y I come and made
a bolt for our lines.

"I meant to go straight to the B.C. post and report wot I seen to
the Major. But I hadn't the heart to, gentlemen, when I was up
against it. It was an awful charge to bring against an orficer,
d'you see? I told myself I didn't know but what the Captain
hadn't been taken prisoner and was makin' the best of it, w'en I
see him, stuffin' the Fritzes up with a lot o' lies. And so I
jes' reported as how th' orficer 'ad crawled out of the trench
and never come back. And then this here murder happened..."

Mr. Marigold turned to the Chief.

"If you remember, sir," he said, "I found this man's leave paper
in the front garden of the Mackwayte's house at Laleham Villas,
Seven Kings, the day after the murder. There are one or two
questions I should like to put..."

"No need to arsk any questions," said Barling. "I'll tell you the
whole story meself, mister. I was on leave at the time, due to go
back to France the next afternoon. I'd been out spending the
evenin' at my niece's wot's married and livin' out Seven Kings
way. Me and her man wot works on the line kept it up a bit late
what with yarnin' about the front an' that and it must a' been
nigh on three o'clock w'en I left him to walk back to the Union
Jack Club where I had a bed.

"There's a corfee-stall near their road and the night bein' crool
damp I thought as how a nice cup o' corfee'd warm me up afore I
went back to the Waterloo Bridge Road. I had me cup o' corfee and
was jes' a-payin' the chap what has the pitch w'en a fellow
passes by right in the light o' the lamp on the stall. It was th'
orficer here, in plain clothes--shabby-like he was dressed--but I
knew him at once.

"'Our orficers don't walk about these parts after midnight
dressed like tramps,' I sez to meself, and rememberin' what I
seen at the Hohenlinden Trench I follows him..."

"Just a minute!"

The Chief's voice broke in upon the narrative.

"Didn't you know, Barling, hadn't you heard, about Captain
Strangwise's escape from a German prisoners of war camp?"

"No, sir!" replied the gunner.

"There was a good deal about it in the papers."

"I've not got much eddication, sir," said Barling, "that's w'y I
never took the stripe and I don't take much account of the
newspapers an' that's a fact!"

"Well, go on!" the Chief bade him.

"It was pretty dark in the streets and I follered him along
without his seeing me into the main-road and then down a
turnin'