The Four Stragglers

by Frank L. Packard

Captain Francis Newcombe laughed.

"And yet," he said, "I embody in my person one of those signs. You can hardly deny that, Sir Harris. Certainly I would never have had, shall I call it the distinction, of being admitted to this club had it not been for the democratic leaven working through the war. You remember, of course? An officer and a gentleman! We of England were certainly consistent in that respect. While one was an officer one was a gentleman. The clubs were all pretty generally thrown open to officers during the war. Some of them came from the Lord knows where. T.G.'s they were called, you remember—Temporary Gentlemen. Afterward—but of course that's another story so far as most of them were concerned. Take my own case. I enlisted in the ranks, and toward the latter end of the war I obtained my commission—I became a T.G. And as such I enjoyed the privileges of this club. I was eventually, however, one of the fortunate ones. At the close of the war the club took me on its permanent strength and, ergo, I became a—Permanent Gentleman. Democracy! Private Francis Newcombe—Captain Francis Newcombe—Francis Newcombe, Esquire."

"A rather thin case!" smiled the baronet. "What I was about to say when you interrupted me was that, so far as I can see, all that the world has been made safe for by the war is the active expression of the predatory instinct in man. I refer to the big interests, the trusts; to the radical outcroppings of certain labour elements; to—yes!"—he tapped the newspaper that lay on the table beside him—"the Simon-pure criminal such as this mysterious gang of desperadoes that has London at its wits' ends, and those of us who have anything to lose in a state of constant apoplexy."

Captain Francis Newcombe shook his head.

"I think you're wrong, sir," he said judicially. "It isn't the aftermath of the war, or the result of the war. It is the war, of which the recent struggle was only a phase. It's been going on since the days of the cave man. You've only to reduce the nation to the terms of the individual, and you have it. A nation lusts after something which does not belong to it. It proceeds to take it by force. If it fails it is punished. That is war. The criminal lusts after something. He flings down his challenge. If he is caught he is punished. That is war. What is the difference?"

The baronet sipped at his Scotch and soda.

"H'm! Which brings us?" he suggested.

"Nowhere!" said Captain Francis Newcombe promptly. "It's been going on for ages; it'll go on for all time. Always the individual predatory; inevitably in cycles, the cumulative individual running amuck as a nation. Why, you, sir, yourself, a little while ago when somebody here in the room made a remark to the effect that he believed this particular series of crimes was directly attributable to the war because it would seem that some one of ourselves, some one who has the entrée everywhere, who, through being contaminated by the filth out there, had lost poise and was probably the guilty one, meaning, I take it, that the chap finding himself in a hole wasn't so nice or particular in his choice of the way out of it as he would have been but for the war—you, Sir Harris, denied this quite emphatically. It—er—wouldn't you say, rather bears me out?"

The old baronet smiled grimly.

"Quite possibly!" he said. "But if so, I must confess that my conclusion was based on a very different premise from yours. In fact, for the moment, I was denying the theory that the criminal in question was one of ourselves, quite apart from any bearing the war might have had upon the matter."