Mary Roberts Rinehart

“ From the berth over him a corporal swung down two long bare legs and sat on the edge, yawning. Then somebody looked at a watch. There would have been a small riot, but the men were too sleepy and too relieved. They tumbled back, and Sergeant Gray lay on his pillow and grinned vindictively.
He did not go to sleep at once. He lay there and thought of his wager, and cursed himself for a fool. Then he dismissed that and thought of his twenty-three and a half hours’ leave. If only there were a girl—a nice girl. He did not want the sort of girl a fellow picked up in the streets. ”

“ There are only two things to be done when a general is angry: One is to get behind the furniture and pretend one is not there; the other is to distract his mind. The general’s ire growing and the car remaining in the tunnel, an aide whom the general called Tommy when no one was near ventured to speak. ”

“ They must get hungry for girls, nice girls.
So now she chattered and she drew from the tall boy beside her something about himself. It was not particularly hard to do. Sergeant Gray opened up like a flower in the sun. He explained, for instance, that he was to have a commission when he was twenty-one.
“Unless,” he admitted, “I’m in too bad with the Old Man.”
“The Old Man?”
“The general,” explained Sergeant Gray, unaware that the young lady was sitting very straight. “He’s hell—he’s strong for discipline, and all that. And—well, every now and then I slip up on something, and he gets me. ”

“ 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.”
59“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. ”

“ Sergeant Gray, who in his leisure hours practiced running a motorcycle with the side car in the air, paid her tribute of approval.
“We’ll be over soon,” he said with a touch of pride.
37“You’d better not tell anybody that.”
“Why? I rather think our being here tells the story.”
“Well, a lot of people would like to know just when you’re going. They hang round the men and offer them rides in cars, and the men get to talking, and pretty soon they’ve told all they know.” ”

“ Or:
“But, my dear general, the weakness of the division lies in your staff. Now, if I were doing it——”
By one o’clock in the afternoon the troop were ready to move. And Sergeant Gray went into the town. There he tried on a new uniform—and the story of Sergeant Gray’s new uniform is the story of the bran muffins.
It was really a beautiful uniform. Almost it took away the sting of that telegram; almost it obliterated the memory of the wager. It spread over his broad shoulders and hugged his slim waist. The breeches were full above and close below. For the first time he felt every inch a soldier. ”

“ The aide laughed also. Aides always laugh when the general does. It is etiquette. When the general had stopped laughing he became very military again, and swore.
“We’ll look into it, Tommy,” he said. “It’s a damned shame. Somebody’s going to pay for it through the nose.”
This is a little-used phrase, but the general had read it somewhere and adopted it. It means copiously.
He was not aware, naturally, that Sergeant Gray was already paying for it, copiously.
It was at that precise moment that a little car drew up outside his quarters. The general smiled and rolled himself a cigarette. ”

“ Sergeant Gray saluted and went away. To all appearances he was a rather overgrown young man trudging through the mud of a not too-tidy camp to a barracks that needed carbolising. Actually he was a sublimated being favoured of heaven and floating in a rosy cloud of dreams.
“Halt!” said a guard, and threw his rifle to port arms. “Who’s there?”
“Sergeant of the Headquarters Troop,” said the superman.
“Where’s your pass?”
The superman presented it, and the guard inspected it closely—the attitude of the M. P. being 43that all men are Germans unless proved otherwise. ”

“ If they chose to arrest a man for a thing he couldn’t help let them do it. He didn’t absolutely know what was in the order and if he could sit in the bull pen the troop could sit in its underwear. It was nothing whatever to him.
He grinned malevolently, however, when he saw the captain and the two lieutenants of the troop leaving camp in a machine in the direction of the city.
“All right,” he said to himself. “We’ll see something later, that’s all. The old boy will be crazy about this.”
The old boy being the general.
In the barracks black despair was in Sergeant Gray’s heart. ”

“ At ten forty-five a scout patrol in slickers having been sent out reported the supply sergeant not in the camp quartermaster’s office, as observed through a window, and the troop officers as having gone for the day.
Black despair, then, in a hundred and ninety-five hearts, but in no one of them such agony as in Sergeant Gray’s. Clad in an army slicker he made a dozen abortive attempts to borrow a uniform from tall men in other companies, but inspection was on, and had commenced with the Headquarters Troop. Not a man dared to be found with less than “breeches, O. D. wool, prs., two.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the light from a street lamp she had caught her first real glimpse of his face.
“Wherever did you get that eye?” she demanded.
“Fighting,” he said shortly. “We had a roughhouse at the barracks last night.”
“I should think you were going to have enough trouble soon without getting beaten up like that,” she said with a touch of severity. “Well, are you going to get in?” ”

“ On the last night in camp, at a pine table in a tiny office cut off from the lower squad room, Sergeant Gray made the above record against his own fair name, and sitting back surveyed it grimly. It was two A. M. Across from him the second mess sergeant was dealing in cans and pounds and swearing about a missing cleaver.
“Did you ever think,” reflected Sergeant Gray, leaning back in his chair and tastefully drawing a girl’s face on his left thumb-nail, “that the time would come when you’d be planning bran 9muffins for the Old Man’s breakfast? What’s a bran muffin, anyhow?”
“Horse feed.” ”

“ He had eaten three fried eggs, some fried potatoes, a bran muffin, drunk a cup of coffee, and was trying to remember if he had made any indiscreet remarks at a dinner party the night before about Pershing or the General Staff, when an aide came in with a report. The general read it slowly, then looked up.
“You mean to say,” he inquired, “that those fellows haven’t had any clothes since yesterday morning?” ”

“ 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 56all the boys I can to the street car. But after we had talked I felt you would understand. ”

“ Then he closed his eyes again and went peacefully to sleep. He dreamed that the general was carrying a plate of bran muffins to his bedside, 12and behind him was a pretty girl with coffee and an ear like an interrogation point. He wakened to find breakfast over and the cook in a bad temper.
“Be a sport, Watt,” he pleaded. “Just a cup of coffee, anyhow.”
“I fed your dog for you. That’s all you get.”
“I can’t eat the dog.”
“Go on out,” said the cook. “This ain’t the Waldorf-Astoria. Nor Childs’ neither.”
“Some day, on the field of honor,” said Sergeant Gray, “you will lie wounded, Watt. ”

“ He had put all his eggs in one basket and the basket had been stolen.
“Lucky I’m not dependent on eggs for food!” he mused and, mistaking the hand in which he held the doughnut, bit vigorously into his cigarette.
Nevertheless his spirits grew lower as the day went on. It had occurred to him that all the fellows he had counted on for sisters would be in the Army, like himself. He cut off girls from his list, on that discovery; but food and theatres remained. He reflected rather defiantly that he could have a good time without girls ”

“ For heaven’s sake, fellows, not on the street! I tell you I’ve got a girl with me. A nice girl. A——”
64The 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And he whistled blithely while laying out his things for the official inspection, comparing his belongings carefully with a list in his hand. Nothing was to 46go wrong that day, nothing mar the perfection of it or curtail his leave. ”

“ Look here,” he added, “your name’s not Joe, by any chance?”
86“You know my name,” said the M. P. sourly.
“Sorry,” reflected the sergeant. “Don’t mind if I call you Joe, do you? Always like the men who arrest me to be called Joe. It’s lucky.”
He stopped and looked back; the little car was almost out of sight.
“All right, Joe, old top!” he said blithely. And he sang in a deep bass
“Where do we go from here, boys? ”

“ The aide subsided. But somewhat later, when the car had moved on and the general was smoking 22an excellent cigar, the general said: “What was the wager, Tommy?”
“I believe, sir, it is to the effect that within a month this fellow will breakfast with you, sir. To be exact, will eat a bran muffin with you.”
The general exhaled a large mouthful of smoke.
“C’est la guerre!” he said. He had been studying French for two weeks. “C’est la guerre, Tommy. Queer things happen these days. But I think it unlikely. Very, very unlikely.”
23 II Sergeant Gray was extremely contented. ”

“ But he failed to count the camp quartermaster; and that Destiny, which had taken him in hand forty-eight hours ago, was making of him her toy.
Now camp quartermasters are but human. They have their good days and their bad, and sometimes it rather gets on their nerves, the eternal examining and determining, for instance, that every man of perhaps thirty thousand possesses in perfect condition:
2 breeches, O. D. wool, prs. 2 coats, O. D. wool. 1 overcoat, O. D. wool. 1 slicker. 1 hat. ”

“ He had been made stable sergeant because he had been a motorcycle racer. By the same process of careful selection the chief mechanic had once kept a livery stable.
8The barracks hummed day and night. By day boxes were packed, containing the military equipment of horses and men in wartime. By night tired noncoms pored over pay rolls and lists, and wrote, between naps on the table, such thrilling literature as this:
“Sergeant Gray: fr. D. to Awol. 10 A. M., 6–1–’18.
“Sergeant Gray: fr. Awol. to arrest, pp. 2. Memo. Hdq. Camp 6–1–’18 to 6–2–’18.” ”