“What was the trouble with French End?” I opened at a venture.
“It was a bit by Sampoux, that we had taken over from the French. They’re tough, but you wouldn’t call ’em tidy as a nation. They had faced both sides of it with dead to keep the mud back. All those trenches were like gruel in a thaw. Our people had to do the same sort of thing—elsewhere; but Butcher’s Row in French End was the—er—show-piece. Luckily, we pinched a salient from Jerry just then, an’ straightened things out—so we didn’t need to use the Row after November. You remember, Strangwick?”
“My God, yes! When the duckboard-slats were missin’ you’d tread on ’em, an’ they’d creak.”
“They’re bound to. Like leather,” said Keede. “It gets on one’s nerves a bit, but——”
“Nerves? It’s real! It’s real!” Strangwick gulped.
“But at your time of life, it’ll all fall behind you in a year or so. I’ll give you another sip of—paregoric, an’ we’ll face it quietly. Shall we?”
Keede opened his cupboard again and administered a carefully dropped dark dose of something that was not sal volatile. “This’ll settle you in a few minutes,” he explained. “Lie still, an’ don’t talk unless you feel like it.”
He faced me, fingering his beard.
“Ye-es. Butcher’s Row wasn’t pretty,” he volunteered. “Seeing Strangwick here, has brought it all back to me again. ’Funny thing! We had a Platoon Sergeant of Number Two—what the deuce was his name?—an elderly bird who must have lied like a patriot to get out to the front at his age; but he was a first-class Non-Com., and the last person, you’d think, to make mistakes. Well, he was due for a fortnight’s home leave in January ’Eighteen. You were at B. H. Q. then, Strangwick, weren’t you?”
“Yes. I was Orderly. It was January twenty-first”; Strangwick spoke with a thickish tongue, and his eyes burned. Whatever drug it was, had taken hold.