CHAPTER II
THE QUARTERMASTER’S BILLETS
I was seated under a shed of loose boards in the courtyard of Cantonment No. 77, and just tasting some excellent macaroni which the cook had warmed up for me, when Dedouche, the orderly, came to find me.
“Say, Sergeant,” he asked, “are you the intelligence officer?”
The title of “sergeant” sounds strange in the ears of a cavalryman, and I felt a little hurt in my esprit de corps; but I at once answered Dedouche’s summons, for the orderly, in spite of being at the beck and call of everyone, enjoys a certain prestige. He has a real importance, small though it be, but an importance which carries weight when he gives his opinion in the discussions of the “little staff” of the company.
This staff is the household of the quartermaster’s billets. With some slight differences it is in general composed of the quartermaster-sergeant, lacking a sergeant-major which companies of machine guns rarely have, a quartermaster-corporal, an adjutant and a mess corporal. I was admitted to the honor of taking part in the discussions of the staff on account of the detached and unusual character of my duties.
But Dedouche was summoning me. I turned and observed him leisurely. Dedouche is an excellent fellow. Without even knowing him one would guess it at first glance. He is good-natured, never in a hurry, no matter how urgent his errand, and indifferent alike to blows and invectives. He smiles under torrents of abuse and threats of the most terrible punishments, and does his duty as man of all work silently. In a word, he possesses all the qualities inherent in his duty. He is tall and spare; his face is beardless and sanctimonious; his eyes smile, but they look far away under his great round glasses with their large rims. All in all Dedouche looks like a lay brother. To complete the illusion, when he talks he has a habit of thrusting his hands into the large sleeves of his jacket and lowering his head to look over his spectacles. In civil life Dedouche was an assistant in a pharmacy in one of the large provincial cities. He knows the art of making up learned formulae. His long slim fingers manage the most fragile things with skill, and his grave voice is accustomed to the mezzotints of the laboratory.
“Yes,” I answered at last, “it is I.”
“The lieutenant wants you.”
I gulped down my plate of macaroni in two mouthfuls, swallowed the coffee which the cook, already attentive to my wants, held out to me, and followed Dedouche the two hundred yards which separated us from the billets.
Two hundred yards is nothing, and yet it is a world. In less time than it takes to tell it I learned a mass of things from Dedouche.