Humberstall dropped the polishing-cloth and knitted his brows again in most profound thought. Anthony turned to me and suddenly launched into a sprightly tale of his taxi’s collision with a Marble Arch refuge on a greasy day after a three-yard skid.
“’Much damage?” I asked.
“Oh no! Ev’ry bolt an’ screw an’ nut on the chassis strained; but nothing carried away, you understand me, an’ not a scratch on the body. You’d never ’ave guessed a thing wrong till you took ’er in hand. It was a wop too: ’ead-on—like this!” And he slapped his tactful little forehead to show what a knock it had been.
“Did your Major dish you up much?” he went on over his shoulder to Humberstall who came out of his abstraction with a slow heave.
“We-ell! He told me I wasn’t expected back either; an’ he said ’e couldn’t ’ang up the ’ole Circus till I’d rejoined; an’ he said that my ten-inch Skoda which I’d been Number Three of, before the dump went up at Eatables, had ’er full crowd. But, ’e said, as soon as a casualty occurred he’d remember me. ‘Meantime,’ says he, ‘I particularly want you for actin’ mess-waiter.’
“’Beggin’ your pardon, sir,’ I says perfectly respectful; ‘but I didn’t exactly come back for that, sir.’”
“‘Beggin’ your pardon, ’Umberstall,’ says ’e, ‘but I ’appen to command the Circus! Now, you’re a sharp-witted man,’ he says; ‘an’ what we’ve suffered from fool-waiters in Mess ’as been somethin’ cruel. You’ll take on, from now—under instruction to Macklin ’ere.’ So this man, Macklin, that I was tellin’ you about, showed me my duties.... ’Ammick! I’ve got it! ’Ammick was our Major, an’ Mosse was Captain!” Humberstall celebrated his recapture of the name by labouring at the organ-panel on his knee.
“Look out! You’ll smash it,” Anthony protested.
“Sorry! Mother’s often told me I didn’t know my strength. Now, here’s a curious thing. This Major of ours—it’s all comin’ back to me—was a high-up divorce-court lawyer; an’ Mosse, our Captain, was Number One o’ Mosse’s Private Detective Agency. You’ve heard of it? ’Wives watched while you wait, an’ so on. Well, these two ’ad been registerin’ together, so to speak, in the Civil line for years on end, but hadn’t ever met till the War. Consequently, at Mess their talk was mostly about famous cases they’d been mixed up in. ’Ammick told the Law-courts’ end o’ the business, an’ all what had been left out of the pleadin’s; an’ Mosse ’ad the actual facts concernin’ the errin’ parties—in hotels an’ so on. I’ve heard better talk in our Mess than ever before or since. It comes o’ the Gunners bein’ a scientific corps.”
“That be damned!” said Anthony. “If anythin’ ’appens to ’em they’ve got it all down in a book. There’s no book when your lorry dies on you in the ’Oly Land. That’s brains.”