The man lowered his chair slowly, a look of blank amazement, changing gradually to gloom, coming over his face.
“Christ Almighty! Captain!” he muttered finally. “So it’s you that’s come to arrest me!”
“It is not!” cried Stacey angrily, “and you ought to know it isn’t!”
The man shook his red hair back from his forehead and stood there, gazing at Stacey.
“Sit down, can’t you?” said Stacey sharply. “You take up too damned much room that way.”
A faint smile curved the giant’s mouth and wrinkled the corners of his eyes. He sat down carefully, the chair creaking beneath him.
Stacey reflected, staring at him thoughtfully. “Monahan,” he began at last, “I found your name on a list of men I was to go out and get for that Sunday night row. What’s the meaning of that?”
The Irishman’s face flamed. “I didn’t have a thing to do with it!” he burst out.
“Oh, hell! I know you didn’t!” said Stacey impatiently. “You were,” he continued slowly, “the most unmanageable man in my battalion (and the one I cared most for,” he added to himself). “You were quarrelsome, you had fits of sullenness, you made me trouble on an average about seven days a week, and you broke every rule it was possible to break, but you wouldn’t any more have been part of a mob to pick on a man than you’d have turned tail and run in an attack. Now what is this charge about?”
A slow smile had spread over Monahan’s vast face. “That’s a hell of a fine character you’ve given me, Captain dear!” he observed.