"Never mind that. 'Ow did you come to lose it?"
The sergeant's patience was wearing thin. Bill, who had now had time to think out his story, took a deep breath.
"Last I seen of it," he said, "I lent it to a chap in the Scottish Rifles what come into our dug-out one night—name o' Conky. 'E come in about twenty-past eleven, 'avin' lost 'is way, an' 'e sez...."
"'Ere," said the constable at the table, speaking for the first time. "Steady!"
"'Ow far 'ave you got with it?" asked Bill kindly.
The scribe, with beads of sweat standing out on his brow, and a protruding tongue whose tip followed the motions of his pencil, was writing madly.
"'Dug-out,'" he quoted. "Name o' ... what did you say?"
"Conky."
"That ain't no good," interposed the sergeant with severity. "Don't waste yer time takin' down muck o' that kind, Collins. What was 'is other name?"
"Smith, I think," said Grant, his fertile brain casting about for further corroborative detail with which to give artistic verisimilitude to his otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. "I can't be sure, though."