," he muttered to himself after a few moments, "very strange.

Tell me, Joe"--his voice was normal again--"exactly how did you find him? What position was he in?"

"He was half sitting on the fire step; with his head in the corner and his legs sprawling in the bottom of the trench."

"Sitting? Then his face was towards you."

"Why, yes. Is there anything peculiar in the fact? He'd probably just been having a look over the top, and as he turned away to get down he was. .h.i.t through the sandbags in the back of the neck. His head was a bit forward as he was getting down, so the bullet pa.s.sed through his head and out of his forehead."

In silence they turned the boy over again and covered his face with a pocket-handkerchief.

"You're too much of a blooming detective, you know, old man. Much police work has made thee mad," laughed the Company Commander. "What else can have happened?"

"I'm no detective, Joe." The other man smiled slightly. "But there are one or two small points of detail which strike me, though I can make nothing out of them, I admit. First--his height. He's six inches shorter than you, and yet you could barely see over the top.

Therefore, what was he doing trying to look over the parapet here of all places? Secondly, the way he fell. A man killed instantaneously, and shot through the back of his head, would in all probability pitch forward on his face. You say his face was towards you, and that he was sitting in the corner of the traverse." He paused to fill his pipe.

"Go on," said the Company Commander curiously. "You interest me."

"The third point is one on which I admit that I am doubtful. The bullet wound is clean. Now I am inclined to think--though I don't know--that a bullet pa.s.sing through a chalk bag would become jagged, and would not be travelling straight when it continued its flight.

However, I don't attach much importance to that. And the fourth and last point is almost too trifling to mention. Do you notice anything peculiar about his uniform?"

The listener flashed his torch over the dead officer, "No," he said at length. "I can't say that I do. Except that one of his regimental badges is missing. I suppose you don't mean that, do you?" The Company Officer laughed irritably.

"I do," returned the other quietly. "It's a point of detail, even if a little one." He looked thoughtfully at the man in front of him. "Do I strike you as a callous sort of devil, old man?"

"You seem to be treating the boy rather on the line of a specimen for improving your deductive powers."

"Perhaps you're right." Staunton turned away. "But I didn't mean it that way--quite. Sorry, Joe; the boy was a pal of yours?"

"He was."

"G.o.d rest his soul!" The second-in-command spoke low. Then, with a final salute to the youngster whose soul had gone to the haven of fighting men, he turned away and vanished into the night.

The next day the Company Commander came round to Battalion Head-quarters.

"My two best subalterns," grunted the Colonel in disgust, "within two days. Very annoying. Good boys--toppers both of them. You'd go quite a way, d.i.c.k, before you bettered Brinton and Dixon."

"You would," affirmed the second-in-command. "Quite a way."

"And with all your theorising last night, old man," remarked the Captain slyly, "we both forgot the obvious solution. He got on the fire step, found he couldn't see over--so he clambered up on top.

Then, when he was getting down, he was. .h.i.t, and slithered into the position I found him in."

Staunton regarded the speaker through a haze of tobacco smoke. "I wonder," he murmured at length. "I wonder."

He did not state that during the morning he had made a point of interrogating Jerry Dixon's servant. And that worthy--an old and trusted soldier--had very positively denied that either of the Pelicans Rampant, which formed the regimental badge, had been missing from his master's coat the previous evening.

"Now Mr. Brinton's coat, sir," he remarked thoughtfully, "that did 'ave a badge off, that did. But 'is servant!" He snorted, and dismissed the subject scornfully.

As I say, the Major did not mention this fact. After all, it was such a very small point of detail.

To the frivolous-minded, d.i.c.k Staunton was at times the cause of a certain amount of amus.e.m.e.nt. Originally in the Army, he had left it when a junior captain, and had settled down to the normal life of a country gentleman. By nature of a silent disposition, he abominated social functions of all sorts. He hunted, he fished, and he shot, and spent the rest of his time studying the habits of the wild. And as always happens to a man who lives much with nature, his mind gradually got skilled in the noticing of little things. Small signs, invisible to the casual observer, he noticed automatically; and without being in any sense a Sherlock Holmes, he had acquired the habit of putting two and two together in a manner that was, at times, disconcertingly correct.

"Points of detail," he remarked one evening in the dug-out after dinner, "are very easy to see if you have eyes to see them with. One is nothing; two are a coincidence; three are a moral certainty. A really trained man can see a molehill; I can see a mountain; most of you fellows couldn't see the Himalayas." With which sage remark he thoughtfully lit his pipe and relapsed into silence. And silence being his usual characteristic he came into the Battalion Head-quarters dug-out one evening and dropped quietly into a seat, almost unnoticed by the somewhat noisy group around the table.

"Afternoon, d.i.c.kie." The Sapper officer looked up and saw him. "D'you hear we're pinching your last recruit? Jesson--this is Major Staunton." He turned to a second lieutenant in the Royal Loams.h.i.+res beside him as he made the introduction.

"How d'you do, sir." Jesson got up and saluted. "I've only just got over from England; and now apparently they're attaching me to the R.E., as I'm a miner."

He sat down again, and once more turned his attention to that excellent French ill.u.s.trated weekly without which no officers' mess in France is complete. Lest I be run in for libel, I will refrain from further information as to its t.i.tle and general effect on officers concerned.

For a few moments Staunton sat watching the group and listening with some amus.e.m.e.nt to the criticisms on those lovely members of the fair s.e.x so ably portrayed in its pages, and then his attention centred on the revolver he was cleaning. Jesson, a good-looking, clean-cut man of about twenty-nine or thirty was holding forth on an experience he had had in Alaska, which concerned a woman, a team of dogs, and a gentleman known as One-eyed Pete, and as he spoke Staunton watched him idly. It struck him that he seemed a promising type, and that it was a pity the Tunnellers were getting him.

"Haven't you got enough disturbers of the peace already," he remarked to the Tunnelling officer, "without s.n.a.t.c.hing our ewe lamb?"

"We are at full strength as a matter of fact, Major," answered an officer covered with chalk; "but they do some funny things in the palaces of the great. We often get odd birds blowing in. I've been initiating him all this morning into the joys of Outpost."

"And how is jolly old Blighty?" remarked the Adjutant. "Thank Heaven!

leave approaches."

"About the same." Jesson helped himself to a whisky-and-soda. "Darker than ever, and taxis an impossibility. Still I dare say I shall be glad enough to go back when my first leave comes due," he added with a laugh.

"Is this your first time out?" asked Staunton.

"Yes." Jesson unb.u.t.toned his burberry and took out his cigarette case.

Outside the dusk was falling, and he bent forward to get a light from the candle flickering on the table in front of him. "The very first time. I've been on Government work up to now."

It was at that moment that a very close observer might have noticed that d.i.c.k Staunton's pipe ceased to draw with monotonous regularity: he might even have heard a quick intake of breath. But he would have had to be a very close one--very close indeed; for the next instant he was again speaking and his voice was normal.

"I suppose you've been at the depot," he hazarded. "Who are there now?"

"Oh, the usual old crowd," answered Jesson "I don't expect you know many of them though, do you, Major? Ginger Stretton in the 14th Battalion--do you know him by any chance?"