on a slicker, put his pass in his pocket and left the barracks. Outside
the door he hesitated. The sun was gleaming from a hot sky, and there
was no wind. The absence of wind, he felt, was in his favour. During his
hurried walk toward the little car he was feeling in his mind for some
excuse for the slicker, but he found himself beside the car before he
had found anything to satisfy him.
“You are late,” said the girl severely.
“Awfully busy morning,” he explained. “Inspection and—er—all that.
There’s a lot to get ready,” he added mysteriously.
He was aware of her careful scrutiny, and he flushed guiltily. As for
the girl, she seemed satisfied with what she saw. He was a gentleman,
clearly. But a slicker!
“You’d better take that raincoat back,” she observed. “You won’t need
it. It’s going to be clear and hot.”
“I guess I’ll take it, anyhow.”
“You’ll be checking it somewhere, and then forgetting to get it again.”
He was frightfully uneasy. She was the sort of girl who seemed bent on
getting her own way. So he muttered something about having a cold, and
she countered with a flat statement that he would get more if he dressed
too warmly.
They had reached what amounted to an _impasse_ when a small boy flung a
card into the car.
“Don’t bother about it,” said the girl as he stooped to get it. “I have
one in my pocket for you.”
“Thanks, awfully,” said the sergeant, rather surprised. “What is it? A
theatre ticket?”
She did not reply at once. He saw that they were passing the end of the
trolley line and going on. He had a little thrill of mingled delight and
uneasiness. He had had no plans particularly, except to see her again.
His only program had been destroyed in the bonfire.
Suddenly she drew the little car up beside the road.
“Have you anything you want particularly to do to-day?” she asked.
“I was just going to play round.”
“Would you like to do a real service? A national service?”
“I seem to be doing it most of the time,” he observed with some
bitterness.
“You said yesterday you were going to have your picture taken.”
Good heavens, was this marvel, this creature from another world, going
to ask for his photograph?
“I would, but this eye——”
“See here,” she said briskly. “I want you to get your picture taken. I
want it for a special reason. And I want you to go”—she felt in her
pocket and pulled out a card—“I want you to go to this man.”
“I see,” he said, and took the card. “Friend of yours?”
“Certainly not!”
“Does he take good photographs?”
“I don’t know. You might read the card.”
He read it carefully. It merely stated that J. M. Booth of a certain
number on Twenty-Second Street made excellent photographs very cheap,
filled rush orders for soldiers, and gave them a special discount. He
even turned it over, but the other side was blank.
“I don’t get it, I guess,” he said at last. “What’s the answer?”
“The more I see of army men the less imagination I find,” was her
surprising reply. “I took that card last night to the—to an officer I
know; and he was just like you. I hope you put more intelligence into
your fighting than you do into other things. How many soldiers do you
suppose have gone to that man?”
“Well, I’ll be one, anyhow.”
He rose gallantly to the occasion.
“A good many hundred, probably. As each division comes in and gets leave
they all run to get their pictures taken, don’t they? And they want them
by a certain time? Why? Because they’re going to sail, of course.”
“There’s no argument on my part.”
“But suppose that man’s name isn’t Booth? Suppose I told you he’d once
been the court photographer at Vienna?”
Sergeant Gray whistled.
“Are you telling me that?”
“I am. My dressmaker is in the same building. She told me. He showed her
a lot of photographs of the royal family.”
Every boy has longed at some period of his life to be a detective.
Sergeant Gray suddenly felt the fine frenzy of the sleuth. But there was
disappointment too.
“So that’s why you picked me up last night?”
“Not at all. But it’s why I came for you this morning.”
“Would you mind explaining that?”
“Not at all. I picked you up because I carry all the boys I can to the
street car. But after we had talked I felt you would understand. Some of
them wouldn’t.”
Sergeant Gray at once put on the expression of one who understood
perfectly. But happening to glance down, the better to reflect, he saw
that the slicker had slid back an inch or so, revealing that amount of a
knee that was not covered with khaki. He blushed furiously, but the
girl’s eyes were on the road ahead.
“I do hope you’ll help me out,” she was saying. “It wouldn’t be of any
use for me to go, you know. But I’ll go with you. I’ll be your sister if
you don’t mind.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to say that there were other
relationships he would prefer, but he did not. She was not that sort of
a girl. And he was uneasily aware, too, that her interest in him was
purely academic. Not that he put it that way, of course.
“The one thing you mustn’t do,” she warned him, “is to tell when you
actually sail. I thought you might say that the submarine trouble has
held up all sailings, and you’re not going for a month.”
“All right,” he agreed.
“Just when do you sail?” she asked suddenly.
He was exceedingly troubled. He had no finesse, and here was a
point-blank question. He answered it bluntly.
“Sorry. I can’t tell you.”
“You’re a good boy,” she said with approval. “I know anyhow, so it
doesn’t matter. I just wondered if you would tell.”
“You know a lot of things,” was his admiring comment.
Half an hour later he was following the girl into a dingy elevator. He
was suffering the pangs of bitter disappointment, for on his observing
that if the fellow tried to find out when the division was sailing he
would throw him out of the window the girl had turned on him sharply.
“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” she said. “You’ll tell him what we’ve
agreed on, and that’s all.”
“All?” he had protested. “And let him get away with it?”
“We’ll decide what to do later,” she had answered cryptically. And
somehow he had felt that he had fallen in her estimation.
In the elevator she said out of a clear sky: “You’ll have to take that
raincoat off, of course.”
He swallowed nervously.
“Sure I will,” he replied. “But—look here, you don’t mind if I ask you
to stay out while I’m being done, do you? I—I’m funny about pictures. I
don’t like any one round. Queer thing,” he went on desperately, seeing
her face. “Always been like that. I——”
“I didn’t come here to see you have a photograph taken,” she replied
coldly.
For the next half hour he did not see her. He was extremely busy.
J. M. Booth proved to be a slow worker. Sergeant Gray, who had been
recently mixing with all races in the Army, was quick to see that he
spoke fluent English with a slight burr.
“French, aren’t you?” he asked genially while Mr. Booth shifted the
scenery.
“Alsatian,” corroborated Mr. Booth. “But this is my country. I have even
taken an American name. Now if you will remove the raincoat——”
Sergeant Gray moved a step nearer to him.
“Can’t,” he explained in a low tone. “Nothing under it. You’ll have to
shoot as I am.”
“No uniform?”
“No uniform. What d’you think of a country that will send fellows to
fight like that, eh?”
Mr. Booth’s small black eyes peered at him suspiciously.
“Is it possible?” he demanded. “This great country, so rich, and—no
uniforms.”
“Uniforms!” continued Sergeant Gray, beginning to enjoy himself hugely.
“Why, say, we haven’t anything! No guns worth the name, not enough
shoes. Why, a fellow in my company’s wearing two rights at this minute.
And as for uniforms—why, I’ll tell you this—my whole company’s going
round to-day like this, slickers and nothing else.”
“Amazing!” commented Mr. Booth unctuously. “We hear of so much money
being spent, and yet nothing to show for it.”
“Graft!” explained the sergeant in a very deep bass. “Graft, that’s what
it is!”
Mr. Booth seemed temporarily to forget that he was there to take a
picture.
“But you—we will come out all right,” he observed, watching the sergeant
closely. “We have so much. The Browning gun, now—do you know about that?
It is wonderful, not so?”
“Wonderful?” queried the sergeant, feeling happier than he had for some
time. “Well, I’m a machine gunner; and if we’re to get anywhere we’ve
got to do better than the Browning.” He had a second’s uneasiness then,
until he remembered that he wore no insignia. “It heats. It jams. It——”
Here ended his knowledge of machine guns. “It’s rotten, that’s all.”
Mr. Booth was moistening his lips.
“It’s sad news,” he observed. “I—but this Liberty motor—I understand
it’s a success.”
“You’d better not ask me about that,” said the sergeant gravely. “Ever
since my brother went down——”
“Went down? Fell?”
“Aviation. Engine too heavy for the wings. Got up a hundred feet—first
plane, you know, testing it out. And——”
He drew a long breath.
“I wonder,” said Mr. Booth, “if you would care for a little drink? I
keep some here for the boys. The city’s a dry place for soldiers. It’ll
cheer you up.”
“I’m off liquor.” It was the first truth he had spoken for some time,
and it sounded strange to his ears. “Rotten food and all that. Can’t
drink. That’s straight.”
It had not been lost on him that Mr. Booth was endeavoring to conceal a
vast cheerfulness; also that his refusal to drink was unexpected.
“Better have the picture, old top,” he observed. “Better get this eye on
the off side, hadn’t you?”
For some five minutes Mr. Booth alternately disappeared under a black
cloth and reappeared again. The sergeant felt that under a pretence of
focusing he was being subjected to a close scrutiny, and bore himself
carefully and well.
When at last it was over Mr. Booth put a question. “Want these in a
hurry, I suppose?”
“Hurry? Why?”
“Most of the boys are just about to sail. They come in here and give me
two days, three days. It is not enough.”
“Well, I can give you a month if you want it.”
“You’re not going soon, then?”
“I should say not! Do you think Uncle Sam’s going to trust any
transports out with these German submarines about? I guess not!”
There was no question as to Mr. Booth’s excitement now. His round face
fairly twitched.
“But you cannot know that,” he said. “That is camp talk, eh?”
“Not on your life!” said the sergeant, and went closer to him. “I got a
cousin in headquarters; and he saw the order from Washington.”
“What was the order? You remember it, eh?”
“All orders for troops to sail during month of June canceled,” lied the
sergeant glibly. “Not likely to forget that, old top, with a month to
play round in your dear old town.”
He was filled with admiration of himself. And under that admiration was
swelling and growing a great loathing for the creature before him. He
would fill him with lies as full as he would hold. And then he would get
him. But he would consult the girl about that. She had forbidden
violence, but when she knew the facts——
He gave his name and put down a deposit.
“You are sure you are in no hurry?” asked Mr. Booth, scrutinising him
carefully.
“I wish I was as sure of a uniform.”
The girl was waiting, and together they went down to the street. Though
her eyes were eager she asked no questions. She preceded Sergeant Gray
to the little car and got in. And suddenly a chill struck to the
sergeant’s heart.
On the pavement, eying him with cold and glittering eyes, were the
stable sergeant, the troop mess sergeant, the second mess sergeant and
two corporals. Like himself they wore slickers to cover certain
deficiencies, and unlike him they wore an expression of cold and
calculating deviltry.
“Hello!” they said, and surrounded him. “Having a good time?”
He cast an agonised glance at the car. The girl was looking ahead.
“Pretty fair,” he replied; and calculated the distance to the car.
“We’ve been keeping an eye open for you,” said the stable sergeant,
stepping between him and the car. “We want to have a word with you.”
“I’ll meet you somewhere.” There was pleading in his voice. “Anywhere
you say, in an hour.” Their faces were cold and unrelenting. “In a half
hour, then.”
“What we’ve got to do won’t wait,” observed the stable sergeant. “How do
you think we like going about like this anyhow? Our only chance to have
a time, and going round like a lot of lunatics. We warned you, didn’t
we? We——”
Sergeant Gray knew what was coming. He had known it with deadly
certainty from the moment he saw that menacing group, cold of eye but
hot of face. And strong as he was he was no match for five of them,
hardened with months of training and infuriated with outrage.
“I’m with a young lady, fellows,” he pleaded. “Don’t make a row here. If
you’ll only wait——”
“Oh, there won’t be any row,” observed the stable sergeant. “You take
off that slicker, that’s all.”
“Not here! For heaven’s sake, fellows, not on the street! I tell you
I’ve got a girl with me. A nice girl. A——”
The stable sergeant hesitated and glanced toward the car.
“All right,” he said. “But we’re going to take that slicker back to
camp. We promised the troop. You can step inside that door. I guess
that’s satisfactory?”
He glanced at the group, which nodded grimly.
For an instant Sergeant Gray was tempted to run and chance it, but the
girl had turned her head and was watching them curiously. Hope died in
him. He could neither run nor fight. And the group closed in on him.
“’Bout face—march!” said the stable sergeant.
And he marched.
Inside the hallway, behind the elevator, however, he turned loose with
his fists. He fought desperately, using his long arms with accuracy and
precision. One of the corporals went down first. The second mess
sergeant followed him. But the result was inevitable. Inside of three
minutes the girl saw the little group returning to the street. One
corporal held a handkerchief to his lip, and the first mess sergeant was
holding together a slicker which had no longer any clasps. The stable
sergeant, however, was calm and happy. He carried a slicker over his
arm.
“Sergeant Gray’s compliments, miss,” he said, saluting. Then, as an
afterthought of particular fiendishness: “And he will be engaged for
some time. If you would take charge of this slicker he’ll be much
obliged to you.”
He saluted again, and the group swaggered down the street.
The girl sat in the car and looked after them. Then she glanced at the
slicker, and a little frown gathered between her eyes. Had he, against
her orders, gone back to deal with Mr. Booth alone? She was mystified
and not a little indignant, and when she started the car again it was
with a jerk of irritation.
Inside the hallway, behind the elevator, cursed and raged Sergeant Gray.
At every step in the doorway he shook with apprehension. Behind him
stretched a wooden staircase, toward which he cast agonised eyes. The
elevator came down, discharged its passengers, filled again and went up.
Outside in the brilliant street thousands of feet passed, carrying
people fully clothed and entitled to a place in the sun. Momentarily he
expected the climax of his wretchedness—that the girl would tire of
waiting and come into the building. He plucked up courage after a time
to peer round the corner of the elevator. The car was gone.
“What’ll she think of me?” he groaned.
Wild schemes of revenge surged in him. Murder with torture was among
them. And always while he cursed and planned his eyes were on the
staircase behind him.
Came a time, however, when the elevator descended empty, and the elderly
man on the stool inside prepared to read a newspaper. He was startled by
a husky whisper just beneath his left ear.
“Say, come here a minute, will you?”
He turned. Through the grille beside him a desperate face with one black
eye was staring at him.
“Come here yourself,” he returned uneasily.
With a wild rush the owner of the face catapulted into the elevator and
closed the grating. Then he turned and faced him.
“Run me up, quick!”
“Good God!” said the elevator man.
There were steps in the entrance. With a frenzied gesture Sergeant Gray,
of the Headquarters Troop of the ——th Division, gave a pull at the
lever. The car descended with a jerk.
“Leggo that thing,” said the elevator man, now wildly terrified. “Want
to shoot down into the subway?”
Thoroughly frenzied, Sergeant Gray pulled the lever the other way. The
car stopped, trembled, ascended. For a moment two stenographers waiting
on the ground floor had a vision of a strange figure in undershirt,
cotton, one, and nether garments to match, surmounted by a distorted
face, passing on its way to the upper floors.
Sergeant Gray surrendered the lever, and ran a trembling hand across his
forehead.
“You’ve got to hide me somewhere,” he shouted. “Look at me!”
“I see you,” said the elevator man. “Y’ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“You’ve got to hide me,” insisted Sergeant Gray; “and then you’ve got to
go out and buy me some clothes.”
They had reached the top floor, and the car had stopped.
“I’ll tell you later. You can get me a pair of pants somewhere, can’t
you?”
There was pleading in his voice. Almost tears. But the tears were of
rage.
“I’ll lose my job if I leave this car,” observed the elevator man. He
had recovered from his fright, and besides he had recognised the boy’s
service hat.
“Soldier, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Look here, old man, I’m in a devil of a mess. Lot of our fellows,
met them outside—it’s a joke. I’ll joke them!” he added vindictively.
“Some fellows got a queer idea of humour,” observed the elevator man. “I
might send out for you. Got any money?”
The full depth of his helplessness struck Sergeant Gray then and turned
him cold. His money, thirty-nine dollars and sixteen cents, was in the
slicker.
“They took my money too.”
The elevator man’s face grew not less interested but more suspicious.
“Why don’t you get a good story while you’re at it?” he demanded. “Looks
like you’re running away from something.”
“Great heavens, I should think I am!”
“You fellows,” observed the elevator man, “think you can come to this
town and raise hell and then pull some soldier stuff and get out of it.
Well, you haven’t any effect on me.”
The buzzer in the cage had been ringing insistently.
“I’ll have to go down. Crawl out, son.”
“Crawl out! Where to?”
“Don’t know. Can’t let you in an office. You may find some place.” He
threw open the door. “Out with you!” he commanded. “I’ll look you up
later.”
“Run me to the cellar,” gasped Sergeant Gray.
“Tailor’s shop there. Full of girls.”
With a hoarse imprecation Sergeant Gray left the elevator and scuttled
down the hallway. To his maddened ears the place was full of sounds, of
voices inside doorways and about to emerge, of footsteps, of hideous
laughter. He had wild visions of finding a window and a roof, even of
jumping off it. Then—he saw on a door the name of J. M. Booth,
Photographer; and hope leaped in his heart.
He opened the door cautiously and peered within. All was silent. On the
table in the reception room lay still open the album with which the girl
had amused herself while she waited, and over a couch—oh, joy
supreme!—there was flung an Indian blanket. He caught it up and wrapped
it about him; and the madness left him. Such as it was, he was clothed.
Still cautiously, however, he advanced to the studio. All was quiet
there, but beyond he could hear water running, and the careful handling
of photographers’ plates. Mr. Booth, erstwhile of Vienna, was within and
busy. It irked the sergeant profoundly that to such unworthy refuge he
was driven for shelter, but he squared his shoulders and advanced. Then
suddenly he heard footsteps in the outer room, footsteps that advanced
deliberately and relentlessly.
Wild fear shook him again. He looked round him frantically, and then
sought refuge. In a corner behind a piece of scenery which was intended
to show the sitter in an Italian garden, Sergeant Gray of the ——th
Division sought shameful sanctuary.
Somewhat later in the day the general, having a broiled squab and
mushrooms under glass in a window at the best restaurant in the city,
put on his glasses and looked out over the surging tide in the brilliant
sunlight of the street. Just opposite him, moving sedately, was a group
of soldiers.
“I wish you’d tell me,” said the general testily to the aide-de-camp
whose particular joy it was to lunch with him, “what the deuce those
fellows are doing in slickers on a day like this.”
“No accounting for the vagaries of enlisted men, sir,” returned the
aide, ordering a _demi-tasse_.
IV
At that exact moment the elevator man, having a moment’s leisure after
the lunch rush, made his way back along the corridor where he had left a
wild-eyed refugee. All was quiet. In the office of the National Asphalt
Company the clicking of typewriters showed that no fleeing soldier,
seeking sanctuary and a pair of trousers, had upset the day’s pavements.
Dolls and Wigs was calm. Coat Fronts remained inadequate and still.
He wandered back, his face twisted in a dry grin. Then suddenly from
Booth, Photographer, he heard a wild yell. This was followed by the
crash of a heavy body, a number of smothered oaths and a steady softish
thud that sounded extremely like the impact of fists on flesh.
The elevator man opened the door of Booth, Photographer’s, anteroom and
stuck his head in. The studio beyond showed something on the floor that
stirred in the wrapping of an Indian blanket, while stepping across it
and on it a mad thing in undergarments and a service hat was delivering
blows at something unseen.
The elevator man carefully reached a hand inside the door and took out
the key. Then as stealthily he closed the door, locked it from the
outside, and moved back swiftly to his cage, where the buzzer showed
that the carpet cleaning company which occupied the fourth floor was in
a hurry and didn’t care who knew it.
At the end of twenty minutes two roundsmen went up in the cage. Going up
they learned of the preliminaries.
“Crazy, I guess,” finished the elevator man. “He looked crazy, now I
think about it. Probably killed the lot by this time. Where do you
fellows hide, anyhow?”
Back in Booth, Photographer, there was a complete and awful silence.
Revolvers ready, the door was opened and the roundsmen sprang in. It
looked like the worst. The Indian blanket nor moved nor quivered. A
chair, overturned, lay on top of it, and against that there leaned
tipsily a photographer’s screen, on which was painted, in grays and
whites, an Italian garden.
“I’m glad to see you,” called a cheery voice. “I’m glad to see you!”
Standing in the doorway of the dressing room was a tall young man. He
held a brush in his hand and was still slicking down his hair.
“How are you, anyhow?” demanded the tall young man, and proceeded to
shake down the leg of a pair of black trousers. “A trifle short, aren’t
they?” he observed. “But they’re a darn sight better than nothing!”
“Get him, Joe,” said one of the officers casually, and walked toward the
inner room.
“Oh, I’ll go along all right,” said Sergeant Gray blithely. “It’s worth
the price. I’m only sorry you didn’t see it. I——”
“Joe!” called the other officer from the inner room. “Come here, will
you?”
“Mind if I go along?” asked Sergeant Gray. “I’d like to look at ’em
again. I want to remember how they look all the rest of my life.”
Joe nodded, and Sergeant Gray led the way to the studio. In a corner,
roped tightly to a chair, sat Booth, Photographer. He was bleeding
profusely from a cut on the lip and another over the eye, his head was
bobbing weakly on his shoulders, and he wore, to be exact, one union
suit minus two buttons on the chest and held together by a safety pin.
Joe stumbling over the Indian blanket heard it groan beneath him, and
uncovered a stout gentleman in a cutaway coat and with his collar torn
off.
“Pretty good, eh?” demanded Sergeant Gray. “Sorry about the collar,
though. Booth’s is too small for me.”
“Want an ambulance?” inquired the elevator man with unholy joy in his
eyes.
“Yes. Better have one.” And to the wreckage: “You gentlemen will be all
right,” said Joe. “How’d this happen, anyhow?”
“I’ll tell you,” volunteered the sergeant. “They’re spies, that’s what
they are. German spies. D’you get it? And I——”
“Aw, shut up!” said the first roundsman, wearily. “Take him along, Joe.
Now, how d’you feel, Mr. Booth?”
“But I tell you——”
“You don’t tell me anything. You go. That’s all.”
“Oh, very well,” said Sergeant Gray cheerfully. “You’ll be sorry. That’s
all. Come on, Joe.” He raised his voice in song.
“Where do we go from here, Joe, where do we go from here?” he sang in a
very deep bass.