pukka I'll ask your pardon and give you a dashed
good bottle of port. I'll trust him and I warn you he's a keen hand.'

There was nothing to do but consent, and I got in beside him with an
uneasy conscience. Supposing the son knew the real Blaikie! I asked the
name of the boy's battalion, and was told the 10th Seaforths. That
wasn't pleasant hearing, for they had been brigaded with us on the
Somme. But Colonel Broadbury--for he told me his name--volunteered
another piece of news which set my mind at rest. The boy was not yet
twenty, and had only been out seven months. At Arras he had got a bit
of shrapnel in his thigh, which had played the deuce with the sciatic
nerve, and he was still on crutches.

We spun over ridges of moorland, always keeping northward, and brought
up at a pleasant white-washed house close to the sea. Colonel Broadbury
ushered me into a hall where a small fire of peats was burning, and on
a couch beside it lay a slim, pale-faced young man. He had dropped his
policeman's manner, and behaved like a gentleman. 'Ted,' he said, 'I've
brought a friend home for the night. I went out to look for a suspect
and found a British officer. This is Captain Blaikie, of the Scots
Fusiliers.'

The boy looked at me pleasantly. 'I'm very glad to meet you, sir.
You'll excuse me not getting up, but I've got a game leg.' He was the
copy of his father in features, but dark and sallow where the other was
blond. He had just the same narrow head, and stubborn mouth, and
honest, quick-tempered eyes. It is the type that makes dashing
regimental officers, and earns V.C.s, and gets done in wholesale. I was
never that kind. I belonged to the school of the cunning cowards.

In the half-hour before dinner the last wisp of suspicion fled from my
host's mind. For Ted Broadbury and I were immediately deep in 'shop'. I
had met most of his senior officers, and I knew all about their doings
at Arras, for his brigade had been across the river on my left. We
fought the great fight over again, and yarned about technicalities and
slanged the Staff in the way young officers have, the father throwing
in questions that showed how mighty proud he was of his son. I had a
bath before dinner, and as he led me to the bathroom he apologized very
handsomely for his bad manners. 'Your coming's been a godsend for Ted.
He was moping a bit in this place. And, though I say it that shouldn't,
he's a dashed good boy.'

I had my promised bottle of port, a