he said, "there's no need to get het up none. I know you Britishers hate to be thought inquisitive—'bad form,' ain't it!—but I didn't figure it thataway, not any. I'd forgot for a minute the difference 'tween—" He broke off and looked down at his sleeve, nodding to the stripes and then to the lieutenant's star. "An' if you don't mind I'll keep on forgetting it meantime. 'Twon't hurt discipline, seeing nobody's here anyway. Y' see," he went on, stooping to his work again, "I'm not used to military manners an' customs. A year ago if you'd told me I'd be a soldier, and in the British Army, I'd ha' thought you clean loco."
Courtenay laughed. "There's a good many in the same British Army can say the same as you," he said.
"I was in London when the flare-up came, an' bein' interested in business I didn't ball up my intellect with politics an' newspaper war talk. So a cable I had from the firm hit me wallop, an' plumb dazed me. It said, 'Try secure war contract. One hundred full-powered available now. Two hundred delivery within month.' Then I began to sit up an' take notice. Y' see, I'm in with a big firm of auto builders—mebbe you know 'em—Rawbon an' Spedding, the Rawbon bein' my dad? No? Well, anyhow, I got the contract, got it so quick it made my head swim. Gee, that fellow in the War Office was buyin' up autos like I'd buy pipe-lights. The hundred lorries was shipped over, an' I saw 'em safe through the specified tests an' handed 'em over. Same with the next two hundred, an' this"—tapping his toe on the floor—"is one of 'em right here."
"I see how the lorry got here," said Courtenay, hugely interested, "but I don't see how you've managed to be aboard. You and a suit of khaki and a sergeant's stripes weren't all in the contract, I suppose?"
"Nope," said the sergeant, "not in the written one, mebbe. But I took a fancy to seein' how the engines made out under war conditions, an' figured I might get some useful notes on it for the firm, so I fixed it to come right along."
"But how?" asked Courtenay—"if that's not a secret."
"Why, that guy in the testin' sheds was plump tickled when I told him my notion. He fixed it all, and me suddenly discoverin' I was mistook for a Canadian I just said 'M-m-m' when anybody asked me. I had to enlist though, to put the deal through, an' after that there wasn't trouble enough to clog the works of a lady's watch. But there was trouble enough at the other end. My dad fair riz up an' screeched cablegrams at me when I hinted at goin' to the Front. He made out it was on the business side he was kickin', with the attitude of the U-nited States toward the squabble thrown in as extra. Neutrals, he said we was, benevolent neutrals, an' he wasn't goin' to have a son o' his steppin' outside the ring-fence o' the U-nited States Constitution, to say nothing of mebbe losin' good business we'd been do in' with the Hoggheimers, an' Schmidt Brothers, an' Fritz Schneckluk, an' a heap more buyers o' his that would rear up an' rip-snort an' refuse to do another cent's worth of dealing with a firm that was sellin' 'em autos wi' one hand an' shootin' holes in their brothers and cousins and Kaisers wi' the other. I soothed the old man down by pointing out I was to go working these lorries, and the British Army don't shoot Germans with motor-lorries; and I'd be able to keep him posted in any weak points, if, and as, and when they developed, so he could keep ahead o' the crowd in improvements and hooking in more fat contracts; and lastly, that the Schmidt customer crowd didn't need to know a thing about me being here unless he was dub enough to tell 'em. So I signed on to serve King George an' his missus an' kids for ever an' ever, or duration of war, Amen, with a mental footnote, which last was the only part I mentioned in mailing my dad, that I was a Benevolent Neutral. An' here I am."
"Good egg," laughed Courtenay. "Hope you're liking the job."
"Waal, I'll amit I'm some disappointed, Loo-tenant," drawled the sergeant. "Y' see I did expect I'd have a look in at some of the fightin'. I'm no ragin' blood-drinker an' bone-buster by profession, up-bringin', or liking. But it does seem sorter poor play that a man should be plumb center of the biggest war in history an' never see a single solitary corpse. An' that's me. I been trailin' around with this convoy for months, and never got near enough to a shell burst to tell it from a kid's firework. It ain't in the program of this trench warfare to have motor transport under fire, and the program is bein' strictly attended to. It's some sight too, they tell me, when a good mix-up is goin' on up front. I've got a camera here that I bought special, thinking it would be fun later to show round my album in the States an' point out this man being skewered on a bayonet an' that one being disrupted by a bomb an' the next lot charging a trench. But will you believe me, Loo-tenant, I haven't as much as set eye or foot on the trenches. I did once take a run up on the captain's 'Douglas,' thinking I'd just have a walk around an' see the sights and get some snaps. But I might as well have tried to break into Heaven an' steal the choir's harps. I was turned back about ten ways I tried, and wound up by being arrested as a spy an' darn near gettin' shot. I got mad at last and I told some fellows, stuck all over with red tabs and cap-bands and armlets, that they could keep their old trenches, and I didn't believe they were worth looking at anyway."
Courtenay was laughing again. "I fancy I see the faces of the staff," he choked.
"Oh, they ante-d up all right later on," admitted the sergeant, "when they'd discovered this column and roped in my captain to identify me. One old leather-face, 'specially—they told me after he was a General—was as nice as pie, an' had me in an' fed me a fresh meat and canned asparagus lunch and near chuckled himself into a choking fit when I told him about dad, an' my being booked up as a Benevolent Neutral. He was so mighty pleasant that I told him I'd like to have my dad make him a present of as dandy an auto as rolls in France. I would have, too, but he simply wouldn't listen to me; told me he'd send it back freight if I did; and I had to believe him, though, it seemed unnatural. But they wouldn't let me go look at their blame trenches. I tried to get this General joker to pass me in, but he wouldn't fall for it. 'No, no,' he gurgles and splutters. 'A Benevolent Neutral in the trenches! Never do, never do. We'll have to put some new initials on the Mechanical Transport,' he says, 'B.N.M.T. Benevolent Neutral! I must tell Dallas of the Transport that.' And he shooed me off with that."
The sergeant had worked busily as he talked, and now, as he commenced to replace the repaired fork, he was thoughtfully silent a moment.
"I suppose there's some dandy sna-aps up in those trenches,
Loo-tenant?" he said at last.
"Oh, well, I dunno," said Courtenay. "Sort of thing you see in the picture papers, of course."
"Them!" said the sergeant contemptuously. "I could make better sna-aps posin' some of the transport crowd in these emergency trenches dug twenty miles back from the front. I mean real pictures of the real thing—fellows knee-deep in mud, and a shell lobbing in, and such like—real dandy snaps. It makes my mouth water to think of 'em. But I suppose I'll go through this darn war and never see enough to let me hold up my head when I get back home and they ask me what was the war really like and to tell 'em about the trenches. I could have made out if I'd even seen those blame trenches and got some good snaps of 'em."
Courtenay was moved to a rash compassion and a still more rash promise.
"Look here, sergeant," he said, "I'm dashed if I don't have a try to get you a look at the trenches. We go in again in two days and it might be managed."
* * * * *
Three days later Sergeant Rawbon, mounted on the motor-cycle which he had repaired and which had been sent over to him, found all his obstacles to the trenches melt and vanish before a couple of passes with which he was provided—one readily granted by his captain on hearing the reason for its request, and one signed by Second Lieutenant Courtenay to pass the bearer, Sergeant Rawbon, on his way to the headquarters of the 1st Footsloggers with motor-cycle belonging to that battalion. The last quarter mile of the run to the headquarters introduced Sergeant Rawbon to the sensation of being under fire, and, as he afterwards informed Courtenay, he did not find the sensation in any way pleasant.
