down seventy-two
steps--backwards, or you hit your head--to a German room, which smells
German, and you will find my boudoir, furnished with sandbags, a
shaving mirror and a telephone.

At eleven o'clock I lie on the sandbags and, like the great hunter,
close my eyes immediately in dreamless sleep.

At five minutes past eleven the telephone-bell rings.

That is what I am good at. I leap to my feet and say "Hullo!"

Utter silence follows, save (as Mr. BEACH THOMAS would say) for the
monotonous drone of the great shells bursting outside.

I repeat my original remark. "Hullo!" I say brightly, "Hullo!...
Hullo!"

I shake the microphone. It sounds as though sand had got into it, and
still there is silence. The minutes creep on and my voice begins to
fail. Outside in the quiet night a solitary gas-alarm chirps a few
quiet notes to the stars and is still. I continue to say "Hullo!"

At eleven-fifteen the operator at the other end finishes the story of
what he said to her and what she, on the other hand, said to him, and
turns refreshed to his instrument.

With a dexterous twist of his wrist he sounds a deafening peal in the
bell at my ear, and says, "Hullo!"

I retaliate. When the score is vantage out, I put all the red tabs I
can into my voice, and his tone changes. He is at once the cheerful
and willing artisan, eager to please.

"Yes, Sir ... Yes, Sir ... Who do you want, Sir? This is Zed Esses Pip
Ack five, Sir ..."

"You called me," I say.

He is more hurt than angry at that. "Oh, no, Sir. You rang me up, Sir.
This is Zed Esses ..."

I nip that in the bud by saying "Hullo!" very loud. He realizes that
the game is up.

"Speak to Division, Sir," he says curtly, and clicks before I can
answer. A faint far gnat-voice says, "Is that Zed Ess?"

"No," I shout. "What the ..."

"Through to Division," says gnat-voice and clicks me off. Another
voice carries on the good work. Upstairs the shells burst playfully
on the parapet, and under the starlit sky a gas cloud drifts slowly
across the fields, almost hiding the cattle who are grazing peacefully
there in the long wet grass.

At midnight I am through to Division.

"Is that you?" says Division. "There is a list ..."

"Finished, please?" says the operator so near and loud that I jump.

Division and I are at one here--we are agreed that we have not
finished. Like the Brothers Crosstalk, we say so simultaneously, using
the same swearword.

The operator clic