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'Damn it...The general commanding the 9th French Army is an intimate friend of mine...But in face of your confidential report--I can't ask him to ask for you. That's blocked!'

Tietjens said:

'I do not propose, sir, at any rate in your eyes, to pass as putting the interests of any power before those of my own country. If you examine my confidential report you will find that the unfavourable insertions are initialled G. D...They are the initials of a Major Drake...'

The general said bewilderingly:

'Drake...Drake...I've heard the name.'

Tietjens said:

'It doesn't matter, sir...Major Drake's a gentleman who doesn't like me...'

The general said:

'There are so many. You don't try to make yourself popular, I must say!'

Tietjens said to himself:

'The old fellow feels it!...But he can hardly expect me to tell him that Sylvia thinks Drake was the father of my own son, and desires my ruin!' But of course the old man would feel it. He, Tietjens, and his wife, Sylvia, were as near a son and daughter as the old man had. The obvious answer to make to the old man's query as to where he, Tietjens, ought to be sent was to remind him that his brother Mark had had an order put through to the effect that Tietjens was to be put in command of divisional transport...Could he remind the old man of that? Was it a thing one could do?

Yet the idea of commanding divisional transport was like a vision of Paradise to Tietjens. For two reasons: it was relatively safe, being concerned with a lot of horses...and the knowledge that he had that employment would put Valentine Wannop's mind at rest.

Paradise!...But could one wangle out of a hard into a soft job? Some other poor devil very likely wanted it. On the other hand--think of Valentine Wannop! He imagined her torture of mind, wandering about London, thinking of him in the very worst spot of a doomed army. She would get to hear of that. Sylvia would tell her! He would bet Sylvia would ring her up and tell her. Imagine, then, writing to Mark to say that he was with the transport! Mark would pass it on to the girl within half a minute. Why...he, Tietjens, would wire. He imagined himself scribbling the wire while the general talked and giving it to an orderly the moment the talk was over...But could he put the idea into the old man's head! Is it done?...Would, say...say, an Anglican saint do it?

And then...Was he up to the job? What about the accursed obsession of 0 Nine Morgan that intermittently jumped on him? All the while he had been riding Schomburg the day before, 0 Nine Morgan had seemed to be just before the coffin-headed brute's off-shoulder. The animal must fall!...He had had the passionate impulse to pull up the horse. And all the time a dreadful depression! A weight! In the hotel last night he had nearly fainted over the thought that Morgan might have been the man whose life he had spared at Noircourt...It was getting to be a serious matter! It might mean that there was a crack in his, Tietjens', brain. A lesion! If that was to go on...0 Nine Morgan, dirty as he always was, and with the mystified eyes of the subject races on his face, rising up before his horse's off-shoulder! But alive, not with half his head cut away...If that was to go on he would not be fit to deal with transport, which meant a great deal of riding.

But he would chance that...Besides, some damn fool of a literary civilian had been writing passionate letters to the papers insisting that all horses and mules must be abolished in the army...Because of their pestilence-spreading dung!...It might be decreed by A.C.I. that no more horses were to be used!...Imagine taking battalion supplies down by night with motor lorries, which was what that genius desired to see done!...

He remembered once or twice--it must have been in September, '16--having had the job of taking battalion transport down from Locre to B.H.Q., which were in the château of Kemmell village...You muffled every bit of metal you could think of: bits, trace-chains,