"Gas!"
The hubbub in the restaurant was tremendous. Well-dressed people can
jostle and clamour and crush just as selfishly as anybody else, and
those of the lunchers who were not near enough stood up on their chairs
to get a better view.
The musician picked himself up with a fried sole embossed on the back of
his dress coat and two portions of hot soup running down his neck, to
say nothing of blobs of mashed potato and the contents of overturned
cruets all over him.
"I've got one of you, anyhow," said Dennis in German, as he seized him
by the collar. "You'd better have sat tight among your fiddles, and
allowed Madame von Dussel to play her own dirty game."
If the musician's look could have killed, there would have been another
vacancy in the Reedshires.
The cause of all the tumult confronted Dennis, purple with indignation,
and began to bluster. But another officer had wormed himself resolutely
forward through the crush.
"I want to know what the deuce you mean, sir!" demanded the indignant
major, but the new-comer interrupted him.
"I am the Assistant Provost-Marshal," he said. "What is the meaning of
this fracas?"
"The explanation is very simple, sir," replied Dennis, handing him the
slip of paper. "My friend and I were astonished to hear this officer
talking so unguardedly. It is charitable to suppose that he has taken
too much wine, and when I expostulated with him I recognised one of the
waitresses as a remarkably clever German spy."
The A.P.M. nodded.
"I gathered that," he said. "I will ask you, gentlemen, to accompany me
to the manager's room." And the excited crowd fell back to let them
pass.
As Dennis brought up the rear with his prisoner he met Bob coming in,
and young Wetherby told him what had happened.
"By Jove! it's a thousand pities we missed that woman," said the
captain. "We haven't seen the end of that vixen and her husband."
What happened in the manager's room it is not for us to reveal, but the
placards of the evening papers had the startling announcement:
"DRAMATIC CAPTURE OF A GERMAN SPY AT
A WELL-KNOWN WEST-END RESTAURANT!
ESCAPE OF HIS FEMALE ACCOMPLICE!
BRITISH OFFICER'S WINE DRUGGED!"
In the _Gazette_ a few days later was an announcement among the
promotions: "2/12th Royal Reedshire Regiment, Captain Robert Oswald
Dashwood to command the battalion with the rank of major. Second
Lieutenant Dennis Dashwood to lieutenant."
Probably none of the lunchers knew what that meant; it was not their
affair.
* * * * *
Up the muddy road swung a brown detachment to the music of mouth organs,
and Harry Hawke, who was lounging at the door of a big barn, chewing a
woodbine and looking fed up with life generally, lifted his snub nose in
the air as the head of the detachment came round a bend in the road.
In an instant the sulky, discontented look vanished from his face, and
he let off a yell.
"Turn out, you beggars!" he yelped. "Tiddler, look at this! 'Ere's our
bloomin' draft at larst. Give 'em a cheer, boys! Now we shan't be long!"
From the barn and the adjacent cottages the Reedshires poured and lined
up at the roadside.
"Never mind the weather,
Now then, all together:
Hallo! Hallo! Here we are again!"
sang the draft, to the accompaniment of the mouth organs, the battalion
joining in with a lusty roar of welcome.
"Lumme, Tiddler! They're a bloomin' fine lot!" was Harry Hawke's
approving comment. "And if there ain't our little 'ero with two blinkin'
stars on 'is blinkin' sleeve! Are we down'earted?"
And eleven hundred and fifty throats gave a thunderous "NO!" as the
draft halted.
Within twenty-four hours of the arrival of the draft the battalion fell
in with packs and rifles. The little pillar-box at the end of the barn,
with the time of the next collection scored in chalk on the wall, had
been filled to overflowing with field post cards for home, and the
Reedshires left their billets to join the brigade again.
It was all new to young Wetherby, and Dennis seemed quite a seasoned
veteran as he pointed out things to his old school chum while they drew
nearer and nearer to the thunder of the guns.
Contalmaison had already been taken with great slaughter before they
reached the firing-line, and the shadows were lengthening as they came
to a captured trench and prepared to make themselves snug for the night.
Dennis and Wetherby were taking possession of a half-demolished dug-out
when Bob made his appearance.
"If you fellows have got any coffee to spare, I'll have some with you,"
said the major. "And I recommend you to turn in all standing, for we're
expecting a big counter-attack from the direction of that wood on our
front. How have you stood the march up, Wetherby? Feel a bit knocked?"
"Nothing to speak of," laughed the new subaltern of A Company. "I'm not
too tired to enjoy the fun when it starts."
"Well, if our informations are correct, you'll see plenty of 'fun,' as
you call it, before sunrise. I've just had a chow with the Governor, and
he's as pleased as Punch that we're up in time, for I think it's going
to be pretty serious. Our airmen have brought news of exceedingly heavy
enemy reinforcements, and the German guns are holding their fire on this
sector, which all points to something."
"How's the wind?" said Dennis, over the rim of his enamelled mug.
"Dead right for Brother Boche," replied Bob, with a smile.
"I don't quite understand," ventured young Wetherby, who, in spite of
the tan of arduous training that browned his clean-shaven, boyish face,
was not ashamed to ask questions.
Like Dennis himself, he was not one of those pert modern boys who think
they know everything.
"What has the wind got to do with it?" said young Wetherby.
"Gas, old chap, gas!" replied the two brothers. "The moment you hear the
alarm, ram on your gas helmet and see the tube is working."
"And by the living Jingo!" cried the major, "there it goes!" And he shot
out of the dug-out into the trench as a man on the look out beat
furiously upon an empty shell-case dangling there for the purpose.
"Pull it right down!" shouted Dennis, giving young Wetherby a helping
hand with his helmet. "Now you're fixed. Wish there was a mirror handy;
you've no idea how well you look in it, old man."
Despite the seriousness of the moment Wetherby roared with laughter
inside the stifling, smelly cowl that made them both seem like familiars
of the Spanish Inquisition.
And then, revolvers in hand, they took their places in the trench and
waited.
"Are you certain it's gas?" said Dennis to Tiddler, who had sounded the
alarm in their front, for beyond the parapet there was a strange
stillness, and the night was as black as your hat.
"Yes, sir; I see it right enough, just as their last flare died down. I
saw it at Hill 60, and I've 'ad some. It'll be 'ere in a tick."
But the enemy was impatient that night, and on a sudden a group of
star-shells burst overhead, lighting everything up brilliantly, and
revealing a long line of grey figures advancing stealthily.
"How do we go now?" inquired Wetherby, as another bunch of star-shells
went up. "Do we wait until they're on top of us?"
"That depends on Bob's judgment," replied Dennis, making himself heard
with some difficulty through the flannel folds of his mask; and while he
was speaking there came the shrill signal for "ten rounds rapid."
As the Lee-Enfields crashed out our machine-guns began to hammer, and
the boy fresh out from England felt a fierce thrill of exultation seize
him, for this was the real thing at last--the thing he had been longing
for so eagerly!
The long grey line seemed to shiver in front of the machine-guns, and
great swathes of the enemy went down. But our trench was on a ridge, and
the rear ranks filling up the gaps with a precision that astonished
young Wetherby, the German line began to mount the slope, breaking into
the double.
Dennis suddenly gripped his arm.
"Yes, what is it?" cried the boy, as the "Cease fire" blew and was
immediately followed by another signal.
"Reedshires, get over!" shouted Dennis. "That's what it is. Good old
Bob! He's a beggar for the cold steel. Come on, Wetherby! There's a fine
bit of free wheel for us--all down hill and a walk over at the bottom.
Charge, boys, charge!"
Looking like demons suddenly gone mad, the battalion let go a muffled
yell, and tore down the slope to meet those other demons, still more
hideous in the steel-faced masks they wore as a protection against their
own gas; and at the end of a dozen strides brown and grey mingled with a
terrific shock.
"Jove, what a ripping scrum!" laughed Wetherby, as he and Dennis plunged
into the struggling mass of men; and when his revolver was empty he
wrenched a Mauser and bayonet from one of the enemy and used them.
The Reedshires were fresh, and made up for that lost time in billets,
yielding not an inch, but forcing the Germans farther and farther down
the slope, until they broke and ran.
They were artful enough to avoid the shell holes, where the gas lay
thick; but they had little time to pick and choose their way, for the
relentless Reedshires clung to their heels so closely that our
machine-guns had to cease fire.
Here and there, where the fugitive mob was tightly wedged in some narrow
gap between a couple of yawning craters, the rearmost of them would turn
at bay, and at just such a place, scarcely wide enough for two men to
pass abreast, young Wetherby overtook a hefty little private tackling a
huge German, who towered head and shoulders above him.
It was impossible to get by until that single combat should be ended;
but as Wetherby paused the big German made a circling swipe with his
rifle, and his bayonet tore a great gash in the Reedshire's gas helmet.
The little man in jumping back lost his balance, and rolled head over
heels into one of the craters, his adversary resuming his flight at the
sight of young Wetherby, who dropped him with a bullet in the back.
The splendid pluck with which the little man had tackled the giant had
appealed to Wetherby's sporting instincts, and realising the hideous
death that lurked in the bottom of the shell hole, he sprang down to his
assistance, and found Tiddler--for it was he--grasping the torn mask
with both hands, while he vainly struggled to scramble out.
But the earth crumbled under his feet, and, already exhausted, the
doomed man sank on his knees, and looked wildly round for help.
He should by rights have had a spare helmet in his haversack, but the
careless fellow had lost it when they were in billets.
"Go back!" he gasped with a wave of his arm; but the officer boy was no
fool, and, opening his wallet, he forced his own spare mask over
Tiddler's head and dragged him to his feet again.
A German lay writhing in fearful convulsions beside them, and young
Wetherby pointed to that terrible object lesson.
"Come on!" he shouted. "Never mind your gun." And, seizing him by the
arm, the pair struggled panting together up the precipitous side of the
hole.
"It's all right up here--the gas has passed over!" shouted Tiddler's
rescuer. And away he bolted, leaving the grateful man to recover his
breath and pick up a spare rifle.