"Immediately after you had moved off with the battalion—that afternoon at Caterpillar Farm, before the Somme show. He and I stayed to clear up, you remember?"
"Yes, yes!" he muttered, staring at the paper. "I remember. But—but why didn't he give it to me? Didn't he realise what it meant?"
"Yes, he realised all right. That was why he didn't give it to you."
Eric took up the despatch in his shaking hand.
"Roy Birnie deliberately held that back?" he said.
I nodded.
"And you?"
"Don't ask me about it," I replied, lighting my pipe and feeling thoroughly uncomfortable. "It's no part of a second-in-command's duty to supervise the adjutant's correspondence."
"But—didn't he show it to you?"
"Now you ask me, he did."