“ ‘Kipling has written a good deal about the Army,’ I said, with an answering smile. ‘Mulvaney and Co. are classics.’
“ ‘It’s not Mulvaney I’m meaning, sir,’ he answered. ‘But didn’t he write a little bit of poetry about “Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree”?’
“ ‘Why, yes, he did.’ I lit a cigarette thoughtfully. ‘I’d guessed that much, Manfield. Is Trevor his real name?’
“ ‘I don’t know, sir,’ and at that moment the subject of our discussion walked past and saluted.
“ ‘Sergeant Trevor,’ I called after him, on the spur of the moment, and he came up at the double. I hadn’t anything really to say to him, but ever since he’d joined us he’d puzzled me, and though, as the sergeant-major said, the other non-commissioned officers might know him better, I certainly didn’t.
“ ‘You’re a bit of a cricketer, aren’t you?’ I said, as he came up.
“A faint smile flickered across his face at my question. ‘I used to play quite a lot, sir,’ he answered.
“ ‘Good; we want to get games going really strong.’ I talked with them both—squadron ‘shop’—a bit longer, and all the time I was trying to probe behind the impassive mask of Trevor’s face. Incidentally, I think he knew it; once or twice I caught a faint gleam of amusement in his eyes—a gleam that seemed to me a little weary. And when I left them and went across the parade ground towards the mess, his face haunted me. I hadn’t probed—not the eighth of an inch; he was still as much a mystery as ever. But he’d got a pair of deep blue eyes, and though I wasn’t a girl to be attracted by a man’s eyes, I couldn’t get his out of my mind. They baffled me; the man himself baffled me—and I’ve always disliked being baffled.
“It was a few nights after, in mess, that the next piece in the puzzle came along. We had in the regiment—he was killed in the war, poor devil!—a fellow of the name of Blenton, a fairly senior captain. He wasn’t in my squadron, and his chief claim to notoriety was as a cricketer. Had he been able to play regularly he would have been easily up to first-class form—as it was he periodically turned out for the county; but he used to go in first wicket down for the Army. So you can gather his sort of form.
“It was over the port that the conversation cropped up, and it interested me because it was about Trevor. As far as cricket was concerned I hardly knew which end of a bat one held.