It is now some months since the great autumn offensive was conducted with
the idea of biting off an awkward salient in my circumstances--in brief, of
obtaining the necessary telephone to enable me to commence an ordered
existence. For many, many days my voice had been unheard crying in the
wilderness that I was a poor demobilised soldier, that I had once had a
telephone and had given it up at my country's call, and please couldn't
they give me back even my old, old telephone again? I have already told how
in response to these very human appeals I at length got only a request for
the balance due for calls for 1914. My old friend Time, however, worked his
proverbial wonders and one day a telephone came--phit! like that.
Directly it had come I suspected a trap somewhere. Nor were my friends
behindhand in telling me of the horrors of gigantic and inexorable bills
from which there was no appeal. They said I must have a coin-box. Excellent
idea! I would have a coin-box.
So the great Spring offensive began. In early February I opened a strong
barrage upon the main headquarters (how lovingly these ancient military
metaphors come back to one!) and kept up a little light harassing fire upon
the District Agent. The enemy replied with rigid uniformity upon printed
forms--a mean advantage, for I have to type mine myself. But matters
progressed. At the end of the first fortnight I had been advised that the
work of installing my coin-box had been entrusted to no fewer than three
groups of engineers, "to whom you should refer in all cases."
Well, I "referred" for some little time, and then, after a decent interval,
made their acquaintance separately. If anything was calculated to bring
back memories of the lighter side of the War it was the gracious and suave
manner in which I despatched and redespatched to other departments. I might
have been the buffest of buff slips the way I was "passed to you, please."
Once again I cancelled all my work in the pursuit of where the rainbow
ends. Nor was this renunciation any great hardship, for I had been writing
a book about the Realities of War, and had just found that all the horrors
that ever might have happened had already been set down by one who saw most
of the game, being an onlooker. "But this," I said, as I set out every
morning--"this is the life, pure adventure in every moment of it."
My efforts were rewarded. In late February three people came and left three
coin-boxes--in pieces. Then I must admit that I did a foolish thing. I
wrote and said that I only wanted one box. I was afraid that if I kept them
all it would be, a case of "Thr-r-ree pennies, please," instead of one.
(Mine is a penny district).
It annoyed them all. They came and took all the boxes away again--jealousy,
I suppose. So at the end of February I was back in my old trenches again
and visitors were still saying, "Oh, _do_ you mind if I ring up So-and-so?"
and I was listening to myself answering, "Oh, _do_. No, of _course_ don't
bother about the twopence" (visitors always want calls just outside the
radius; I do myself).
The crisis came in March. It was then that I joined the criminal classes.
For many days I had haunted the telephone dump, taking a melancholy
pleasure in watching real engineers come out with real coin-boxes for other
people. No Peri at the golden gate ever looked more wistful. I know now
that it is opportunity that makes the criminal, and one day the opportunity
came. It came in the form of a young and evidently new hand, who emerged
from the dump and pitched upon me--me of all people--to ask, "Can you tell
me where this place is?" As he spoke he began to get out a slip with the
address, and in that moment my fate was sealed. One glance showed me that
he was the bearer of a perfectly good coin-box, and in a second I had
seized the opportunity.
What he said I have not the slightest idea and it wouldn't have mattered
what the address had been; before he started I had assured him that by a
curious coincidence I was going to that very place, and that by a still
more curious coincidence I was the very man who wanted that coin-box.
Curious, wasn't it, how such coincidences happened in real life as well as
in books?
I took him to my home in a taxi. On the way I succeeded in diverting his
mind from any possible awkward questions by relating details of my sad
story until I could see the poor fellow was on the verge of tears. For
those interested in criminology I may say that all the best criminal
devices are not necessarily planned beforehand to the end; they are begun
any-old-how and the genius consists in carrying the thing through
afterwards, much the same as running a great war. I recked not what might
occur after I had nefariously induced the poor innocent to install the
machine; perhaps I had some vague idea that the Englishman's house is his
castle, though this seems ridiculous when considered calmly. However, what
matter these psychological dissections? He came with me unsuspecting, and I
piloted him out of the taxi without his ever noticing the name of the
street even. How could I have foreseen? Well, anyhow I didn't, or I
shouldn't have tipped him on the stairs.
With many nods and winks I gave my wife the hint how I had managed it, and
we went about the house whispering and hobnobbing in odd corners like a
couple of conspirators while he began the work of installation.
Then the first dreadful moment came. Suddenly he addressed me by my name,
with a certain suspicious interrogation in his tone.
"Who?" I asked blandly, going as red as a turkey-cock, of course; I never
can help it.
He looked surprised and I plunged heavily, giving the first name I could
think of, which happened to be the one he had mentioned in the taxi--his
own, in fact. He looked still more suspicious and I knew it had been a
mistake, especially as close to where he had been working were two
envelopes addressed to me. I am certain that if my wife had not called me
at that moment I should have gone permanently purple all over.
When I got back (I tried to get my wife to go, but she said she would
rather I went, and that I wasn't really as red as I felt)--when I got back
I could see that it had dawned upon him that I had wheedled him there
without his knowing exactly where he was, and that he was determined not to
be had. He asked me to sign for the installation.
Alas, I could not do that. It was only then that I realised that I am
constitutionally honest; besides they might find me out.
We both tried to turn his thoughts to pleasanter topics. Perhaps asking him
to have a glass of port was a mistake there are times when even bribery is
bad policy. Briefly, after a mumbled remark that "there was something
fishy," he refused to leave the box. Dry-eyed we watched him take it all
down and depart in a dudgeon. We were left with a vision of shameless
visitors with their twopenny calls and interminable bills running up even
while we were away on our holidays.
"Let us," I said hoarsely--"let us go and look at our child; she is all we
have left now."
Moodily we turned to go upstairs. In the hall we stopped dead. Upon the
floor was the wretched paper which my Victorian conscience and my
twentieth-century caution had prevented me from signing.
"He must," said my wife with her usual perspicacity, "have dropped it on
his way out. Let's see who the box was really meant for."
Picking it up I read aloud in cold firm tones _my own name and address_.
The box had been meant for us after all.
* * * * *
We got it in the end. It came one morning, like the flowers in Spring,
quite suddenly, and we spent a whole day telephoning to our friends to tell
them we had a coin-box at last. I also wrote a letter full of gratitude to
the telephone people and got the reply that, "owing to the shortage of
plant, etc.," they regretted that for the time being they could not grant
my request for a telephone.
We did not tell them that we had had one for three months; Heaven knows
what would have happened.
And we are left in peace--now that our visitors have heard that we have a
coin-box.