June 5, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
assured ii ae couia have detected m us composition traces of 
those cubes of ouion and garlic witli which the maker of 
Delikatessen tickles the coarse palate of the Hun. But an 
examination with the magnifying glass yielded no assurance 
on tliis point. Still it was a working hypothesis. 
Then he turned his attention to the scrap of paper. It was a 
piece of ordinary writing paper some three inches by four, but 
on holding it up against the light he failed to find any traces 
of a water-mark. He scrutinised the written characters and 
saw at a glance they were in a foreign tongue. He did not 
know a word of (icrmau although he knew that the language 
was not French. But he was struck by the prevalence of words 
ending in the letters " ch." Although the characters had 
been partly obliterated by the rain he could make out clearly 
the words'" bach " and " hoch." His pulses quickened as he 
rcilccted that the German tongue was notoriously a language 
of gutturals. Then he caught sight of the word " Strafe," 
and persuasion became a certainty. The fragment of sausage, 
inconclusive and insignificant in itself, added nothing to what 
WIS now a conviction, but undeniably it strengthened it. 
He descended the hill with a light heart. 
He knew that stern things lay ahead of him. For the 
uninterned German who chooses to play the part of spy an 
ignominious death is the inevitable penalty, and the man 
would in all probability sell his life dearly. But the A. P.M. 
was not a man to flinch. He telephoned through to his 
office giving orders to the sergeant that each man was 
to bring his revolver. Then he went to a chalk-pit some 
hundred yards from the village and fired the six chambers 
of his own revolver in succession to test the trigger- 
pull ; the weapon was in perfect trim though the pull was a 
bit heavy, and he regretted now that: he had not, as he had 
long intended, had the pressure reduced to six pounds. Only 
one thing remained to do — and he didiit. He sent off a code 
telegram to " Decency, London." It contained the following 
message : "' Have matter well in hand. Important' develop- 
ments. Will report to-morrow." ■■■,.:■ >, .-. . 
This was not strictly necessary, but you must remember 
that the A. P.M. was young and zealous. And youth does 
not like to hide its light under a bushel ; it prefers to let it 
shine before men. It is a venial fault. 
During the afternoon he rehearsed his plans for the night. 
He despatched his four men by different routes, avoiding the 
beaten track, with orders to assemble at a stunted beech-tree 
which was within a few yards of the place of his discoveries. 
They were instructed to keep completely out of sight, taking 
all possible cover so as to escape notice bv anyone who might 
be keeping the .open spaces of the hillside under the observa- 
tion of a pair of field-glasses. The A. P.M. himself approached 
the rendezvous by the most open route like any casual way- 
farer. They met at the appointed place at the end of half- 
an hour. Each of the men reported that he had seen nothing. 
They had carefully obser\-ed their direction and the A. P.M. 
felt confident that forty minutes would suffice for the night's 
advance. He therefore timed the start for 10.20 p.m. 
At the appointed time the four men, who had been disposed 
in such a manner that they formed an approximate circle 
with the beech-tree in the centre, slowly conv^ged on their 
objective and halted some hundred yards away. ,, The A. P.M. 
had arranged to simulate the plaintive cry of a. peewit as the 
signal foir closing in. They lay there for what seemed an 
interminable time until a rosy fiush in the East heralded the 
approach of dawn and a lark rose in the morning air. The 
A. P.M. began to fear that they had been observed. 
He decided to remain where ne was all the next day, keeping 
the men with him so that no movement of theirs on the hill- 
side shoald be visible to the secret watcher. One man was 
detailed as a ration party to crawl down the hill as unob- 
trusively as possible and bring back food and water. It was 
a tedious vigil. The sun beat down fiercely upon their heads, 
the flies tormented them like the seven plagues of Egypt, 
they had a most amazing thirst, and as he lay on his back 
the A. P.M. reflected that the attractions of a detective's career 
are greatly exaggerated in fiction. The sun set at last, 
sinking in a ball of fire below ilie horizon, and within less'than 
lialf-an-hour one man crawled in from his observation post 
a hundred yards away, and reported the approach of four 
men. The AP.M. was a Htt'le itaken aback at the number. 
He drew his revolver out of ifs hiplster a^d waited. 
His men had orders that n6'bj(^pd was to be shed except in 
case of extreme necessity ; it vv'^s impoitant to capture the 
spies alive, for they might bie the means' of ehciting valuable 
information. The newcomers were slow in arriving, but as 
Ihey approached their voices grew more distinct. They 
sp<jke a foreign tongue full of strange gutturals. And at 
times tluy uttered the letter " I " in a curious way as though 
they were clearing their palate with a view to expectoration. 
The .\.P.M. despatched his man to relieve another who was 
stationed nearer the doomed men ; , the other lieported that 
their conversation was unmlstakaWv German — be' had dis- 
tinctly heard the word " Strafe," though the rest of it was 
unintelligible. The four spies clustered together, and one of 
them suddenly flashed a lamp. 
At that movement the military policeman by the side of 
the A. P.M. tried to distract his attention in a hurried whisper. 
"Hush ! you fool," said the A. P.M. testily, and pursing his 
lips as though he were drawing at a pipe he uttered the shrill 
cry of a peewit. The A. P.M. and three of his men rushed 
forward noiselessly over the turf, the fourth unaccountably 
lagging behind. It was beautifully done. Each mihtary 
pohceman closed with the man nearest him, the A. P.M. 
catching his man with either hand around the ankles and 
bringing him heavily to the ground. He fell with him and 
as he did so received the impact of a huge fist in his eye 
which made him see flashes such as are not recognised in the 
Morse code. 
" Blast ! " said his victim, and as he struggled he poured 
forth a torrent of invective. Most of it was unmistakably 
English, but unfamiliar words hke "Duw "and ••Diawl" caught 
the A.P.M.'s ear and the accent was foreign and peculiar. 
Therefore the A. P.M., giving himself the benefit of the doubt, 
tightened his grip on the profane man's windpipe. 
■' Let me go now, look you. Yes, indeed," said a voice 
near by, as though the owner was trying to agree with his 
adversary quickly. " You have got your knee in my guts 
whatever. There's fooUsh you are, man. I was have a 
belly-ache. And for why ? Duw anwyl ! man, stop it I tell 
you." 
" It's the South Wales Borderers, sir," said the fourth 
policeman who had betrayed such indecision at the last 
moment and who now came up panting. " And I think they'\ e 
been doing signal practice. I saw the answering signal 
on the hill t'other side of the bay just now, sir. And I tried 
to draw your attention to it, sir " he added with gloomy 
satisfaction. 
The A. P.M. relaxed his hold, and the combatants rose to 
their feet. He had nearly strangled the Ufe out of a sergeant 
of a crack Welsh Regiment. The others rose also, including a 
mihtary policeman who, having been an ostler in private 
life, had been trying desperately to sit on his opponent's 
head, and was surprised to find that he still kicked. Serious 
things had been done upon the earth that night. • The 
penalty for striking a superior officer on active service is 
Death — and the sergeant had struck, and painfully. The 
penalty for an officer who strikes a soldier at any time is 
dismissal, and the A. P.M. had incurred it. Four military 
policemen had committed an unprovoked and aggravated 
assault on three inoffensive soldiers engaged "in the per- 
formance of a military duty — which is a tort, a misdemeanour, 
and also a statutory offence under the Army act. 
The British army is a wonderful thing. The sergeant 
of the Borderers gravely saluted the officer to whom he had 
given a black ej'e, andtheA.PM. returned the salute with no 
less gravity. The sergeant, with his windpipe still somewhat 
contracted by the pressure from his sujjerior office's finc;crs, 
proceeded to offer an explanation with the mechanical preci io i 
of a soldier giving evidence at a court-martial : 
" At^p.m. on tlie 2^h, 1 7mss ordered by the signalling offlzer 
of the lo^th Batlalton the South Wales Borderers to proceed 
to Winstone Point. I wass arrive there at dusk ." 
" That will do, sergeant," said the A.P.M. smiling bitterly. 
" I think I know the rest— which I can explain better than you 
can." And he did. 
As the A.P.M. retired down the hill with his picquet he 
thought deeply — this time deductively. The major premiss 
of his syllogism does not matter, but the conclusion was 
depressing. He could not stand the Sergeant of the Borderers 
a drink ; in an A.P.M. that would be conduct exceedingly 
" prejudicial." To offer him the price of one would be 
worse. But a little gift in kind— there would be no harm 
in that, just to show there was no ill feeling. When he got 
back to his billet that night his eye (the uninflamed one) Ut 
on a book which had been one of his dearest possessions, 
but which he now regarded with a hostile air. He had had 
it specially bound in tooled morocco. He packed it up 
and posted it to the Sergeant with his comphments. Its 
title was The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. 
• * * * « 
The Sergeant of the Borderers held his tongue— for 
obvious reasons. But one of his men must have talked. 
And as the sparks fly upward, the story spread from hut- 
ments to the orderlv-room, from the orderly-room to the 
officers' mess, from the officers' mess to Brigade H.Q., and 
from Brigade H.Q. to the H.Q. of the command, till it was 
noised abroad from Dan even to Beersheba. I have already 
said that an A. P.M. is more feared than loved, and that he is 
apt to be a lonely man. The A.P.M. was no longer sure 
that he was fearedbut he was certain that he felt \ery lonely. 
He has applied for a transfer. 
