The Case of the Fighting Soldier: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  At the end of the talk the same major rose and expressed the gratitude of the Course. There was not a man, he said, who would not think of Peakridge with the same affection, because, as far as the acquiring of vital knowledge was concerned, it had been both father and mother. Then three cheers were given for the staff, and a minute later there was a wild scramble of students to get to their huts and the transport that would take them to the station.

  It was curious at lunch that day, with only the staff in solitary state at the high table; far worse, indeed, than one’s own house after guests have gone away. Mortar was not there, and as we came out to the parade ground I asked Ferris what had happened to him.

  “He’s got a binge on,” he said. “It’s his birthday.”

  “It’s a real birthday,” he said as he caught my look. Some of the students, it appeared, had come to Peakridge by car and so were independent of the train. Mortar was meeting a gang of them at the Greyhound, where they had ordered a special lunch. He had promised to be back by fifteen hours at the latest.

  “You be a good fellow,” I said, “and keep an eye on him when he does get back. If he’s under the weather, keep him out of the Colonel’s way, and other people’s.”

  “I’ll see to that, sir,” he said. “I’ll be on the look-out for him and I’ll get him to work in my room where I can keep an eye on him.”

  I worked on steadily that afternoon and had my batman bring me tea. Just before eighteen hours I felt the need of a breather, so I walked as far as the lecture-room. A new batch of German and other films had arrived, and I had had an idea that Flick was running them through. But Flick was not there, and one of his trainees told me he was not running the new films off till after dinner. He had become something of an expert himself, so he ran one short one through for my benefit. The whole batch, he said, would take about two hours, so something would be going on if I looked in at any time between twenty and twenty-two hours.

  I had a cold bath and a change to clear away my feeling of frowstiness, and went to the Mess for a quick one. Only Harness was there, and we yarned till the bugle went. Neither Mortar nor Ferris was at table, and Staff told me, with something of a thin little sneer, that they were working in Ferris’s room. His own share of the work was finished, he said, and he hinted that mutton-fisted fighting men were none too good when it came to administrative work.

  It was a gloomy meal, with the huge room full of echoes in its emptiness, and I was glad when it was over. Half an hour later my share of the clerical work was completed and deposited in Harness’s office.

  “And now if I stay in my room,” I told myself, “it’s ten to one on someone fetching me to the Colonel to give him a hand. I know what I’ll do. I mayn’t get time in the morning, so I’ll dig myself in in the writing-room and get off my letter to Bernice.”

  I was still feeling somewhat jaded, so I got Shorty, the resident barman, to mix me a long tonic, and with the door to the bar closed behind me, I settled down on my job. It was at twenty hours forty-five that I actually finished the long letter—I am an uxorious sort of cove in the best sense, of course—and I remember glancing at my wrist-watch as I fixed the stamp on. Just then I became aware that the dim voices I had just heard in the bar were becoming more loud, and even obstreperous. Then there was a tap at the door and it opened. Ferris nipped in.

  “Shorty, you’ve got to have a drink.”

  “Sorry, sir, but it’s against orders.”

  “Come on, Shorty, be a sport. It’s my birthday—”

  That was what I heard as Ferris opened the door and nipped through. The voice, of course, was Mortar’s, and had a thickness which I have not tried to convey.

  “Will you come in a minute, sir?” Ferris said urgently. “He’s tight as a lord and I can’t make him go to his room.”

  I gave a sigh as I got to my feet. Mortar was still leaning against the bar maintaining the same maudlin, repetitive arguments with Shorty. Tucked under his left arm was the little white kitten.

  “Here’s Major Travers,” Shorty said warningly.

  “Ah! the Major,” Mortar said, with a somewhat incoherent enthusiasm. I frowned at Shorty, who sheered off from behind the tiny bar.

  “I’m talking to you straight, and officially,” I said to Mortar as I grasped his arm, and Ferris gently removed the kitten. “You apparently haven’t sense enough to be your own friend, so I’ll be a friend to you. Into your room you go, and stay there. Get that? If not I’ll have you up before the Colonel in the morning as sure as my name’s Travers.”

  He glared at me, snapped his eyes, then swayed back. Ferris had him by the other arm.

  “That’s a sensible chap,” I said soothingly, while we steered him towards the door. “If the Colonel or anyone saw you like this, there’d be hell to pay.”

  It was a cold night, and clear, though there was no moon. Mortar’s legs gave way as the air struck him, but we got him along. As we drew him warily to the shadow of the long hut, Ferris gave a sudden ‘Sh!’ and we halted.

  “Flick!” whispered Ferris. “What the devil’s he doing there?”

  I strained my eyes to see what was happening, then Ferris gave a sigh of relief. “All right, sir. He’s gone now. A narrow squeak, that.”

  We came to the door of Mortar’s room.

  “Better get him in before we turn on the light,” Ferris said.

  So we got him in, switched on the light, and saw the black-out was in order. Mortar had flopped down in the easy-chair just inside the door.

  “How’re you feeling?” Ferris whispered.

  “Bloody awful,” Mortar told him drearily.

  “Shall we put you to bed?”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “You’ll give me your word you won’t leave this room again to-night?” I asked him bluntly. He was smelling like a brewery on wheels.

  He smiled. “You’re a good old sport, Major—”

  “You answer my question,” I told him. “You won’t leave this room again to-night?”

  “I’ll be all right,” he said. “Good chap, Ferris. Good sort is old Ferry.”

  Ferris had been undoing his shoes, and now he was tying the laces in intricate knots. If Mortar wanted to put those shoes on again, he’d have the devil of a job.

  “Going to bed now,” Mortar drawled sleepily. “One little thing to do and then going beddy-byes.”

  Ferris glanced at me and I nodded. “Cheerio, old-timer. Mind you sleep,” he said.

  “Don’t forget you’ve given me your word,” I added, and out we went. Very gently Ferris turned the key in the door, and there was a good job done.

  “You keep the key,” I told Ferris.

  “I thought I’d slip back in a few minutes and turn off the light,” he said. “He’ll be bound to leave it on and someone might see a crack.”

  We had been moving in the direction of the Mess, and for a long minute neither of us spoke.

  “I left my letter behind,” I said at last. “Where are you bound for?”

  “I’d better see Shorty,” he said. “He’s got to keep his mouth shut about all this. Perhaps you’d like a word with him, too, Major.”

  I suddenly went hot and cold all over at the thought of the news flying round that I had helped put Captain Mortar to bed. The Colonel would be furious, and naturally enough, at my failure to report the matter.

  “I think I will have a word,” I said.

  But I was never to have that word, at least as I was planning. What happened I can’t quite say, but just as the last word left my lips, there was the most shattering roar I have ever heard in my life, and I have been fairly close to a bomb or two in my time. In the same split second I was on my back, and my head got the devil of a crack. My ear-drums seemed to burst, and then as I snapped my eyes and began trying to get up, something crashed on the roof of the Mess behind me. Then in front of me, where there had been darkness, flames began to curl, and as I began struggling to my feet again, I saw that wher
e Mortar’s room had been was a queer sort of nothing. Nothing, that is, except the mounting flames.

  Chapter VI

  A dozen things were happening at once. Only the tricks of a cinema camera could give you the faintest idea, with split-second changes and super-exposures, and a wild whirling of this and that. You must bear with me if I fail to convey the impression of speed and confusion, and also I want you to get certain happenings clearly in your mind.

  The reason why I was not able to get up at once was that a length of weather-boarding, blown from the hut by the terrific explosion, had fallen across my middle. As I did struggle to my feet, I heard Ferris, but as if at a far distance, for my ears were humming. As a matter of fact he was actually standing over me.

  “My God! What’s happened? You all right, sir?”

  “I’m all right,” I began, and then he was suddenly gone. The mounting flames made a fine light, and I saw him hold his arm before his face to protect it from the heat, and then he disappeared round the north end of the burning hut. In the same moment, as I moved off that way myself, I was aware that the camp was astir. Distant voices were nearing, and were becoming shouts.

  As I came round in the comparative darkness by the north end, Staff was suddenly on me.

  “It’s you, sir,” he said excitedly, and as if he’d been looking for someone else. “Do you know what’s happened, sir?”

  I shook my head and hurried on. It was queer that I should have noticed that he was wearing a gun, but the light caught the butt of the Colt where it protruded from the holster.

  Once round the corner I could see clearly to well beyond the hospital. But everything was still confused, with sparks flying from the burning building, and the heat already so intense that I had to shield my head as I circled warily round. I could hear the Colonel shouting orders. Men were removing furniture from the undamaged rooms, and then suddenly I heard the hiss as the first of the hoses got to work, and the water sizzled on the flames.

  “Come out of that, sir!”

  There was a shout on my left, and I could see Ferris and Brende struggling within a few yards of the flames. Ferris had evidently determined to get into that flaming room to see if Mortar were still alive, which was about as mad a thing as could ever enter a man’s brain, for I could see now that nothing was left of Mortar’s room but the floor. Compress came running over, and he and Brende dragged Ferris back. I didn’t see what happened then because a swirl of smoke and sparks came my way, and I sheered off to where the Colonel had been. There was no sign of him when I got there, and then I heard him shouting for the hoses to be played on the unharmed rooms.

  As the smoke cleared again I could see that Staff’s room was well alight, as was Ferris’s, but that Flick’s and Collect’s were practically intact, though windows had been shattered. I think it was just at that moment that I realised what had happened, and a cold sweat was all at once on my forehead. That terrific explosion must have killed Mortar before he had known a thing, and it had probably blown him to smithereens. Curious, wasn’t it, that I should stand there and be regarding the whole thing so impersonally, but even at that moment, with Mortar’s room virtually gone, everything seemed so unreal. Then as I stood there, suddenly shivering in the cold wind, I saw everything in a different way. Mortar was dead. Mortar, and I had seen him and talked to him only a few minutes before. Mortar dead! It was incredible somehow, and all at once I found myself polishing my glasses and blinking away at the flames and the darkness beyond.

  “That you, Travers?”

  The Colonel was dashing up, and Collect puffing at his heels. Compress appeared and the Colonel was on him like a flash.

  “You’re sure there was nobody in his room?”

  “Pretty sure, sir,” Compress said. “Mortar wasn’t likely to go to bed at nine o’clock.”

  Another cold perspiration came over my forehead. The singing in my ears had almost gone, but my voice sounded queer to me as I spoke.

  “Were you asking about Captain Mortar, sir?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “I’m afraid he was in his room, sir.”

  “My God! You sure, Travers?”

  “Dead sure, sir. I happened to see him in the Mess and he’d had just about as many drinks as he could carry. It was his birthday—”

  “Get on with it, man!”

  “Well, Mr. Ferris and I induced him to go to his room, and so that he shouldn’t get out to the Mess again, I saw the door locked and Mr. Ferris took the key.”

  “Why’d he do that?”

  I explained, and somewhat tersely. The Colonel is one of those annoying people who are always wise after an event. He could always inform you afterwards what you should have done, and he would do it with an air of conveying that that was what he would have done in the same circumstances.

  “If I had left the key and told him not to leave the room, I’d no guarantee he’d have obeyed me,” I said. “If you’re suggesting, sir, that he’d have still been alive, I say most emphatically that the force of the explosion must have killed him at once. It blew me off my feet and I was near the Mess.”

  “No point in argument,” the Colonel told me testily.

  “One fact does remain,” Collect put in suavely. “Undoubtedly he had explosives in his room, and he was doing something with them. It’s possible that he knew there was going to be an explosion, but he couldn’t get out of the door.”

  “Are you suggesting I was responsible for his death?” I asked him quietly, but I was taking a step or two nearer. “Not at all. Not at all.”

  “Then stop chattering,” I told him angrily. “There’ll be a time for talking and you can do it then.”

  “That will do, gentlemen,” the Colonel said, and stepped in between us. “Things are bad enough as they are, without all this argument and—and talk.”

  Then, happily, Nurse Wilton’s voice was heard and we could see her coming across.

  “Get her away, Compress,” the Colonel snapped. “Tell her to go to her office and be ready to treat any men who get burnt. Collect, you tell those men to put everything back again in the rooms. The fire’s practically over.” It was practically over, and I was suddenly aware of the gloom and depression now the light from the flames had gone. Somehow I couldn’t help thinking of the difference there would have been if it had been Collect, say, who had died in that gap between the blackened, sodden wrecks of rooms that flanked the space where Mortar’s room had been. “Poor old Collect,” it would have been, and, “How terrible!” and all the rest of it. But it was Mortar who had died, and not Collect, and neither the Colonel nor a soul had uttered a single expression of what one calls grief. Then as I looked round I saw the Colonel had moved away again, so I moved off too.

  Round the north end of the hut I came on Ferris, at least I had to stoop to make sure it was he, for he was sitting on a box or something that had been left there, elbows on knees and head in his hands.

  “Feeling a bit knocked over?” I asked him gently.

  “Just a bit, sir,” he said, and got to his feet. He shook his head as if to rouse himself, and then he was coming quite close to me. “What killed him, sir?”

  It was my turn to do the head shaking. “God knows,” I said. “But most undoubtedly he had some explosives in his room and he was fooling around with them after we’d gone.”

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “Do you remember what he said to us? He said he had something to do first and then he was going to bed.”

  “That’s right,” I said, and I saw the room as clearly as if I was still in it. Mortar lolling in that low chair and making as if to rise. “One little thing to do and then going beddy-byes.” Behind his back Ferris had been gently removing the key from the lock.

  “Feeder will tell us, sir,” Ferris was saying. “I bet he knew everything that was in that room. He’ll know if Mortar had any explosives there.”

  “Where is Feeder?” I said. “I’ve forgotten all about him. Why hasn’t he turned u
p here?”

  “I got him out of the way,” Ferris said. “Mortar had promised him a half-day in the town to celebrate the birthday, and then when Mortar came back from that lunch he told Feeder to stay, after all. I knew he’d be working in his room and probably having Feeder bring him relays of drinks, so I got him to change his mind again, and made him come to my room instead.”

  “I remember now,” I said. “And very wise of you it was. Still, as soon as Feeder gets back he’ll have to be questioned.”

  Then Ferris was shaking his head in a queer way, and I saw his lip droop.

  “I don’t think we’ll get much from Feeder.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, nothing, sir,” he told me. “All I was thinking was that the third time pays for all.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I said, and then ended with a lame, “Oh.”

  “You see it then, sir?” he said, and the lip curled again.

  “I’m seeing nothing,” I told him, “and I advise you to do the same. When the time comes to talk, that’s when to do the talking.”

  “Major Travers! Major Travers!”

  Someone was calling me, and it turned out to be Compress. The Colonel wanted me in his room at once. The explosion had dislocated the electric light system, he told me as we hurried along, but a temporary wire had just been rigged up. The men were just about to rig up another over the floor of Mortar’s room and he was then going to search for what remained of the body.

  Collect was there, and I’m afraid my eyebrows lifted at the sight of him.

  “Ah! come in, Travers,” the Colonel said, and quite mildly. “We’ve got to talk this business over and decide on a line of action.”

  I nodded as I took the chair he was pointing to.