Bones of the River - Edgar Wallace [75]
Hamilton did a rapid mental calculation. “The total’s right, but the Lord knows how you got it,” he said, and reached for the paper.
Suddenly he roared. “You dithering ass, you’re adding up the men’s chest measurements!”
Bones rose briskly. “That explains the jolly old deficit of eight an’ fourpence, sir,” he said, and passed the pen. “Audited and found correct – sign!”
“Not on your life, Bones,” snapped Hamilton. “Those clothing accounts are a month overdue, and you’ll sit down there and make out a new sheet. Sergeant Ahmet complains that you’ve charged him for a pair of shorts he never had, and there are four shirts, grey, flannel, that do not appear in your account at all.”
Bones groaned. “Last week it was brooms, hair, one,” he wailed, “and the week before buckets, iron, galvanised, two. Dear old thing, this isn’t war! This isn’t the jolly old life of adventure that poor old Bones enlisted for! Buckets, dear old thing! What does a jolly old warrior want with a bucket except to kick it, in the glorious execution of his duty, dear old thing?”
Hamilton slid down from the chest of drawers on which he had been sitting and made for the door.
“I’ll go into this matter after tiffin,” he said ominously. “You are supposed to be stores officer –”
“If there is anything that I’m not supposed to be, dear old Ham,” said Bones, with marked patience, “you might mention it, dear old soul. I’m OC Bathrooms and GOC Dustbins, and CIC Chicken-houses. In addition to which, Ham, I’m Inspector-General of Shirts an’ Military Controller of Corns–”
“I’ll see you after lunch in my official capacity,” said his superior. “As a human being, I will give you a long and tingling drink if you will come to my room.”
“Barley water?” asked Bones suspiciously.
“Whisky, with aerated water and large and globous chunks of ice.”
“Lead me to it, my jolly old Satan,” said Bones.
As they were crossing to the residency:
“You really must get out those accounts, Bones,” said Hamilton. “I’ve had a perfectly awful letter from HQ. Besides which, the new half-yearly supply is on its way, and Sanders may want you to go with him into the bush at any minute. And dim the unholy fire in your eyes, Bones – if those accounts are not ready by tomorrow, I will accompany the Commissioner and you can stay.”
“Have a heart, dear old fellow creature!” said Bones reproachfully. “I’ve got quite enough trouble, dear lad. Let me take the accounts with me–”
“If you were going to heaven I wouldn’t let you take them,” said the firm Hamilton. “And nothing is less likely.”
“That I would take ’em, dear old cynic?” said Bones. “Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re right. I’ll say ‘when,’” he added, as Hamilton uncorked a bottle, “and don’t forget, Ham, that drownin’ a baby’s petty larceny, but drownin’ good whisky’s a naughty old felony.”
It is a fact that Bones had, as he claimed, sufficient trouble. And it was trouble of an unusual kind. It had begun some eight months before, when he had received a letter, delicately scented, and postmarked in Madeira.
“Dear Unknown,” it began, and Bones had blushed pleasantly.
It was the story of a young and beautiful woman who had seen him once when the boat on which she was travelling had stopped at the river’s mouth to land the mail. She sent her photograph: she told him her life history. She was married to a man forty years her senior. She craved life and youth and freedom. She had for the moment her dreams, and in the very heart of brilliant and soothing visions was “a tall, grave Englishman, whose blue eyes are like flowers in a desert.”
Bones spent that day so tall and so grave that Hamilton thought he had a sore throat. He sat up all one rainy night inditing an epistle which was, in a way, a model. It counselled pacience and currage, it embodied sage and fatherly advice, and finished up with all that Bones could remember of a poem which seemed appropriate.
When skys are dark dark and glumy
And every