The Booby-trap
The trouble is that in War retribution so rarely comes on the man who deserves it. The thing is such an impersonal affair: shells, trench mortars, and rifle bullets slay or miss impartially, and there are so many pawns the less to carry on the good work. Even the bayonet cannot be said to settle any long-standing feud: the gentleman who dies and the gentleman who kills him are really complete strangers. Very annoyed with one another undoubtedly; but there is no question of the grievance being an old one.
And so, when some act of poetic justice is done, it is apt to impress itself forcibly on the memory. They are very rare, those acts: opportunities are few and far between. But sometimes they do, and… However, this was the way of one such occasion.
The name of the village is immaterial. It lies in the country evacuated by the Hun during February and March of 1917, and it is not yet marked on the small-scale maps. For the beginning of the affair one must go back to a certain night in March, twenty days after the Germans had gone. They had left it, as they left most of the villages in that district, destroyed but not gutted. The trees were cut, the little bits of garden were ruined, and the inhabitants bore in their eyes the hopeless despair, the frozen apathy, of those who have been down into the pit. Old and decrepit – for of their children none save babies remained – they sat about round the doors of their ruined houses, hardly speaking, just watching and wondering. To them had come the desolation of war, in full measure pressed down and running over, and the poor old tired brains could scarcely grasp it. The fruit of years, a whole life’s work gone – finished; and no one to build it up again. Just them and a few little children – and desolation. Old men would mutter soixante-dix: old wives would shake their heads, wiping their eyes furtively with their aprons: the babies would stare solemnly and fearfully at the khaki soldiers who had replaced the field grey. For the spirit of Death does not leave those who live with it in a moment…
Now, in this particular village, on the day in question, were the headquarters of two battalions of infantry. The battalions in question were the Royal Loamshires and the South Devons, and from time immemorial the Loamshires and the South Devons had been friends. In the days before the war this friendship manifested itself in many ways, which it were, perhaps, indiscreet to mention. There was the occasion, for instance, when a battalion of the Loamshires, homeward bound after many years abroad, stopped for the night at a certain port of call where a battalion of the South Devons had its temporary residence. And there was a dinner to mark the happy occasion.
It has been handed on, the account of that dinner, in the archives of both these famous regiments. The unfortunate mishap which caused a distinguished general, specially invited for the occasion, to be greeted with an over-ripe melon in the chest just as he entered the ante-room; the sudden disappearance of the visiting colonel as he was making his fourth speech owing to his being torpedoed by an enterprising officer under the table; the celebrated feat of a subaltern who rode his bicycle five times round the billiard-table while other enthusiasts tried to poke him off with cues – all these and many like bonds to friendship occurred that night and on other gala occasions.
So it is not surprising that such a regimental tradition, founded and cemented in times of peace, should endure in the stress of war, and be passed on to the Service battalions for guidance and future action. Owing to circumstances beyond our control, ripe melons and billiard-tables are no longer available; but much may be done in the local estaminet where the omelette is good and the red wine better – where Madame’s coffee is superb and the Benedictine comforting. Moreover, the two battalions with which we are concerned were quite alive to that fact.
Their friendship, however, did not prevent the really serious matters of life being taken with due solemnity. When a move was contemplated, the rival billeting officers became for the time sworn enemies. They vied with one another in lying and contumely to obtain the best accommodation for their own people, and the state of the score at the time showed that the South Devons were two up. That last point had rankled dreadfully with Finlayson, of the Loamshires: he swore that it was entirely due to the Town Major of the place where it occurred being soft in the head: he swore – many things, but the fact remained he was two down. And so when he discovered the battalion’s destination, and further elicited from the Staff captain that they might be there anything from one hour to four days – the Staff captain disliked being a false prophet – he again swore. He swore a mighty vow that if Tremayne, of the South Devons, again did him down in the race for billets – which, in this case, were likely to prove even more sketchy than usual – thereby making the score three up, he personally would murder him with his own hand. Then he went and dined with him and discussed “Blighty.”
By what vile deceit he succeeded is neither here nor there. All that is known officially is that Tremayne approached the village some half an hour after Finlayson had arrived, and that he looked thoughtful. Occasionally his lips moved – it is to be assumed in silent prayer; occasionally he raised a protesting hand to heaven and jibbered feverishly. He was met on the outskirts by Finlayson, smoking a fat cigar and smiling offensively.
“Good ride, dear old boy? I’m afraid you’ll find the billeting accommodation a bit limited.”
Tremayne dismounted in silence. “James,” he remarked slowly, “I wouldn’t have believed it of you. After all these years, to treat me thus – me, your almost brother! Why, you damned old scoundrel!…”
Finlayson held up a protesting hand. “This language grieves me to the quick, Peter. And the score is now one.”
They stopped in front of the only decent-looking house in the village, and Tremayne inspected it with a professional eye. “Two windows, no door, a leaking roof. Great Scott! Old boy, I suppose that is where we’ve got to go?”
But Finlayson was not to be drawn. “Not so, Peter,” he answered; “that is where we have gone. Yours is far worse – just down the road here. You haven’t got a window at all!”
“Do you really mean this is the next best?” Tremayne demanded, when he had fully explored the second selection down the road. “The bally place is a series of holes indifferently held together by plaster!”
“I’ve had a good look round, and you won’t find anything better.” Finlayson gently fell through the wall he was leaning against and swore, while Tremayne pondered pessimistically. Under the rules of the game they did one another down only in so far as to who got the first pick. After that the second would be chosen by the conqueror with punctilious care and held against all corners till his rival should arrive.
“I would like,” murmured Tremayne, when the other emerged from the debris, “to catch the Hun that did this.”
“We have got a kitchen of sorts,” spluttered Finlayson, at length, “so you’d better all lunch with us.”
And this occurred on the twentieth day after the Germans had gone. On the twenty-first the two battalions were still there. The Staff captain had arrived – principally to find how the score stood – and had left again. The Sapper commanding the Field company had arrived ostensibly to find if he could help anybody – in reality, to cadge lunch. The men, strolling aimlessly about, were fraternising with the inhabitants; and over the village there brooded an air of peace. The guns were more or less silent, and not too near; the aeroplanes seemed to be taking a day off, when – of a sudden, it occurred.
A rumbling, shaking roar; a great sheet of flame, and a belching cloud of dust; a rending sort of crash, as timbers and walls were torn asunder; the sound as of a mighty hailstorm, as bricks and rubble came raining down into the street; and it was over. The headquarters of the Royal Loamshires had ceased to exist. The house had disappeared, and in its place there hung a thick cloud of acrid smoke.
Mortimer, the CO of the South Devons, who was just preparing for his afternoon siesta, dashed into the road, colliding with his adjutant and Tremayne.
“What the devil was that?” he cried, only to stop abruptly and stare at the slowly-drifting pall of smoke. “My God! What’s happened?”
From all directions men had come into the street, out of houses and barns, to see what had occurred. There had been no whine of a big shell; in the sky above there was no sign of an aeroplane; and yet a house had suddenly disappeared, and bits of it were still coming down, hitting the ground with a vicious thud.
Tremayne was the first to recover himself and walk up the village street towards the scene of the disaster. The roof had been completely blown off, and of the outside walls nothing except a few jagged splinters remained. A great mass of broken bricks and rubble blocked the near side of the road, filling the bottom story of the house; and, even as he approached, a big lump of brickwork broke off from the top of a still standing corner and narrowly escaped braining him as it fell.
But this was no time to worry about trifles of that sort. Only half an hour previously had he been lunching there with Finlayson and the CO and adjutant of the Loamshires. The doctor had been there, and the interpreter, and two or three other pals. Only, as I say, that had been half an hour ago.
Tremayne clambered up over the heap of debris, and almost at once he saw what caused him to curse savagely – an arm stuck out from the top. He hurled away the bricks which covered the rest from view and recognised what he found by the badges on the uniform. It was the doctor. Then he cursed again and turned to the Colonel, who was standing in the road behind.
“We’ll want a fatigue-party, sir,” he said. “I’ve found the doctor, and I’m afraid they’re all in here, buried.”
The Colonel nodded, and gave a brief order to his adjutant. Then he turned to the Field Company officer beside him. “What the devil do you think did it?” he asked.
“No shell, no aeroplane; it can only have been one thing.” The Sapper thoughtfully studied the wreckage. “No shell except the very biggest could have made such a mess, and everyone would have heard it coming. No aeroplane bomb could have done it either. The Huns, before they left, laid a delay-action mine under the house, and it’s just gone off.”
“But it’s twenty-one days, my dear chap!” objected Tremayne, who had joined them and heard the last remark.
“With a little ingenuity you could arrange a delay-action mine for twenty-one weeks,” returned the engineer. “A question of acid eating through wire – connection being made when the wire severs. That’s only one of many ways, and the time would depend entirely on the strength of the acid and the thickness of the wire. They knew this village would be occupied; they knew that that house, being the best available, would be occupied by an officers’ mess. And the swine have drawn a winner.”
In silence they watched the salvage operations, which were being directed by the adjutant.
“Just to think of the rotten luck of the thing!” burst out Tremayne suddenly. “Poor old Jimmy Finlayson – so damned pleased at having got the bulge on me and got this house. And now this happens! By Jove! There is the old boy now!”
He went to help two of the men who were carrying into the road all that was left of Finlayson, billeting officer of the Royal Loamshires.
“Carefully, boys,” said Tremayne. “Lay him down there beside the doctor.” For a while he looked at his dead friend in silence, and then he bent down and covered up his face with a handkerchief. “If,” he remarked quietly to the Sapper officer, “I was ever privileged to meet the man who ordered that mine to be laid, he would die – nastily. Unfortunately, those things don’t happen except in stories.”
“No,” replied the Sapper. “I’m afraid they don’t.”
Now we come to what happened on the twenty-second day in that little village in the evacuated area. The ball was started rolling during a stroll which Tremayne and the adjutant took before lunch. To all outward appearance the village was normal again; tragedies, however sudden, lose much of their sting when they happen in the Land of the Great Tragedy. At intervals heaps of brickwork from the tottering walls slithered down on the pavé below, raising a little cloud of dust; at intervals some old peasant would look with quavering eyes at the ruin by the corner and mumble foolishly to his wife. To them it was all part and parcel of the whole scheme of things – just one more of the upheavals in which they had lived for the past two years. Stray limbers still clattered down the street; limbers whose drivers never turned their heads to look at the heap of rubbish as they passed it. Similar heaps were too common to excite even the most casual remark. Lorries jolted on their way unheeding; dispatch-riders, in their khaki overalls, rushed past on bumping motor-bicycles; the normal life of France six miles behind the line, which must not be dislocated even for a second, carried on as usual.
Tremayne and the adjutant came to the end of the village, and paused for a moment in front of the last house. In silence they glanced at the fruit-trees, each with the usual ring cut round it; with a cynical smile they noticed the little bit of garden systematically and thoroughly destroyed.
“By George,” remarked the adjutant thoughtfully, “those swine are thorough! They make a business of it, at any rate. What would you give, Peter, to do this to them in Germany?”
“We will, some day,” Tremayne was always an optimist. “Always provided the peace swine at home are deleted from the book of the words. But, to come to more intimate details, Ginger, this house looks to me a great deal better than the one we’re in at present. It has, at any rate, a window – and a door. Let us explore.”
He pushed open the gate and, followed by the adjutant, walked into the front room. It was bare and mouldering, but the walls were intact, and so was the window.
“Not so bad!” exclaimed the adjutant. “With a fire and a tot of rum. By Jove, old boy, look at this! What about that for a mess-room?”
Tremayne peered over his shoulder as he stood in the open doorway of the room behind. It was a typical French kitchen, with old wood rafters and big stove all complete. In the centre was a table, with four or five chairs, and the remains of a meal, covered thickly with dust, were scattered about. Some German equipment was thrown in a corner, along with a few books, and close by the door there stood several bottles of beer. The room gave the appearance of having been suddenly left. All the chairs were pushed back from the table just as they would have been had their occupants suddenly risen and not returned. The beer in the glasses was half drunk, the food on the plates was not finished; and, as a crowning touch, there hung on the wall a first-class specimen of a Prussian Guardsman’s helmet.
“They seem to have left in a hurry,” remarked Tremayne, after a long inspection. “And that looks to me quite a pleasing specimen of helmet.”
“Which, for God’s sake, don’t touch!”
The sudden voice from behind made him swing round, and there, framed in the doorway, stood the Sapper officer. Tremayne’s hand dropped to his side, and he looked at the engineer stupidly.
“What on earth do you mean, old boy?” he said at length. “It’s a damned nice helmet.”
“Quite too nice to have been left here, however hurried the departure,” rejoined the other. “Of course I may be wrong, but you know what happened yesterday.”
“Good Lord! Do you mean that this house may be mined, too?” cried the adjutant.
But the Sapper took no notice. Standing on a chair, with his cheek pressed against the wall, he was peering behind the helmet. It was hanging by the strap on a big nail, so that the bottom of the helmet was against the wall, and the top swung out about an inch from the head of the nail. For a few seconds he examined it, and then he smiled gently.
“From a professional and from an artistic point of view, I congratulate the bird who did this. By Jove, Peter, my boy, the South Devons very nearly lost their adjutant and their billeting officer this morning.”
“What do you mean, Sapper?” The adjutant was smoking a little faster than usual.
“That that is about the best booby-trap I’ve heard of yet.” The engineer produced a pair of wire-cutters from his pocket, and they watched him insert them carefully behind the helmet. There was a snip, and they saw him lift the helmet off gingerly. Then he got down off the chair, and laid it on the table. “Very neat – very neat, indeed!”
“What’s neat?” snapped Tremayne. “You bally specialists are so confoundedly cold-blooded.”
The Sapper grinned.
“You see that wire sticking out of the wall there below the nail? That’s the wire I cut – you can see the base end of it here made fast to the helmet. Now that helmet was hung by its strap, and its top was away from the nail. Supposing you had lifted it off, Peter, from the floor, you would have caught hold of the lower part, and in doing so would have pulled it away from the wall. The helmet would have pivoted round the strap, and the top part would have gone nearer the wall – would have touched the nail, in fact. After that the subsequent proceedings would have interested you no more.”
“You mean that the helmet touching the nail would have completed the circuit?”
“Precisely. And the quickest way at the present moment in which you could deprive His Majesty’s Army of the services of three particularly brilliant officers would be to touch the nail with the end of the wire sticking out of the wall.”
“Thank you; it’s all very interesting.” Tremayne’s face was set and hard. “Why can’t the damned swine fight like gentlemen?”
“For the very good reason that they don’t know how a gentleman fights.” The Sapper rose and stretched himself. “I will just remove a little more of that wire to make things safe, and then I shall have no objection to lunching with you.”
“But you aren’t going to leave the place full of explosive, are you?” The adjutant paused at the door in surprise.
“My minions shall deal with the matter this afternoon,” answered the engineer. “Everything is quite safe,” he continued, as they passed into the street. “There’s no delay action about this like yesterday. It’s just a booby-trap pure and simple.”
“Which unpleasantly nearly caught the booby,” remarked Tremayne quietly. “It’s devilish lucky, old man, that you were going round when you were. Otherwise–”
But it was unnecessary to finish the alternative.
Despite all assurances on the part of the engineer officer, the headquarters of the South Devons declined, as one man, to move their residence.
“It may,” remarked the CO, “be all that you say and more, but I personally decline to chance it.”
“Right-ho, sir!” laughed the Sapper. “The stuff is all removed, but if you don’t like the idea–”
“I do not!” answered the Colonel firmly. “I am of a nervous disposition, and I grow more frightened daily. I refuse to place my valise in a munition works.”
It was the following morning, and the two men were standing outside the door of the South Devons’ mess.
“It’s a dirty method of fighting,” went on the CO after a moment. “Poor old Grayson” – he mentioned the late Colonel of the Loamshires – “and Finlayson, and all these others. And yesterday, but for the grace of God, and you being there, Tremayne and Hugh–” He stopped, and stared thoughtfully down the road. “Hallo, some prisoners! And an officer, too. Wonder what he is?”
“I think he’s an engineer,” answered the Sapper, inspecting his uniform. “Let’s ask him.”
Six shambling Huns, with a morose and scowling officer at their head, came to a halt in front of the Colonel, and the escort, a young and grinning Tommy, saluted.
“Told to bring this little bunch ’ere, sir,” he remarked. “ ’E ain’t ’arf a little pet, that there one in front.”
“Told to bring them here?” said the Colonel. “But they ought to go on to Brigade or Division. There’s no cage here.”
The Tommy scratched his head and looked blank. “This is where they said, sir,” he repeated. “I don’t know my way, sir, neither, not no farther–”
“All right, lad. I’ll take them over from you. Hand them over to the sergeant-major, and the adjutant will sign your receipt.”
“Come on, yer little bundles of beauty!” The Tommy sloped arms, and the party was preparing to move off, when the officer stepped forward.
All the time the Colonel was speaking his eyes had been roving up and down the street of the village. Once, when he caught the Sapper looking at him fixedly, he had scowled furtively and immediately turned away. He was a man of striking appearance, tall and broad, with a long red scar running across his right cheek. He seemed to be trying to hide that scar by turning up the collar of his greatcoat and getting well inside it; but whenever he moved or turned his head the top of it showed above his uniform.
“I would request,” he said in a harsh voice, “to be separated from the soldiers, and sent on at once.”
“You will be sent on when I wish,” answered the Colonel, “and when it is convenient for me to send an escort to take you. You are an engineer officer, are you not?”
“I am; and I desire–”
But he got no further with the statement of his wishes. In speaking, he had thrown back his head, so that the whole of the scar was visible, and immediately an excited clamouring broke out in the little crowd of villagers and children which had collected. A score of fingers were pointed accusingly at the mark on his face, and everybody talked at once.
“There seems to be some slight upheaval,” remarked the Sapper, glancing first at the scowling officer and the six impassive soldiers behind him, and then at the gesticulating villagers. “I will elucidate.”
It was not a rapid matter, that elucidation. The crowd were all very anxious to speak, and proceeded to do so at the tops of their voices and the same time. But at last one fact emerged from the general din – a fact which caused the elucidator to become extremely thoughtful.
“They say, sir,” he said, turning to the Colonel, “that this officer lived in this village for nearly two months just before the Germans left. They recognise that scar.”
“I don’t quite see what the devil all the excitement is about, even if he did,” answered the Colonel. “It merely seems a strange coincidence.”
“Yes. But they say he lived in the house where the Loamshires were.” The two men looked at one another, and a light dawned slowly in the Colonel’s face.
“The deuce, he did! And the blighter is an engineer.”
“As you say – the blighter is an engineer.”
They had been speaking in an undertone, but now the Colonel turned to the German officer.
“They say that you were billeted in this village before you evacuated it.”
“I was.”
“They say, moreover, that you lived in the house up there, which you now see is a heap of bricks.”
For one moment and one moment only there flashed across the German’s face a look of triumph; then it resumed its look of morose sullenness.
“I was; I suppose it has since been hit by a shell.”
The Colonel was about to speak again when the Sapper caught his arm.
“Send him away, sir!” he whispered. “Send him away, but keep him in the village for a bit. I’ve had a brainstorm.”
For a moment the Colonel hesitated.
“Didn’t you see that look on the swine’s face,” urged the Sapper, “when he saw what had happened. I know he’s the man – I’m absolutely certain of it!”
“Still, what the devil can we do?” The Colonel was still in doubt. “Even if he is–”
The Sapper interrupted him.
“Of course we can do nothing, sir; of course not. But it would be nice to know for certain; very nice to know.” He was looking straight at the Hun as he spoke, and he was thinking of the doctor of the Loamshires. The doctor had been a great pal of his.
“Take ’em away,” said the Colonel to the escorting Tommy. “I’ll make arrangements later.”
The party moved down the street, and he turned to the Sapper.
“What’s in your head, old boy? I’d like to string that swab to a lamp-post; but I’d like to do lots of things I can’t!”
“My dear Colonel!” The other held up his hands in horror. “The idea of such a thing! He must be treated in every respect like the gallant, merry hero that he is. In – er – every respect. Good morning, sir. I’ll come and look you up in about two hours.”
To say that he winked would be libellous; his eyelid fluttered slightly, but it was entirely due to the wind. So what it was that day at luncheon which caused the Colonel when he had finished telling the incident to add a postcript about “Greek meeting Greek” is, I regret to state, beyond me.
The meal was hardly over when the sapper walked into the mess, to be pounced upon immediately by Peter Tremayne.
“What have you found out?” he cried. “Is that the swine who did it?”
“My dear Peter,” returned the engineer, “you outrage my feelings. I have been engaged in a couple of hours of – er – quiet study. In my branch of the army, you know, continual work is–”
“Dry up, you damned fool.” Tremayne’s face was set. “I’m in no mood for fooling. Is that the man who murdered Jimmy?”
“That is what I propose to find out now. Not exactly ordeal by fire, you know; but a sort of reconstruction of the crime. It might be amusing, and it will clear the air and remove doubts.” The Sapper lit a cigarette. “I want you to interview the prisoner, Colonel, in that room in which the booby-trap was put.”
The South Devons looked at him in silence.
“What’s the game?” remarked the adjutant shortly.
“None. Why should there be?” He thoughtfully blew out a cloud of smoke. “I shall be there myself, and don’t be surprised or – er – alarmed at anything you see me do.”
“What do I say to him?” asked the Colonel.
“Oh, any old thing! Ask after Hindenburg’s health, and put him at his ease. I want him to think that you are using the place as your mess. I shall come in after he is in the room, and it won’t take ten minutes.” The Sapper grinned at them gently. “Shall we process?”
They rose and trooped over to the house in which the Sapper had found Tremayne and the adjutant the preceding day, and sat down round the table. Orders had already been sent for the prisoner, and in silence they awaited his coming.
“I see you’ve put the helmet back in position,” said Tremayne. “I hope to Heaven you’ve removed the juice!”
“What do you think, papa?” laughed the Sapper. “In the words of an enterprising weekly – watch that helmet!” He glanced through the window. “Here he comes. Watch him, too!”
Now there rests over the last phase of this episode of Divine retribution a certain haziness – almost, one might say, the fog of war. The Hun came into the room and, according to Tremayne, the click of his eyes as they fastened on the helmet might have been heard down the street. But let me quote that veracious raconteur, as we got it later in the oyster shop at Amiens:
“There we all were sitting round the table, pretending to toy with some remnants of bad sausage and a glass of flat beer, when in walks Master Hun with the escort behind. He looked round the room once or twice, and then he spotted the Guardsman’s helmet hanging upon the wall, just as it had been the day before. He got that helmet transfixed with such a gaze that he didn’t even hear the Colonel’s first question, and you can bet your shirt we weren’t missing that loving look of his. Seen it before? Of course he’d seen it before. Why, the swine had put it there; he was the swab who’d caused all the trouble. I knew it, so did everyone.
“The play sort of dragged a bit, owing to the Hun missing his cue twice in his conversation. He couldn’t talk and think about that helmet at the same time, with the nice little packet of trouble which he thought was underneath the floor, and I was just on the point of butting in with a leading question or two, when in strolls the Sapper – just as if he’d never seen us before. The Hun looked at him quickly and he looked at the Hun – and somehow I don’t think they liked one another very much. The doctor man in the Loamshires – Jerry Dermot – and the Sapper had been great pals.” Tremayne thoughtfully skewered an oyster, and contemplated it.
“However,” he continued, “we were most of us wise to his game by this time, and, ’pon my soul, he acted well. Someone ought to write a play round that situation as a plot.”
“Someone has,” pessimistically barked an intense officer opposite, “and it’s been rejected by every manager in London.”
Tremayne looked offended. “Damn it! you don’t know what the situation is yet.”
“The point is immaterial,” boomed the intense one still more pessimistically. “I, personally, have written a play round every possible and impossible situation which can or cannot occur. They have all been rejected by every manager in London. Proceed.”
“He passed the time of day with the Colonel, and hoped he wasn’t interrupting anything official; he murmured inanities about our having a nice mess, and then – he saw the helmet. Now he was acting, and we were all acting, and it says something for our acting that the Hun never spotted us. There wasn’t a man in that room who hadn’t got one eye at least on that dirty Boche.”
Tremayne finished his Chablis savagely.
“The Colonel asked him a question, and he didn’t answer. He’d got his eyes set on the Sapper, and he couldn’t move ’em, and we watched him sweat. The sapper strolled up to that helmet, and he examined it from all angles.
“‘That’s a damned good helmet,’ he remarked casually, ‘damned good. Prussian Guard, isn’t it?’ He put up his hand towards it, and there was a noise like a stillborn explosion from the Hun. The Sapper swung round and looked at him. ‘By Jove!’ he cried. ‘What’s the matter? You look quite faint.’ Then we all looked at him openly, and the sweat was pouring off that man’s face in two streams.
“‘I am all right,’ he said thickly; ‘but I would not – I would not–’ The words sort of died away in his throat, and he choked a bit.”
“The scene undoubtedly has its dramatic possibilities,” murmured the intense officer. “It is, I believe, an established fact that the fear of death is worse than death itself, though how the deuce anybody knows…” He relapsed into silence.
“We didn’t rush matters,” continued Tremayne. “The Sapper came away from that helmet, and the sweat ceased coming away from the Hun. Then he returned again, and so did the sweat. He put up his hand and he fingered that helmet, and he talked casually while he did so. I was sorry for him really, because he missed the Hun’s face. And then, at last, he started to take it down, and as he did so, with one ghastly shout of ‘Don’t touch!’ the Hun leaped for his arm and caught it. It was really very fine: a pretty sight… Madame – encore des huîtres, s’il vous plait.” Tremayne looked round the circle of faces and his eyes were gleaming… “The Sapper, an infuriated figure of outraged dignity: the Hun shaking like a bally jelly and still holding his arm.
“‘What the devil do you mean?’ roared the Sapper. ‘Let go my arm at once, damn you!’
“The Hun mouthed and sweated, and we waited.
“‘Let me get it down for you,’ he got out at last. ‘If you could lend me a pair of wire-cutters.’ He paused, and didn’t seem to like meeting anyone’s eye.
“‘May I ask,’ said the Sapper, in a voice you could keep the fish on all the summer, ‘why you require wire-cutters to take down a helmet hanging on the wall?’
“‘The helmet is secured to the wall by a wire,’ stuttered the Hun. ‘You will have to cut it, and I thought you might damage it.’
“‘You know this room, then – and this helmet?’ The Colonel chipped into the conversation, and you know what his orderly-room voice can be like.
“‘Yes,’ answered the German. ‘When I was here before, I used this room.’
“‘Indeed!’ remarked the Colonel. ‘Well, since the officer wishes to take down the helmet for us, I see no reason against it.’
“In perfect silence the Sapper produced some wire-cutters, and handed them to the Boche, who clambered on to a chair and flattened his cheek against the wall exactly as the Sapper had done the day before. And then that worthy winked at us – just once.
“‘It will help you if I pull the bottom out a bit,’ he said quietly, and we saw him do so. I put it that way because the Hun did not. That helmet only had to move an inch, but during the time it took to do it the Hun moved about ten yards. Head first he dived into the corner – straight off his chair as if it was into water. Only, as it wasn’t water but a good stone floor, he ceased to take any active interest in the proceedings for the next ten minutes.”
Tremayne lit a cigarette.
“When he came to again the helmet was lying on the floor beside him, and the wall was blank except for the nail, as it had been the whole time. He opened his eyes and peered round, and from that moment no one of us spoke a word. He saw the helmet – he looked at the wall; then he looked at us, and – understood. For a while he didn’t understand – he thought something had gone wrong with the works; but then suddenly he did. One could tell the moment when it came to him, the certainty that we had known all along; the realisation that we had watched him sweat with terror over his own dud booby-trap, and finally stun himself in the agony of his fear.”
“Did he say anything?” asked a cavalry man sitting opposite.
“Not a word. No more did we. We just watched him in silence, and after a bit he got up and tried to pull himself together. Then he went, with the escort behind him, and that was the end of it.”
Peter Tremayne got up and started to put on his British warm. I remember he paused at the door for a moment before going out.
“I once saw a man accused of cheating at cards before a lot of people – and the accusation was true. He was a decent fellow, but he was short of cash – and I have never forgotten the look in his eyes. He blew his brains out that night. I once saw a fellow at school – a great hulking blighter – who was caught stealing money red-handed. He came up before us prefects, and I have not forgotten the look in his eyes, either. And if you combine ’em, and multiply ’em by ten, and then do it all over again, you may have a dim idea of the look in that German’s eyes just before he passed out of the picture. So long, boys; hope I’ve not bored you.”