Page:Weird Tales volume 36 number 01.djvu/31

Rh who as a former New York police lieutenant had been assigned to the Intelligence, Weinberg of the Medical Corps, like me assigned to base hospital work in Treves, and Fontenoy apKern, an infantryman about to take up duties at the provost marshal's office at the old walled city.

The fourth man was unknown to me and, for no reason I could think of, I disliked him with the sudden spontanietyspontaneity [sic] of a chemical reaction. The double braid on his cuffs marked him as a captain and where the raccoon collar of his short coat was thrown back I saw crossed rifles on the neckband of his blouse. His uniform was well-cut and expensive—English made, I guessed—his blond hair neatly trimmed, his slim, long, white hands sleekly manicured. More of a fop than a soldier he seemed, some dandy from the fashionable East Fifties with a bullet-proof commission going from the secretariat at Paris to staff headquarters at Coblenz; but in the army one goes where he is sent and does the work they set him at; it wasn't mere resentment of a grime-and-blood veteran for a pantywaist soldier that stirred my quick, instinctive dislike. It was the smug arrogance of him. Clear-cut as the image on a coin his profile silhouetted against the window, high-cheeked, hard-eyed, sharp-chinned. Prussian as an oberleutnant of the Elite Guards Corp, that face would have seemed more in its proper setting above the field gray of a German uniform than the olive drab of our army.

The stranger glanced up quickly at my advent and I had a momentary glimpse of faintly sneering mouth and hard, cold, haughty eyes, then he resumed his reading of the Paris edition of the London Daily Mail.

Greetings were in character: "Hullo," said Amberson, sweeping me with the quick look of suspicion which is the mark of the professional policeman. "Thought you'd gone A.W.O.L.," grinned Weinberg. "Wouldn't, blame you if you had. Lot o' flu up Treves way; lots o' work for us poor suckers in the M.C." "Hi lug!" apKern saluted me "Mopped 'em all up on the Paris sector and goin' up to croak a few in Germany?"

The blond captain of infantry took no notice of me, nor any of us.

I stumbled over an assorted lot of feet, stowed my duffel in the rack above my seat and dropped down on the hard cushions. The place across from me was vacant, but a white card indicated it had been reserved. "Wonder who'll draw it?" apKern wondered. "Pity the poor bloke, havin' to look at your ugly mug from here to Treves. Gosh, when I came to up at Catigny and saw you starin' at me I thought I still was under ether and havin' a bad dream! If I could a talked I'd a' asked the nurse to slip me a fresh dose of anesthetic—"

"Quiet!" cut in Weinberg. "Who'd know when you were conscious or anesthetized, anyhow? If I'd been there I would a' operated on you as they brought you in, you—" His amiable insults stopped half uttered, and a sudden blankness wiped expression from his face as he looked past apKern to the compartment door.

Followed by a railway porter a girl stood at the entrance, and I felt my own heart skip a beat as I looked at her. Mentally I commented, "There ain't no such animal'

She was quite young, not more than twenty-three or -four, quite breath-taking in her loveliness. A red cross gleamed upon her overseas cap, beneath her heavy dark coat with its wide fur collar showed a white stock and the well-cut, smoothly-fitting whipcord uniform of the Red Cross Motor Corps. Three service chevrons on her left cuff showed she was no post-Armistice importation, and her utter lack of self-consciousness showed she was at home with soldiers. More like an effeminate boy than, a young woman she seemed