These thoughts filled and racked his brain as he sat drinking rum and water in the bar of the Green Man on Christmas evening; a solitary man, mixing little with the people of the village, he sat apart at a small table in the corner, musing within himself, yet idly watching the company—villagers, a few friends from London and elsewhere, some soldiers and their ladies. Besides these, a tall slim man stood leaning against the bar, at the far end of it, talking to Bill Smithers, the landlord, and sipping whisky-and-soda between pulls at his cigar. He wore a neat dark overcoat, brown shoes, and a bowler hat rather on one side; his appearance was, in fact, genteel, though his air was a trifle raffish. In age he seemed about forty. The Sergeant had never seen him before, and therefore favored him with a glance of special attention.
Oddly enough, the gentlemanly stranger seemed to reciprocate the Sergeant’s interest; he gave him quite a long glance. Then he finished his whisky-and-soda, spoke a word to Bill Smithers, and lounged across the room to where the Sergeant sat.
“It’s poor work drinking alone on Christmas night,” he observed. “May I join you? I’ve ordered a little something, and, well, we needn’t bother about offering a gentleman a glass tonight.”
The Sergeant eyed him with apparent disfavor—as, indeed, he did everybody who approached him—but a nod of his head accorded the desired permission. Smithers came across with a bottle of brandy and glasses. “Good stuff!” said the stranger, as he sat down, filled the glasses, and drank his off. “The best thing to top up with, believe me!”
The Sergeant, in turn, drained his glass, maintaining, however, his aloofness of demeanor. “What’s up?” he growled.
“What’s in the brown bag?” asked the stranger lightly and urbanely.
The Sergeant did not start; he was too old a hand for that; but his small gimlet eyes searched his new acquaintance’s face very keenly. “You know a lot!”
“More than you do in some directions, less in others, perhaps. Shall I begin? Because we’ve got to confide in one another, Sergeant. A little story of what two gentlemen do in London on Wednesdays, and of what they carry home in a brown leather bag? Would that interest you? Oh, that stuff in the brown leather bag! Hard to come by now, isn’t it? But they know where there’s still some, and so do I, to remark it incidentally. There were actually some people, Sergeant Hooper, who distrusted the righteousness of the British Cause, which is to say (the stranger smiled cynically) the certainty of our licking the Germans, and they hoarded it, the villains!”
Sergeant Hooper stretched out his hand towards the bottle. “Allow me!” said the stranger politely. “I observe that your hand trembles a little.”
It did. The Sergeant was excited. The stranger seemed to be touching on a subject which always excited the Sergeant—to the point of hands trembling, twitching, and itching.