"I spotted him by the fountain-pen stains on his vest and the thunderbolts sticking out of his pockets," said Frederick. "So I went up to him and said, 'You are Wuffle of The Daily Hooter, the man who wiped-up Whitehall and is now engaged in freezing-out France?"
"What did he say?" asked Percival.
"Whipped out a note-book and asked me to tell him all about it. I said I was pining for the white cliffs of Albion and that the call of the counting-house and cash-box was ringing in my ears, but that I couldn't get demobilised because the Colonel's pet Pomeranian had conceived a fancy for me and wouldn't take its underdone chop from anyone else. I also hinted that I and a few friends could tell him things that would make his biggest journalistic scoops look like paragraphs in a parish magazine, so he invited me to bring you round this afternoon to split an infinitive with him."
"Wuffle?" said Binnie. "That's the man who wrote about 'gilded subalterns loafing luxuriously in cushioned cars in a giddy round of useless and pampered ease'?"
"Well, I won't say he wrote it, but he signed it. No single man living could write all the stuff Wuffle signs. It's turned out as they turn out cheap motor-cars. One man roughs it out, passes it to the adjective department, thence to the punctuation-room, where they sprinkle it with commas and exclamation marks, and then Wuffle touches it up, fits it with headlines and signs it. Oh, I forgot. Before it goes to press the libel expert looks it over to see that it isn't actionable."
"Anyway, he's the responsible party," said Binnie, "and I would fain have converse with the Wuffle. That 'gilded subaltern' bit was ringing in my head like a dirge the other night when I was wearily trudging the seven kilometres from St. Denis camp because there was no one to give me a lift."
That afternoon Frederick introduced his friends to Wuffle.
"Sorry we're late," he said, "but Percival and Binnie here have been engaged with the Pioneer-Sergeant discussing the best method of converting a whippet-tank into a roller for the tennis-courts."
At that moment a motor-lorry rumbled by, and Binnie, recollecting a passage in Wuffle's latest article about "motor-lorries rushing madly about with apparently no purpose in view," jumped excitedly to the door.
"'Magneto Maggie' leading," he shouted, "and 'The Sparking Spitfire' is just behind. Care to double your bet on 'Maggie' at evens, Percival?"