"What about the addressee?" asked another officer. "Who is Henry Smith, of 563 Pentonville Road?"
"The London people will keep him under observation, no doubt," said the captain. "I told the post corporal to examine every batch carefully, and see if there are any more addressed to the same person."
Three days passed. No letters or cards addressed to Henry Smith were discovered. On the third day a telegram from London was delivered to the colonel.
"Henry Smith gone, leaving no address. Report result of enquiry."
After consulting Captain Adams the colonel telegraphed in reply that Murgatroyd's signature appeared to have been forged, probably with the intention of getting him into trouble, and that he was keeping a careful watch on the correspondence. Ginger meanwhile had recovered his spirits. He had been made a lance-corporal, and sewed the stripe on his sleeve with ingenuous satisfaction. At the back of his mind was a suspicion that Stoneway might have sought a mean revenge for his thrashing by this use of invisible ink; but since the scheme had failed, he resolved not to trouble his head about it.
CHAPTER VI
BAGGING A SNIPER
The village being within easy range of the German guns, its immunity from bombardment struck the officers of the battalion as rather strange. For a few days, it is true, the enemy might have been unaware that British troops were in occupation; but a German aeroplane, a dove-winged Taube, had been observed to fly over the place, and it could hardly be doubted that information of their presence had been carried to headquarters. All that the soldiers knew of warfare for two or three weeks was the dull boom of distant guns, the passage of ambulances occasionally and of supply wagons frequently, and the passing of railway trains conveying new howitzers and field guns along the line a mile or two away.
The call to action came unexpectedly. One evening, just after supper, the men were ordered to parade in full marching kit. They overflowed from the little market square into the adjacent streets, and there they were inspected by the colonel, who passed up and down the ranks with an orderly carrying a lantern.
When the inspection was finished, the colonel posted himself on a tub in the middle of the square. It was a dark night, and the flickering light of the lantern illuminated only the lower part of the colonel's body, leaving his face in shade.