Chapter 23

proposition was incontrovertible. "But where did you gather your wisdom?"

"I suppose," he replied seriously, "that my mind is not entirely unaffected by a very expensive education."

I looked at the extraordinary figure in sheepskin, bundles and mud, and laughed out loud. The hands of Esau and the voice of Jacob. The garb of Thomas Atkins and the voice of Balliol. Still, as I say, the fellow was perfectly right. His highly trained intelligence had led him to an exact conclusion. The festering sore demanded drastic treatment,--the surgeon's knife. As we talked I saw how coldly his brain had worked. And side by side with that working I saw, to my amusement, the insistent claims of his vanity. The quickest way to the front, where alone he could re-establish his impugned honour was by enlistment in the regular army. For the first time in his life he took a grip on essentials. He knew that by going straight into the heart of the old army his brains, provided they remained in his head, would enable him to accomplish his purpose. As for his choice of regiment, there his vanity guided. You may remember that after his disappearance we first heard of him at Aberdeen. Now Aberdeen is the depot of the Gordon Highlanders.

"What on earth made you go there?" I asked.

"I wanted to get among a crowd where I wasn't known, and wasn't ever likely to be known," he replied. "And my instinct was right. I was among farmers from Skye and butchers from Inverness and drunken scallywags from the slums of Aberdeen, and a leaven of old soldiers from all over Scotland. I had no idea that such people existed. At first I thought I shouldn't be able to stick it. They gave me a bad time for being an Englishman. But soon, I think, they rather liked me. I set my brains to work and made 'em like me. I knew there was everything to learn about these fellows and I went scientifically to work to learn it. And, by Heaven, sir, when once they accepted me, I found I had never been in such splendid company in my life."

"My dear boy," I cried in a burst of enthusiasm, "have you had breakfast?"

"Of course I have. At the Union Jack Club--the Tommies' place the other side of the river--bacon and eggs and sausages. I thought I'd never stop eating."

"Have some more?"

He laughed. "Couldn't think of it."

"Then," said I, "get yourself a cigar." I pointed to a stack of boxes. "You'll find the Corona--Coronas the best."

As I am not a millionaire I don't offer these Coronas to everybody. I myself can only afford to smoke one or two a week.

When he had lit it he said: "I was led away from what I wanted to tell you,--my going to Aberdeen and plunging into the obscurity of a Scottish regiment. I was absolutely determined that none of my friends, none of you good people, should know what an ass I had made of myself. That's why I kept it from my mother. She would have blabbed it all over the place."

"But, my good fellow," said I, "why the dickens shouldn't we have known?"

"That I was making an ass of myself?"

"No, you young idiot!" I cried. "That you were making a man of yourself."

"I preferred to wait," said he, coolly, "until I had a reasonable certainty that I had achieved that consummation--or, rather, something that might stand for it in the prejudiced eyes of my dear friends. I knew that you all, ultimately, you and mother and Phyllis, would judge by results. Well, here they are. I've lived the life of a Tommy for ten months. I've been five in the thick of it over there. I've refused stripes over and over again. I've got my D.C.M. I've got my commission through the ranks, practically on the field. And of the draft of two hundred who went out with me only one other and myself remain."

"It's a splendid record, my boy," said I.

He rose. "Don't misunderstand me, Major. I'm not bragging. God forbid. I'm only wanting to explain why I kept dark all the time, and why I'm springing smugly and complacently on you now."

"I quite understand," said I.

"In that case," he laughed, "I can proceed on my rounds." But he did not proceed. He lingered. "There's another matter I should like to mention," he said. "In her last letter my mother told me that the Mayor and Town Council were on the point of giving a civic reception to Colonel Boyce. Has it taken place yet?"

"Yes," said I.

"And did it go off all right?"

In spite of wisdom learned at Balliol and shell craters, he was still an ingenuous youth.

"Gedge was perfectly quiet," I answered.

He started, as he had for months learned not to start, and into his eyes sprang an alarm that was usually foreign to them.

"Gedge? How do you know anything about Gedge and Colonel Boyce? Good Lord! He hasn't been spreading that poisonous stuff over the town?"

"That's what you were afraid of when you asked about the reception?"

"Of course," said he.

"And you wanted to have your mind clear on the point before interviewing Phyllis."

"You're quite right, sir," he replied, a bit shamefacedly. "But if he hasn't been spreading it, how do you know? And," he looked at me sharply, "what do you know?"

"You gave your word of honour not to repeat what Gedge told you. I think you may be absolved of your promise. Gedge came to Sir Anthony and myself with a lying story about the death of Althea Fenimore."

"Yes," said he. "That was it."

"Sit down for another minute or two," said I, "and let us compare notes."

He obeyed. We compared notes. I found that in most essentials the two stories were identical, although Gedge had been maudlin drunk when he admitted Randall into his confidence.

"But in pitching you his yarn," cried Randall, "he left out the blackmail. He bragged in his beastly way that Colonel Boyce was worth a thousand a year to him. All he had to live upon now that the blood-suckers had ruined his business. Then he began to weep and slobber--he was a disgusting sight--and he said he would give it all up and beg with his daughter in the streets as soon as he had an opportunity of unmasking 'that shocking wicked fellow.'"

"What did you say then?" I asked.

"I told him if ever I heard of him spreading such infernal lies abroad, I'd wring his neck."

"Very good, my boy," said I. "That's practically what Sir Anthony told him."

"Sir Anthony doesn't believe there's any truth in it?"

"Sir Anthony," said I, boldly, "knows there's not a particle of truth in it. The man's malignancy has taken the form of a fixed idea. He's crack-brained. Between us we put the fear of God into him, and I don't think he'll give any more trouble."

Randall got to his feet again. "I'm very much relieved to hear you say so. I must confess I've been horribly uneasy about the whole thing." He drew a deep breath. "Thank goodness I can go to Phyllis, as you say, with a clear mind. The last time I saw her I was half crazy."

He held out his hand, a dirty, knubbly, ragged-nailed hand--the hand that was once so irritatingly manicured.

"Good-bye, Major. You won't shut the door on me now, will you?"

I wrung his hand hard and bade him not be silly, and, looking up at him, said:

"What was the other thing quite different you were intending to do before you, let us say, quarreled with Phyllis?"

He hesitated, his forehead knit in a little web of perplexity.

"Whatever it was," I continued, "let us have it. I'm your oldest friend, a sort of father. Be frank with me and you won't regret it. The splendid work you've done has wiped out everything."

"I'm afraid it has," said he ruefully. "Wiped it out clean." With a hitch of the shoulders he settled his pack more comfortably. "Well, I'll tell you, Major. I thought I had brains. I still think I have. I was on the point of getting a job in the Secret Service--Intelligence Department. I had the whole thing cut and dried--to get at the ramifications of German espionage in socialistic and so-called intellectual circles in neutral and other countries. It would have been ticklish work, for I should have been carrying my life in my hands. I could have done it well. I started out by being a sort of 'intellectual' myself. All along I wanted to put my brains at the service of my country. I took some time to hit upon the real way. I hit upon it. I learned lots of things from Gedge. If he weren't an arrant coward, he might be dangerous. He would be taking German money long ago, but that he's frightened to death of it." He laughed. "It never occurred to you, I suppose, a year ago," he continued, "that I spent most of my days in London working like a horse."

"But," I cried--I felt myself flushing purple--and, when I flush purple, the unregenerate old soldier in me uses language of a corresponding hue--"But," I cried--and in this language I asked him why he had told me nothing about it.

"The essence of the Secret Service, sir," replied this maddening young man, "is--well--secrecy."

"You had a billet offered to you, of the kind you describe?"

"The offer reached me, very much belated, one day when I was half dead, after having performed some humiliating fatigue duty. I think I had persisted in trying to scratch an itching back on parade. Military discipline, I need not tell you, Major, doesn't take into account the sensitiveness of a recruit's back. It flatly denies such a phenomenon. Now I think I can defy anything in God's quaint universe to make me itch. But that's by the way. I tore the letter up and never answered it. You do these things, sir, when the whole universe seems to be a stumbling-block and an offence. Phyllis was the stumbling-block and the rest of the cosmos was the other thing. That's why I have reason on my side when I say that, all through Phyllis Gedge, I made an ass of myself."

He clutched his rude coat with both hands. "An ass in sheep's clothing."

He drew himself up, saluted, and marched out.

He marched out, the young scoundrel, with all the honours of war.