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Tietjens said:

'Don't you know enough to discount what they say in this town?' He said to himself: 'That was all right!' He had spoken with a cool edge on a contemptuous voice.

He said to the sergeant-cook who was panting--another heavy, grey-moustached, very senior N.C.O.:

'The general's going round the cook-houses...You be damn certain there's no dirty cook's clothing in the lockers!' He was fairly sure that otherwise his cook-houses would be all right. He had gone round them himself the morning of the day before yesterday. Or was it yesterday?...

It was the day after he had been up all night because the draft had been countermanded...It didn't matter. He said:

'I wouldn't serve out white clothing to the cooks...I bet you've got some hidden away, though it's against orders.'

The sergeant looked away into the distance, smiled all-knowingly over his walrus moustache.

'The general likes to see 'em in white,' he said, 'and he won't know the white clothing has been countermanded.' Tietjens said:

'The snag is that the beastly cooks always will tuck some piece of beastly dirty clothing away in a locker rather than take the trouble to take it round to their quarters when they've changed.'

Levin said with great distinctness:

'The general has sent me to you with this, Tietjens. Take a sniff of it if you're feeling dicky. You've been up all night on end two nights running.' He extended in the palm of his hand a bottle of smelling-salts in a silver section of tubing. He said the general suffered from vertigo now and then. Really he himself carried that restorative for the benefit of Miss de Bailly.

Tietjens asked himself why the devil the sight of that smelling-salts container reminded him of the brass handle of the bedroom door moving almost imperceptibly...and incredibly. It was, of course, because Sylvia had on her illuminated dressing-table, reflected by the glass, just such another smooth, silver segment of tubing...Was everything he saw going to remind him of the minute movement of that handle?

'You can do what you please,' the sergeant-cook said, 'but there will always be one piece of clothing in a locker of a G.O.C.I.C.'s inspection. And the general always walks straight up to that locker and has it opened. I've seen General Campion do it three times.'

'If there's any found this time, the man it belongs to goes for a D.C.M.,' Tietjens said. 'See that there's a clean diet-sheet on the messing board.'

'The generals really like to find dirty clothing,' the sergeant-cook said; 'it gives them something to talk about if they don't know anything else about cook-houses...I'll put up my own diet-sheet, sir...I suppose you can keep the general back for twenty minutes or so? It's all I ask.'

Levin said towards his rolling, departing back:

'That's a damn smart man. Fancy being as confident as that about an inspection...Ugh!...' and Levin shuddered in remembrance of inspections through which in his time he had passed.

'He's a damn smart man!' Tietjens said. He added to McKechnie:

'You might take a look at dinners in case the general takes it into his head to go round them.'

McKechnie said darkly:

'Look here, Tietjens, are you in command of this unit or am I?'

Levin exclaimed sharply, for him:

'What's that? What the...'

Tietjens said:

'Captain McKechnie complains that he is the senior officer and should command this unit.'

Levin ejaculated:

'Of all the...' He addressed McKechnie with vigour: 'My man, the command of these units is an appointment at disposition of headquarters. Don't let there be any mistake about that!'

McKechnie said doggedly:

'Captain Tietjens asked me to take the battalion this morning. I understood he was under...

'You,' Levin said, 'are attached to this unit for discipline and rations. You damn well understand that if some uncle or other of yours were not, to the general's knowledge, a protégé of Captain Tietjens', you'd be in a lunatic asylum at this moment...'

McKechnie's face worked convulsively, he swallowed as men are said to swallow who suffer from hydrophobia. He lifted his fist