He pushed the chart back on his desk and rose suddenly to his feet.
“Major,” he cried as the adjutant-general’s active figure entered the office, “we are all a set of ninnies. Don’t start and look indignant, sir,” he added in mock severity. “You are as bad as the rest, but Blynn there is the worst of us all, for he can’t do what he’s employed to do—you and I are only plain, blunt soldiers, while he is supposed,” with fine scorn, “to be in addition lawyer and detective; a regular secret service sleuth and all that.
“Here, read that,” he ended throwing the telegram on the desk. “You see it’s the same old story, and ten more men butchered through our stupidity.”
The general paced up and down his office with quick, energetic steps.
“I’ve a good mind to go out in the field myself,” he exclaimed, half to himself. “I am tired of these silly, costly blunders.” Then he glanced through the open door into the next office to his own. “Come here, Blynn!” he hailed.
A stout, dark-visaged officer arose from a desk littered with countless papers and came energetically toward him.
The older officer’s eyes roamed searchingly over his judge-advocate general’s strong, massive frame; he gazed with kindling eyes at the bronzed cheeks, the unbending directness of his black eyes, the firm set to the bulldog jaws. Here surely was no weakling. He waved his hand toward the adjutant-general, standing in stunned silence, the telegram crumpled in his hand.
“That may interest you,” the general exclaimed as he turned away.
“The information was first hand, sir,” Captain Blynn’s bass voice insisted after he had straightened the paper and read the unwelcome message. “There’s been a leak.”
“Of course there’s been a leak,” the general announced hotly, “any idiot would see that, but where? Where? that’s the question!”