This tale might just as well have been christened Under Two Flags, for it was under two flags, and through the medium of a third one, that all the trouble worked itself out. But, since another and an earlier writer has had the bad taste to apply this desirable title to a creation frankly lacking in the first elements of that which is the truth, I am constrained, because of its unfortunate associations, to put it to one side and seek yet another—for I find myself restricted to the setting-down of none but sombre facts. And the facts in the matter are these:
One afternoon in late September it chanced that my personal affairs took me up into the twelfth story of one of the lofty office-buildings which rear themselves, crag-like, above the very fertile soil of those shadowy and narrow valleys, our down-town streets. What was my exact errand is here of no consequence. It is enough if I say that I was endeavoring to make a man see a certain thing in the same light in which I saw it, and that, after having failed most miserably in the attempt, I had risen to go, when he glanced out through the window and said, “You’re up in that sort of thing: tell me, what’s going on over yonder?”
I followed the direction of his glance, across a mile-wide wilderness of ill-assorted roofs and chimneys, to where the great tower of the regimental armory lifts its bulk above the brick-and-mortar dwarfs that cluster in its shadow. And there, upon the summit of the topmost flanking-turret, my eye caught the flutter of a speck of red bunting.
“That?” said I; “why, that’s a signal detachment at flag-practice. Well, I must be going. Sorry I can’t make you listen to reason.” And I went—to risk my life in the downward rush of an express elevator.
Now, that glance from the twelfth-story window sealed my fate for the rest of the afternoon. My good nature had been placed under heavy strain, and the never-ending rush and racket of the swarming streets jarred so tormentingly upon my tired head that—with the blessed recklessness of the boy who cares not one darn whether school keeps or not—I consigned business to total smash, swung myself upon a passing car, and was trundled gaily along towards freedom, sunlight, and the armory.
“For Kenryck will be there,” I told myself, “and I can talk to him. And my pipe will be there, and I can smoke it. And I can sit on the parapet wall, and look out over the harbor—and forget how infernally mean everything is.”
And Kenryck was there. I dropped off the car, walked down to the armory, dived into the staff-room to get my pipe from its pigeon-hole in my desk, dived into the armorer’s den after a bunch of matches, and then climbed up and up, flight after flight of narrow stairs, to the top of the main tower. And there, in luxurious ease, Kenryck sat in state upon a camp-stool: a note-book on his knee, a bull-dog jammed between his teeth, and his field-glasses well in play.
“Kenryck, I’m weary,” I announced, as my head emerged from the trap in the tower roof, “and I’ve come to—”
“Shut up, will you, for a minute,” said Kenryck cordially. “Hi! you, up there”—to the signalman twenty feet in the air above us, upon the little turret—“what’s that? How’s that last message? No enemy visible on Lexington road? Yes, that’s right. Down flag! Rest!” Then to me, “Hullo, old man. Pull the rest of yourself out of that hole, and come on deck. Royal old afternoon, isn’t it?”
I stepped up and out upon the tiles. “Don’t mind me in the least, Ken.,” I said. “I’ve not come to bother you. I’m only here for rest and peaceful contemplation. So go ahead with your wig-wagging, and I’ll be a non-combatant.”