said that his brain never tired and he had not
enough body to tire. He was one of the wheels of the great army machine
and loved the work for its own sake too well to be embittered at being
overshadowed by a younger man. As a master of detail Westerling regarded
him as an invaluable assistant, with certain limitations, which were
those of the pigeonhole and the treadmill.

As for Bouchard, nature had meant him to be a wheel-horse. He had never
had any hope of being chief of staff. Hawk-eyed, with a great beak nose
and iron-gray hair, intensely and solemnly serious, lacking a sense of
humor, he would have looked at home with his big, bony hands gripping a
broadsword hilt and his lank body clothed in chain armor. He had a
mastiff's devotion to its master for his chief.

"Since Lanstron became chief of intelligence of the Browns information
seems to have stopped," said Westerling, but not complainingly. He
appreciated Bouchard's loyalty.

"Yes, they say he even burns his laundry bills, he is so careful,"
Bouchard replied.

"But that we ought to know," Westerling proceeded, referring very
insistently to a secret of the Browns which had baffled Bouchard. "Try a
woman," he went on with that terse, hard directness which reflected one
of his sides. "There is nobody like a woman for that sort of thing.
Spend enough to get the right woman."

Turcas and Bouchard exchanged a glance, which rose suggestively from the
top of the head of the seated vice-chief of staff. Turcas smiled
slightly, while Bouchard was graven as usual.

"You could hardly reach Lanstron though you spent a queen's ransom,"
said Bouchard in his literal fashion.

"I should say not!" Westerling exclaimed. "No doubt about Lanstron's
being all there! I saw him ten years ago after his first aeroplane
flight under conditions that proved it. However, he must have
susceptible subordinates."

"We'll set all the machinery we have to work to find one, sir," Bouchard
replied.

"Another thing, we may dismiss any idea that they are concealing either
artillery or dirigibles or planes that we do not know of," continued
Westerling. "That is a figment of our apprehensions. The fact that we
find no truth in the rumors proves that there is none. Such things are
too important to be concealed by one army from another."

"Lanstron certainly cannot carry them in his pockets," remarked Turcas.
"Still, we must be sure," he added thoughtfully, more to himself than to
Westerli