The Case of the Fighting Soldier: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  “It’s hellish, you know,” he went on. “Perfectly hellish. Whatever Mortar was, there he is—blown up and—well, it doesn’t bear thinking about. And the school. Is there a curse on the place, or what?”

  “Just bad luck, sir, that’s all,” I told him. “What we’ve got to think about is that it might have been far worse.”

  He stared.

  “It happened when the Course had dispersed,” I explained. “True, a new Course assembles to-morrow, but all they’ll see will be the results of the fire. The staff should keep what they know to themselves, and—if I may venture to suggest it—we should encourage the impression that it was due to the electric lighting. That one of the staff officers was unlucky enough to get trapped in the fire and burnt to death, would follow as a matter of course.”

  “Now that’s a capital suggestion,” the Colonel said. “I was telling Collect here that I knew you’d be of considerable help.”

  “And by the way,” said Collect leaning forward, “I’m sorry, Travers, if I offended you just now. I assure you it wasn’t intended.”

  “Forget it,” I said. “Perhaps I spoke a bit too freely too.”

  The Colonel cut in quickly. “Well, you’ve taken a load off my mind, Travers. And now the point is, what ought we to do and how ought we to do it. Undoubtedly there’ll have to be a report to the War Office.”

  I thought the time had at last come to throw my weight about.

  “Do you mind if I tell you something personal, sir?”

  “By all means,” he told me, but was looking a bit wary again.

  So I told him that inquiries were right up my street, for they had been a part of my civil occupation. I also said I’d had trouble at the camp where I’d been Commandant, and much the same situation had arisen.

  “Really?” he said, and with quite a changed tone. “And what are you proposing we should do in this case?”

  “I think we should hold our hands for an hour or two,” I said. “If Compress finds the body and sufficient of it for identification, that will alter the whole report. If we can’t prove that Mortar was in that room, then whoever answers the ’phone from the War Office end will be bound to ask if we’re sure Mortar was there, and was killed. We’d look fools if we had to say we didn’t know.”

  “He’s right. He’s dead right,” the Colonel told Collect.

  “And I think we should interrogate the man Feeder,” I went on. “He would be bound to know if there were explosives in the room. He and Captain Mortar hadn’t any secrets.”

  “We’ll get him at once,” the Colonel said, and went over to the ’phone that communicated with Harness’s office. It was working all right, but Harness wasn’t there. The Orderly Sergeant said that he was in the Mess writing-room, supervising the issue of bedding and furniture so that Staff and Ferris could sleep there that night.

  “Handle it yourself,” the Colonel told him testily. “You don’t want to leave everything to Mr. Harness, do you? Get Feeder sent to me at once.” Then he caught my frantic waving, and handed over the ’phone to me.

  “This is Major Travers,” I said. “If Feeder isn’t in camp, then he may be in town. If he isn’t back in a minute or two you might get in touch with the Peakridge police.”

  “What’s he doing in town?” the Colonel demanded.

  “I believe Captain Mortar gave him permission. A special half-holiday as it was the Captain’s birthday.”

  “But the town’s out of bounds till to-morrow morning,” Collect said.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Those are the facts as I’ve learned them.”

  There was a tap at the door, and at the Colonel’s shout, an R.A.M.C. sergeant came in. “Mr. Compress’s compliments, sir, and he says there’s no doubt about Captain Mortar being there.”

  The Colonel grunted and rubbed his chin. “What’s he doing now?”

  “Still searching the site, sir.”

  “Right,” the Colonel said, by way of dismissal. Once more I had to butt in.

  “Don’t you think, sir, that sentries ought to be posted round the site at once? You know what men are like for scrounging souvenirs. The Sappers will have to go over all that wreckage to try to find the cause of the explosion, and some vital thing may get taken away.”

  “Heavens, yes,” the Colonel said. “You see to it at once, Major Collect, will you? Get Brende to take it in hand.”

  No sooner were we alone than the Colonel was making for the cupboard where he kept his whisky and siphon.

  “I don’t know about you, Travers, but I feel as though I could do with a good stiff drink.”

  I knew that was his way of showing some sort of gratitude for the suggestions I’d made, obvious though they seemed to me. As soon as we’d taken the first swig he was assuring me that we were well on top of the job, and he was pretty sure everything would be all right. I couldn’t help wondering if some of the satisfaction were prompted by the realisation that Mortar had gone. At the same moment he was giving some confirmation of the suspicion.

  “Well, Mortar might have his faults but he had his good points,” he said, and nodded at his tumbler. “When you and I have to go, Travers, I’d think we’d like to go as quick and painlessly.”

  I winced at the thought, and then fortunately, before I had to reply, there was another tap at the door and Harness came in.

  “I’ve got Mr. Staff outside, sir, and I think you ought to hear what he’s got to say.”

  Staff had a most amazing story to tell. When he went to his room after dinner he found a note that had been pushed under the door, for he always kept his room locked when he was out, and the batman had a duplicate key. The note, as far as he remembered, read like this—

  Keep an eye on your room to-night. Mortar’s going to rag you.

  By that he had gathered that at any time Mortar might appear and play up hell in the room. Mortar, as the far bigger man, might also try some game like de-bagging if he found Staff there.

  “Where is the note now?” I asked.

  “Destroyed, I expect, sir,” Staff said. “I laid it down somewhere and now of course it’s gone.”

  “Any envelope?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Type-written?

  “Yes, sir. Type-written.”

  I asked the Colonel’s permission to put another question or two.

  “When I saw you just after the explosion,” I said to Staff, “you were wearing a gun. You haven’t got it now.”

  “Well, yes,” he said, and was smiling sheepishly and hunting for words. “I wondered if you’d noticed it, sir.”

  “Well, go on,” I said. “Tell the Colonel and me all about it. Why were you wearing the gun?”

  He gave a long-winded but feasible explanation. He was fed up, he said, by all that blether about Mortar being the only fighting soldier, and he had suspicions the note was part of the rag. What he meant by that was that he might get laughed at if he didn’t stand his ground. So he made up his mind to sit tight in his room and await the coming of Mortar. If he came, and he tried any monkey business, then Staff was going to poke that gun in his belly and march him outside. There would be no doubt then on whose side the laugh would be.

  I had to smile, though I hope I didn’t show it. The idea of Mortar being intimidated by a gun held by Staff was really too comic.

  “And why did you happen to be outside your room when the explosion actually occurred?” I said.

  That, it appeared, was just one of those lucky things that happen. Staff had got fed up with waiting, so he determined to reconnoitre the enemy’s position. So he opened his door a little, and then he heard muffled voices outside Mortar’s door. I nodded, for the voices were mine and Ferris’s.

  Then he shut the door again and waited, and when after a few minutes he looked out once more, he saw and heard nothing, so out he stepped to reconnoitre. Nothing was to be seen, so he decided to look round at the back.

  Just as he was turning the corner the explosion occur
red and he was blown clean off his feet. It was a few moments before he recovered, and then he saw someone—who turned out to be me—coming towards him in the dark.

  That was his story, and he stuck to it. Also he swore he had seen or heard nothing suspicious except what he had already reported.

  “You didn’t see Mr. Flick?” I asked.

  “No, sir,” he said, and then with surprise: “I thought he was at the lecture-room all the evening.”

  He and Harness went out, and the Colonel was at once clicking his tongue exasperatedly.

  “Damn’ young idiot,” He did some more tongue clicking. “Seems to me, Travers, all sorts of things have been going on behind our backs. Most unsatisfactory. Most unsatisfactory.”

  “You can’t treat men like boys, sir,” I said. “In any case, now poor Mortar is gone things ought to be on a different footing.”

  I was hoping he’d argue the point, since the getting rid of Mortar had been, by his own admission, the one snag to the smooth running of things, but then there was yet another tap at the door and this time it was Collect who came in.

  “I’ve got Feeder outside, sir, if you’d like to speak to him.”

  “Bring him in,” the Colonel said belligerently.

  “He doesn’t know what’s happened, sir,” Collect warned him. “Also he’s been drinking.”

  The Colonel nodded meaningly and waved a hand. In came Feeder, blinking a bit at the sudden light. When he caught sight of me he gave a cheerful grin of acknowledgment, and for the life of me I couldn’t help a faint smile in return. For Feeder was looking very much the happy warrior. His battered face was rosily flushed, and his eyes were sparkling. That bit of a binge had certainly toned him up, and he was less likely than ever to be abashed by circumstances.

  “Where’ve you been?”

  Feeder’s eyebrows raised at the Colonel’s curt demand, then he gave a shake of the head and another cheerful grin.

  “Just down town, sir, having a bit of a do.”

  “Stand to attention!” Collect reminded him sharply.

  The look he received was not so cheerful. Feeder let his hands appear by the seams of his trousers, but there was no other smartening up.

  “You know the regulations,” the Colonel said. “Why did you break them?”

  “Well, it was like this, sir,” began Feeder, in the usual style and words of the Army defaulter. What he said was virtually what Ferris had told me, though he had sense enough not to mention Ferris’s name. He admitted, with every bit as much cheerfulness, that he had broken camp regulations, but added with a confidence that I personally found most engaging, that he regarded himself as a kind of civilian, and therefore outside the rules.

  “Well, you’ll soon be a civilian again—a real civilian,” the Colonel told him, and with wholly unnecessary cruelty, irritating though Feeder must have been. “I’ve got some news for you. Bad news. Captain Mortar’s been killed.”

  Feeder had straightened up at the words news, then he had leaned forward, and when the last word had been said, he was staring at the Colonel like a man hypnotised. A moment or two and he was shifting the same intent gaze on me.

  “It’s true, Feeder,” I said. “There was an accident and Captain Mortar is dead.”

  The intent look went and he was standing there with a kind of stupid lolling.

  “Say something, man!” the Colonel snapped at him. “You’re not too drunk to understand what you’ve been told?”

  “I’m not drunk, sir,” Feeder told him quietly. “I’ve been drunk but three times in my life, sir, and the last was at Rabat, and that was seven years ago.”

  He turned to me with a queer, natural dignity. “So the Captain is dead, sir.”

  I nodded.

  “How did it happen, sir? Would you mind telling me that?”

  I glanced at the Colonel before replying. “We don’t know. We think he had some explosives in his room and was experimenting with them and they went off. There was a tremendous explosion at about nine o’clock.”

  “Explosives, sir, in his room?” He sounded so incredulous that I asked him why.

  “There’s not a thing in that room that I don’t know of,” he told me. “There was nothing in the room at twelve o’clock to-day, sir, and that I’ll swear by all that’s holy.”

  “You never knew him to have any explosives in the room?”

  “Never, sir. Not even a Mills.” He paused to give another incredulous shake of the head. “And why should he blow himself up with explosives, sir? He knew more about them things than any man living. Him and me’s handled explosives all our lives, and never an accident to either one of us.”

  “Well, there we are,” I said. “It’s one of those things that happen.”

  “And where is he now, sir? Can I see him?”

  “I’m afraid not,” I said. “To tell the truth, Feeder, and you’re man enough to hear it, there isn’t anything of him to see.”

  I had caught the Colonel’s eye again, and he motioned me to the far end of the room where we had a whispered talk. Feeder was to consider himself under open arrest and was to stay in his quarters till further notice.

  When we came back to our chairs, Feeder was wiping his eyes on the sleeve of his greatcoat.

  “Get along now,” the Colonel told him, and with far more humanity than I expected.

  “Just one little thing,” I added. “Did he have any relatives, Feeder.”

  “Never a one, sir,” he told me. “That was why he didn’t mind where he went and what he did. That’s what he told me once, sir.”

  Collect went off with him, and the Colonel was heaving a sigh as soon as the door closed on them. I waited for him to speak, and it was a goodish time before he did so.

  “What now, do you think, Travers? Ought we to ring the War Office?”

  “I think we ought, sir,” I said. “And I think it ought to be done as quickly as possible. And from Harness’s office, because what will have to be said is highly confidential.”

  “Right,” he said, and was getting to his feet.

  “One minute, sir. Don’t you think we ought to be sure in our minds what precisely we’re going to report?”

  He gave that curious, wary look of his. “Just how do you mean?”

  “Well, sir, in my considered judgment we’re not going to report an accident.”

  “What do you mean?” he said, and stared again. “It’s the accident we’re going to report, isn’t it?”

  “No, sir,” I said quietly. “We may have to report something that was meant to look like an accident.”

  “Meant? What do you mean by meant?”

  “What I say, sir. Something that was meant to look like an accident, but wasn’t. To be perfectly frank, sir, we may have to suggest that Captain Mortar was murdered.”

  Chapter VII

  The Colonel’s look was one of horror, and I never saw a man so taken aback in my life, though surely everything we had heard was merely a leading up to a climax he should have recognized for himself.

  “You mad, Travers?”

  “Look here, sir,” I said. “You and I have got to do some plain speaking, and I’d prefer it to be as man to man. You’re the Commandant and you’re entitled to ask my views and put me down to give evidence at a Court of Inquiry, but you can’t force me to do anything else.”

  No wonder he was startled at that attitude of mine. I had blurted out the beginnings of what I thought, for the simple reason that I could see myself on the very edge of the devil of a hole. At the Greyhound I had been given information in confidence, and the Colonel might rightly say that if I had passed that information on to him, then Mortar might be still alive. What I somehow had to do was to still keep that information back both from the Colonel and from the Court of Inquiry. If I couldn’t do the latter, then I had to play for time.

  The Colonel had been frowning, and rubbing his chin. “Well—er—yes,” he said, “All the same, I don’t see what you’re getting at
.”

  “Then it’s this, sir,” I said. “All I might do now is ask if you want me any more, and then say good night, It’s no business of mine to report to the War Office, unless you expressly order me to do so.”

  “But you agreed to help?” he said, and no wonder he was looking bewildered. I had never shown any bellicose tendencies, and he must have felt like someone suddenly savaged by his pet rabbit.

  “Exactly,” I said. “But if I help it must be in my own way. You’ll pardon me if I recall that I’ve had experience of happenings along the same lines as this one. If you gave me a free hand, I think I could promise that all this business would be cleared up without any fuss or scandal.”

  “Why should there be fuss?” he asked, very much on his dignity.

  “You’re the answer to that,” I might have told him. What I did say was that there wouldn’t be any. “You and I have the same interests at heart,” I said. “We want the school to function normally next week, and we’d hate like hell to have it get a bad name for accidents. Once rumours start, they run like wildfire.”

  “Yes,” he said, and was nodding heavily. And then we were disturbed once more; this time by Compress.

  “I don’t think I can do any more to-night, sir.”

  “Any definite results?” the Colonel asked him.

  “Plenty, sir,” Compress said. “We can definitely identify him. But what I wanted to ask, sir, was about procedure from now on.”

  The Colonel glanced at me. I had been in that same predicament about procedure myself, and luckily I knew all the answers.

  “The War Office will be giving instructions later,” I said. “As soon as they come through, the Colonel will let you know.”

  Out went Compress and we got on with our little chat.

  “As I was saying, sir, I think I know a way to get this bad business settled domestically, so to speak. I even think we can avoid a pukka Court of Inquiry.”

  “No-o-o!” said the Colonel incredulously.

  I convinced him, at least sufficiently to let me make the attempt, which was enough for the moment. Had I known even a part of what was going to happen, I should not have been so cocksure.