I didn’t know what he was talking about at all, and promptly said so.
“Gee, that’s rich, ain’t it, now?” He laughed kinda sourly. “And here I been picturing you gettin’ down on yer knees to thank me fer rescuin’ ya! Instead o’ which you got the guts to try an tell me ya don’t know what I’m talkin’ about. Gee, Leony, you’re terrible!”
“And you’re crazy as hell!” I retorted.
“Yeh—but I ain’t so crazy but what I know why ya got me this transfer, an’ I’ll accept it as yer thanks.” He laughed again, that same unhealthy ha-ha. “All I gotta say is ya musta been pretty hard up to be sidlin’ after that greasy bartender’s wife! You, of all people!... Ha-ha—I guess appearances is deceivin’, eh?”
“Oh!” I gasped. So that was it! But I still couldn’t understand the connection. I didn’t see how Ben had got mixed into Pierre’s jealousy. He had never been in the place with me and there was no reason for Pierre to connect us.
“I should say OH, too, if I was you,” he observed dryly.
“But I still don’t understand, Ben,” I told him seriously. “What bartender and where did this happen?”
At first he refused to take me seriously, but I finally goaded him into explaining.
“Just to put the details fresh in yer mind—which seems to be purty fergetful all of a sudden—” he began with grave condescension. “I eased into a buvette in Le Mans one evenin’ an’ saw before me nobody but my old bunkee, Sergeant Leon Canwick himself, an’ he was bein’ mauled all over the floor by a little runt of a frog wid a bartender’s apern on ’im. I suppose you don’t remember him at all, eh?”
“Go on with your story,” I replied, beginning now to suspect the secret of the mess.