For a long time nothing happened.
"Well?" said the sergeant impatiently.
"Well?" I said.
"Why don't you read?"
"What? Have we begun?" I asked in surprise. I couldn't see anything.
The medical officer came over to me and in a friendly way put his hand
over my left eye. It didn't help much, but I spotted where he came
from, and gathered that the card must be in that direction. Gradually
it began to loom through the blackness.
"Wait a moment," I said. I removed his hand and gazed keenly at the
opposite wall. "That's a B," I announced proudly. "That top one."
The doctor and the sergeant looked at each other.
"It's no good," sighed the sergeant.
"He can't even read the first two lines," groaned the doctor.
"It's all very well for you two," I broke in indignantly; "one of you
lives down here and is used to it, and the other knows the card by
heart. I haven't come to enlist for night operations only. Surely your
regiment does things in the daylight sometimes?"
The doctor, only knowing about the daylight by hearsay, looked blank;
the sergeant repeated sadly, "Not even the first two lines."
"Look here," I said, "lend me the card to-night and I'll come again
to-morrow. If it's only two lines you want, I think I can promise you
them."
The doctor said mournfully that he might lend me the card, but that in
that case it would be his painful duty to put up a different card for
me on the next day.
There seemed to be nothing more to say. I was about to go when a face
which I recognised emerged from the gloom. It had a shirt underneath
it and then legs. The face began to grin at me.
"Hallo," said a voice.
"Hallo, Rogers," I said; "_you_ enlisting? I thought you couldn't get
leave." Rogers is in the Civil Service, and his work is supposed to be
important.
"Well, I haven't exactly got leave--yet," he said awkwardly. "The fact
is, I just came here to ask about a commission for a friend, and while
I was here I--er--suddenly decided to risk it. You know Madingley, by
the way, don't you?"
"I used to think so," I said.
But now I see that there is more in Madingley than I thought. His job
in this war is simple--and exactly suited to himself. By arrangement
with the War Office he sends likely recruits to make enquiries for
him--and the sergeant does the rest.