to
have imagined that I could conquer McNab's steely glance!

"Superior then, if you prefer it."

McNab's eyes, which had glared with indignation, lost their fire and
assumed their normal expression of calm and relentless despotism, and
the red flag of agitated displeasure disappeared from his tanned face.
He seized with alacrity the olive branch (also another tankard of beer)
which I held out to him.

"The history of the British Army," he observed as he blew at his ale
"'minds me of a married soldier's letter to his wife. The most
interesting parts are all left out ... do you get me?"

McNab tilted his hat at a perilous angle on one side of his head, and
thrust his hands deep into his pockets.

"Touching upon some of those unwritten exploits of the Army," I darkly
hinted: "I'll bet I can find a brilliant historiographer not a hundred
miles away from the 'Three Nuns' who could dictate a few of 'em that
would fairly make the _Daily Mail_ turn green with envy--eh, McNab?"

"I know the brilliant bloke you mean," my friend conceded modestly,
"though calling me 'orrible names like that would brand you as a swanker
or a gentleman wot had left his manners in the hall in any barrack room
from here to Hindustan. When we were resting at Quality Street near
Loos, for example"--he paused a moment, and with a playful dig from his
banana-like thumb nearly knocked me on the floor--"why, name of a dog!
There you have a case in point!"

"A case of a swanker?"

"A case of one of those spies. We caught the perisher. Begad, we did!"

McNab put the red-hot end of a cigarette into his mouth, stammered with
wrath in a medley of international profanity at the unexpected warmth,
and would not be comforted till his favourite barmaid had placed a
slice of cooling lemon on his tongue.

"My first introduction to the entertaining sport of spy tracking," he
mumbled, "was at Loos, where I was sent with several hundred other chaps
to help push the Huns out of the Hohenzollern Redoubt. At the present
moment, as you know (or ought to by this time), I am a military genius
'ighly thought of at the War Office, a strategist Kitchener has his eye
on, and a model soldier quoted every day by my colonel as a shining
light to the regiment. But of course you must remember that a few months
ago I was practically a yob at the game, and now of the fame (and the
extreme shyness that seems to come with it) of my later avatar.

"We took over some temporary