"BRAMBLE,
"Colonel."
"You are a wise man, sir," said Parker.
"I know the game," said the colonel. "I have played it for thirty years."
"Once upon a time," said the doctor, "there were two officers who, on the same day, each lost something belonging to His Majesty's Government. The first one mislaid a coal-bucket; the second a motor-lorry. Now you must know, Aurelle, that in our army an officer has to pay for anything which he may lose by negligence out of his own pocket. The two officers, therefore, received notices from the War Office advising one that he would have to pay three shillings, and the other that a thousand pounds would be stopped from his pay. The first one wished to defend himself; he had never had any coal-buckets, and tried to prove it. He stopped his promotion, and in the end had to pay the three bob. The second, who knew a thing or two, just wrote at the bottom of the paper, 'Noted and returned,' and sent it back to the War Office. There, following an old and wise rule, a clerk lost the correspondence and the officer never heard anything more of that little matter."
"That isn't a bad story, doctor," said Major Parker; "but in the case of the loss of property belonging to the Government there is a much better method than yours—Colonel Boulton's method.
"Colonel Boulton commanded an ammunition depot. He was responsible, among other things, for fifty machine-guns. One day he noticed that there were only forty-nine in the depot. All the inquiries, and punishment of the sentries, failed to restore the missing machine-gun.
"Colonel Boulton was an old fox and had never acknowledged himself in the wrong. He simply mentioned in his monthly return that the tripod of a machine-gun had been broken. They sent him a tripod to replace the other without any comment.
"A month later, on some pretext or other, he reported the sighting apparatus of a machine-gun as out of order; the following month he asked for three screw-nuts; then a recoil plate, and bit by bit in two years he entirely destroyed his machine-gun. And correspondingly, bit by bit, the Army Ordnance Department reconstructed it for him without attaching any importance to the requisitions for the separate pieces.
"Then Colonel Boulton, satisfied at last, inspected his machine-guns, and found fifty-one.