The Case of the Fighting Soldier: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  By the way, there was rather a peculiar happening one morning. I was off duty so I strolled round for a breather. The regular Sappers were due the following day to recover that unexploded bomb, and I made my way in that direction. It was bad walking country, and what with the rocks and undergrowth and red flags everywhere.

  I soon decided it was no spot for a constitutional. Then as I was turning back I caught a movement. Someone was well ahead of me and searching for that bomb, and who should that someone be but old Collect!

  Why should I be so startled? Well, there was a tubby, academic cove like Collect grubbing about in country where at any moment some contact with that twenty-pound bomb might send him sky-high, and if he was not looking for the bomb, then what on earth was he doing there? Moreover, he must have known himself to be doing something suspicious, for no sooner did he catch sight of me than he was out of sight like a shot, for there was plenty of handy cover for concealment, let alone pockets of dead ground.

  As for Collect’s reasons for loathing Mortar, there was of course a very deep jealousy of the success of the man as a lecturer and his popularity with the Course and general staff. Collect had no use for me, if it comes to that, even if he covered that particular jealousy by effusiveness. And he had never forgiven that loss of his own lecture on Scoutcraft, and the plain speaking there had been at the particular conference which sat in judgment on it. Collect, I knew, was a bad hater, and when I came to theorise to myself I thought he was trying to locate the bomb so as in some way to discredit either Mortar or Ferris, even if Brende had been responsible for aiming and firing the bombard.

  I said that Flick was at first one of the Not-so-Regular gang. That lasted for about a week, and then he transferred to the other camp. One night I was taking my usual ten minutes’ stroll before turning in, when I barged almost full into a couple strolling towards the hospital. I sheered off at once, but I knew that one of the promenaders was Nurse Wilton, and the other I guessed was Flick. Then, as I came to the door of my room, I actually saw Flick, for he came round my end of the hut to get to his own room at the north end.

  The following evening I was doing some writing in the Mess. I had gone in as usual to finish a job just before dinner, and when I came out to the bar, Ferris and Mortar were having a drink. I gathered that as far as Mortar was concerned it was one of a series, for he was carrying almost his full load.

  The wireless was in full blast just inside the room. It was a new set and we had asked to have it there so that we could listen to the news.

  “Turn the damn’ thing off, Major, will you?” Mortar said airily. “You can’t hear your ruddy self speak.”

  It was a bit raucous, for a noisy variety show was on.

  “If there’s one thing I loathe it’s the B.B.C. comedians trying to be Irish,” Ferris said. “How a regular boy-o like Flick can stand it beats me.”

  “You’ve got a bit of an Irish accent at times,” I said, and so he had, though it was only when he was excited that I had thought I recognised it.

  He looked surprised and even startled. Then he smiled. “Sure I have,” he said, and with none too good a try at the real thing. “Plenty of Irishmen in Spain, weren’t there, old-timer?”

  Mortar nodded, being engaged at the time in finishing his drink.

  “I generally worked with the Irish in my Brigade,” Ferris said.

  “Good at a scrap—the Irish,” Mortar said.

  “My God, yes,” Ferris said, and gave a reminiscent kind of nod.

  “What you might call fighting soldiers,” I added maliciously.

  Ferris grinned a bit sheepishly, then asked me to have a drink. I did a glance round. “Well, seeing we’re in good company, I don’t know that I won’t,” I said.

  Ferris ordered three drinks, then changed his mind and made it two.

  “None for you, old-timer,” he told Mortar. “What about that job of work you had to do?”

  “My God, yes!” said Mortar. He lifted his glass to make sure there was definitely nothing more in it, gave me a cheerful and rather tottery salute, and went off.

  “Where’s Flick?” I asked. “Isn’t he a regular caller at about this time?”

  Ferris shrugged his shoulders.

  “Come on,” I said. “Out with it. What’s in the wind now?”

  Ferris frowned with a kind of secrecy. “I rather think Mortar’s pinched Flick’s girl.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Mortar’s a bit of a lady’s man,” Ferris went on. “He had a narrow escape from a rather peeved husband in Spain.”

  I had to frown. “Why don’t you keep him a bit more in check? Never knew such a pair as you are for stirring up trouble. Well, not you,” I added, at the surprise in his face. “And look at things from the lady’s point of view. These things get around and her name oughtn’t to be bandied about. She’s here on a serious job, not for fooling around with members of the staff.”

  “I think you’ve got the wrong angle, sir,” Ferris told me, and rather amusedly. “It’s the lady who’s a bit flighty.”

  “The devil she is!” I said ruefully, and then had to bolt the rest of my drink, for there was the sound of the second bugle. I was not too pleased with myself either, as I made my way to the dining hut. I ought to have known that, since the man I saw with Nurse Wilton wasn’t Flick, then it must have been Mortar, for the two were exactly alike in build.

  Beneath the surface, then, there was an atmosphere of strain that made the communal life of the staff more than uncomfortable for a lover of peace like myself. By the end of the first week it had become more than a perceptible undercurrent. For one thing, the seats at the high table had been rearranged. Staff had sat at first alongside Ferris, but suddenly they were changed till, as you looked along the table from left to right, they ran—Ferris, Compress, Mortar, Travers, Topman, Collect, Harness, Flick, and Staff. Flick must have been responsible for the changes, in his capacity of Messing Officer, but undoubtedly Collect had also had a hand in it. Baulked of his supposed prize of the appointment of second-in-command, he had transferred his interference to Flick’s department, and Flick, I had gathered, was only too willing for the Reverend—as Mortar and Ferris aptly nicknamed him—to get on with the job.

  Then there were all sorts of furtive whisperings and nods and undoubted intrigues. Staff was clinging to Collect’s cassock, and I became aware of surreptitious visits and approaches to the Colonel. Altogether, as I said, there was little communal life that wasn’t sham, and for the life of me I couldn’t see how to remedy matters. What I actually began to hope was that there might be a real explosion of some sort, which would give me the chance to do some plain speaking, and somehow get the air a bit clear. Then something did happen. The Colonel asked me one night after dinner to come to his room.

  “Make yourself comfortable, Travers,” he said, and that wasn’t difficult, for there were a couple of easy-chairs in the room, and a better electric stove than most. I was not particularly keen on a drink, but he was having a whisky and soda so I had one, too. Then we talked about the Russians and the ups and downs of the war, and all the time I was wondering when he was coming to the real point, and what that point was.

  “And how do you think things are going here?” he asked at last.

  I told him I thought they were going magnificently. The Course was keen as mustard, and the way they marched off the parade ground that morning would have made a regular battalion envious.

  “Yes, yes,” he said, just a bit impatiently and as if he had expected me to give him an opening. Then he took a positive header, and before I was hardly ready.

  “What’s your opinion of Captain Mortar?”

  “Captain Mortar, sir?” I echoed rather feebly. “Well, I think he’s a first-class man and an asset to the school. Mind you, sir, I know he has his faults.”

  “Ah!” went the Colonel, and I knew he had what he wanted. From then on I knew, too, though the voice was of the commandant, the words were t
he words of Collect.

  “That’s something I wanted to talk over with you in confidence,” he went on. “You’re the sort of fellow who gives everybody credit. Don’t deny it, Travers. I know, and it’s a fine spirit to have. All the same, we’ve got to think of wider—er—implications. My own information, and my own ideas, of course, are that Captain Mortar is having not so good an influence as you’d think.” He cleared his throat noisily, then produced the bombshell. “In fact, I don’t know that I’m not of the opinion that we oughtn’t to get him transferred.”

  I did some quick and hard thinking. “Suppose such action struck you as essential, sir, wouldn’t it be difficult? Doesn’t Mortar hold an appointment direct from War Office? I mean, there’d have to be a confidential report. Later on he’d have to see it, and he’d have the right of appeal.”

  “I know, I know,” he told me impatiently. “I thought you were pretty astute, and you might suggest a way round.”

  Now if there’s one thing that can get my back up, it’s to be called astute.

  “There’s the regulations, sir,” I said laconically, and brought the subject nearer home. “But do you mind telling me the precise charges against Captain Mortar? The charges that would form the basis of your confidential report?”

  That had him. Mortar was a heavy drinker, he said, and it wasn’t thinkable that he should be obviously under the influence of drink at the high table where the whole Course could see him. I said I thought that a slight exaggeration, and that what mattered was that Mortar was always cold sober when about the jobs that mattered. Then the Colonel said Mortar was cantankerous, and lacking in discipline.

  “His manner’s always perfect towards me,” I said.

  “I mean general discipline,” he said, and snorted. “What’s the man been these last few years? Nothing but a kind of pirate. There’s that man of his too—Feeder. He’s here in defiance of regulations. A horrible fellow, and looks like a savage.”

  “His ribbons show a first-class fighting record,” I pointed out.

  “What are those other two ribbons he wears?”

  “One’s the Croix de Guerre—I admit it’s a bit dirty and I believe the other’s a French decoration too. Something to do with the Foreign Legion.”

  “Ah!” said the Colonel. “Has he permission to wear it?”

  “That’s a matter for Harness, sir,” I pointed out.

  “Exactly, exactly,” he said, and frowned. “The trouble about the whole thing is that I think Mortar has influence.”

  “Of what sort, sir?”

  “Well, between ourselves, Government influence. This Labour element, you know. Lacking in discipline, and full of intrigue.”

  What could one say to a man like that? A war on, and his rule of measurement was still the dear old Conservative Party. I did make some further protests, and, in fact, I think I induced him to refrain from all action till after the completion of the first two Courses. If the faults of Mortar became more heinous, then by that time there might be an unanswerable case to put forward, influence or no influence. If Mortar could be cured of some of his faults then the situation would not arise.

  But the whole business infuriated me. That the Colonel had been nobbled, there was no doubt. There he was, professing to have nothing at heart but the success of the school, and yet lending himself to subterranean intrigues. One could make excuses, but it was still a bad business. The way I ended the whole thing was by suggesting that I might have a word with Feeder, after a brief inquiry into the eccentricities that were apparently making him, according to the Colonel, as notorious as his master.

  The Colonel and I parted the best of friends, at least on the surface. He told me he had been and was still very worried because the Sappers had not found that bomb. He had written a snorter of a letter about it and insisted on a larger search-party. I agreed that it was certainly disconcerting to have that bomb somewhere around, and did venture to point out that it wasn’t a danger.

  The following morning, which was a Saturday, Mortar was lecturing, so I made my way to his room, where I knew Feeder was having the usual clean out. Who should be there but Ferris, sitting at his ease and yarning with Feeder while he worked. I gave a private signal for Ferris to clear off.

  “Mr. Ferris is a rare nice gentleman,” Feeder told me. “Him and me often have a yarn about old times.”

  “You were in Spain?” I asked.

  “In Spain!” He snorted contemptuously. “Was I bloody well not! The Captain and me have been together since ’19.”

  It was an interesting story he told me. He had been down and out and had tried singing from street to street. Mortar had come up and questioned him and had then taken him straight into his employ, and the two had been together ever since, except for a spell of five years, when Feeder himself had got fed up with the absence of a fighting job and had joined the Foreign Legion after a first-rate row with Mortar. Mortar had bought him out again, for the express purpose of taking him to Spain. His fifth ribbon, he told me, was a French Colonial one, and, in his own words, “For something I and another couple of blokes done after some of our gang had been scuppered out at El Aglish.” It was dirty, as was the Croix de Guerre, because he kept those two original pieces of ribbon as souvenirs.

  I think he rather liked me, for he allowed me to talk to him like a father, though doubtless he had his tongue well in his cheek. I liked him too, even if his free and easy discipline was somewhat disconcerting, for once he actually addressed me as “chum,” and he more than once assured me that the Captain thought a lot of me.

  Well, that was that. I hadn’t done all I had outlined to the Colonel, but I hoped I had put oil and not sand in the general works. Mortar said to me later in the day, “I hear you’ve been doing a bit of spit and polish with Feeder, sir. That’ll do the swine good.” I knew the term was one of affection, and I could deduce that between master and man there were precious few secrets.

  And now you know as much as I do about all those things which were later discovered to be essential clues. On the following Monday was to be the first of the queer accidents that culminated in the appalling tragedy.

  Chapter V

  I was on duty on the Monday morning, and at ten-thirty hours I made my way to the ranges where firing was to take place. By the way, this seems a good moment to set some settled policy about the use of the Army twenty-four hour clock. From now on, then, we shall use the time as used at the school, and it isn’t so difficult to get accustomed to recognising, say, eighteen hours as being six o’clock in the early evening.

  Firing was actually to take place at eleven hours, and was to be with the rifle and the Northover each firing Mills bombs. Mortar and Ferris and Brende each took a third of the students for the actual firing of the rifles, and then the whole Course gathered round while Mortar fired the Northover projector. They made a crescent, standing a good forty yards back, for, as Mortar and others had already explained, there was just the faint danger of an accident.

  For the benefit of those who are not acquainted with the most famous of all bombs—the Mills—let me give a brief description, and then you will appreciate what Mortar meant when he assured the spectators that an accident was an improbable thing. Once more I must pause to do a little explaining. No official secrets are being given away to the Germans by calling the Mills by its correct name or by printing this diagram. They must have captured many thousands of them in the last war, and they know as much about the Mills as we do.

  A Mills bomb is roughly the shape and size of a good lemon. Inside is the high explosive, and a detonator with a fuse attachéd. The fuse, which may be a four seconds’ one, is set off by the action of the striking hammer, and this is held in place by a lever which retains the spring. The lever arm is outside the bomb and kept secure by a pin. When your fingers close round the bomb, and therefore round the lever, the lever is held in place even if you pull out the pin. When you throw the bomb, the lever flies up, the spring is released, down goe
s the hammer, the fuse begins to burn, and in four seconds the bomb explodes.

  Now it so happens that the barrel of the Northover is just large enough to admit the Mills bomb, so that you can fire a Mills from it by exactly the same method as the phosphorus bottle. But the point I wish to make clear is that when you put the Mills in the barrel, with the pin out, the lever cannot move since the bomb nestles in comfortably. When you put in the charge and fire, if some obstacle in the barrel stops the bomb from coming out, there can’t be an accident, for until the bomb actually leaves the barrel, the lever can’t spring off.

  But suppose the obstacle in the barrel, and it may be some slight roughness, is sufficient to check the speed of the bomb after the firing of the charge but still not enough to stop it emerging from the barrel, then it is clear that the bomb may fall anywhere between the end of the barrel and the target it should have reached. If the obstacle has been rather serious, then the bomb may fall only a foot or so away from the front of the projector. In that case the gun crew have four seconds, or just under, in which to spring back and drop flat.

  Mortar was acting as second man, that is to say, he was aiming and firing the projector, and a sergeant of the general staff was his number three, or loader. Number one was unnecessary, for his job is to look out for targets and warn of enemy approach. We all stood with our eyes on the target at which Mortar was firing, for we were familiar with the working of the simple mechanism, and in any case Mortar’s bulk hid the front of the projector.

  The breach slammed to, the cap was put on, Mortar crouched and almost at once there was the plop! of the cordite charge. But no Mills came hurtling out. Two seconds must have passed in the wonder of what had happened, then came the roar of Mortar’s voice.