“Enough of this!” stammered Jay-Jay. “I didn’t come here to fool around like this. The sergeant is under arrest.”
“What for?” inquired the Captain. “For being a girl?”
“For enough!” retorted Jay-Jay, apparently at a loss to know just what the sergeant could be accused of. “Anyway, he’s under arrest. Take him along, Corporal. I’ll be responsible.”
The M.P. stepped hesitatingly into the center then, but before he could touch Canwick, the Captain spoke up again, and this time his voice had none of that mellow sarcasm that had marked it before. “We’ve had enough of this!” he stated incisively. “What kind of damned fool nonsense is this?... You burst into my room and try to tell me that a boy I knew in America and have known intimately over here is not a boy at all, but a girl. What kind of damned nonsense is that?”
The M.P. stopped. Jay-Jay was momentarily taken back by the obvious sincerity in the Captain’s words, but he quickly recovered his pose of domination. “I suppose you want me to believe that you are not aware of the sergeant’s sex, Captain?”
“I don’t give two damns in hell what you believe, Lieutenant!” replied the Captain. “What you think or conceive in your stumbling stupidity doesn’t concern me in the least. But you have seen fit to crash into my rooms without any invitation from me, and I demand an explanation at once ... and a sensible one.”
“Don’t you believe that that is Leona Canwick sitting there?” Jay-Jay’s voice was almost screaming.
The Captain laughed. “Is this a joke, Lieutenant?”
“Dammit all, Captain, that is Leona Canwick!”
“I’m afraid you have been sleeping in a distillery, Lieutenant.... Of course that isn’t Leona ... why, I had a letter from Leona just this morning, mailed in New York two weeks ago, and this chap has been over here for seven or eight months at least.”