Over There with the Canadians at Vimy Ridge. Ralphson George Harvey
the tattooed colors in good condition. The nurse got me a little box and some salt, so everything is ready as soon as the doctor comes along with his saw."
"When is he coming?" Irving inquired.
"Sometimes this afternoon, he said," Tourtelle replied. "What do you think about it, Ellis? Will you do me the favor?"
"Sure," the private answered with a smile. "I'm sorry you're going to lose your arm, but I'll take care of your cubist art for you with pleasure. I'm really very curious to see what it looks like."
"I'd roll up my sleeve and show you, but I'm afraid I'd hurt my arm," the "second looie" said in response.
"Oh, no," Irving returned hurriedly, "I wouldn't have you do that for anything. But I'll kind o' hang around until the surgeon comes. If I'm not here right on the dot, the nurse'll be able to find me without much trouble."
CHAPTER IX
BOB'S LETTER
Irving almost forgot that there had ever been any difficulty between him and Lieut. Tourtelle in contemplation of the novel service he had promised to perform. Perhaps his remembrance of that trouble had been smothered by his curiosity as to the character of this tattooed copy of a "Basket of Eggs Spilling Down Stairs."
The surgeon came at 3 o'clock in the afternoon and got busy at once. However, before administering the ether, he acknowledged an introduction to Private Ellis and promised to "skin the tattoo off the arm" after the amputation and turn it over to its delegated caretaker.
Irving was permitted to be present during the operation. He watched with a good deal of curiosity for a first vision of the cubist art on the patient's arm, and was not at all disappointed. It surely was a clever piece of work, from the point of view of a votary of this sort of art. This was the conclusion of all who saw the operation, and it was the general subject of conversation until the arm was removed.
The surgeon took more interest in the subject now than he had taken at any time previously. This doubtless was due to the special preparations made by the patient for the preservation of the tattooed skin. While the ether was being administered by a nurse, he bared the wounded arm and examined the "copy of quaint art" with interest.
"What does he call this picture?" the "military sawbones" asked as he gazed at the seemingly unmethodical arrangement of distorted "cubes" of all sorts of shapes and angles.
The patient was not yet unconscious, although the nurse was dropping ether into the mask covering his mouth and nose. In a low dreamy voice he answered the question thus:
"It's 'The Basket of Eggs Spilling Down Stairs.'"
The surgeon and the two attending nurses laughed at this answer.
"His mind is wandering under the anæsthetic," said the surgeon.
"No, it isn't," Irving interposed. "He told you the same thing he told me. You see, he's a cubist. That's his idea of art. That tattooing on his arm is a copy of a picture painted by him when he was a student in an art school. That's the story he told me this morning."
The expression on the surgeon's face went through a motion-picture metamorphosis while the boy onlooker was making his statement. First it indicated a kind of professional resentment at the contradiction; then followed a wave of incredulity, succeeded by an enigmatical smirk. As he cast a glance of still-smirking amusement at young Ellis, the latter interpreted it to mean that he questioned the sanity of the patient.
"If I were to perform this operation in the manner that cubists execute their art, he'd probably want to sue me for malpractice," said the scientific man as he finished preparation for the use of the knife.
The operation was quickly performed, and the surgeon obligingly peeled off the portion of skin containing the cubist tattooing and handed it to Irving. The latter proceeded at once to pack it in the box of salt provided for the purpose, and said to the nurse in charge:
"I'll lay it here on the bed beside his pillow, so that he'll find it when he wakes up. Will you please call his attention to it?"
The nurse promised to do as requested, and Irving left the building and heard nothing more of the incident for several days. At last his shoulder recovered from its lameness and he was ordered back to the front.
Before returning to the trenches, however, he received a letter from his cousin, Bob, that stirred in him a thrill of excitement that no sensational activities of battle could have aroused. The affair thus revealed over a distance of thousands of miles confronted Irving with what seemed at first a most remarkable coincidence. But the boy was unable to accept it as such without first making an inquiry about certain suspicious circumstances. He suspected at once that something was doing that ought to be laid before army officials for investigation.
"I'm getting along first rate, Irving," Bob wrote. "My wounds have all healed. I was pretty badly shot to pieces. One of the bones of my left leg was pretty much shattered. They thought, at first they'd have to amputate the limb, but it was saved, thank goodness, although the knee will always be stiff. I had half a dozen shell and machine gun wounds in my body, too, though fortunately all of them were well removed from vital spots. But, although these injuries were as bad as one would care to receive, all of them together were not nearly as dangerous or uncomfortable as the dose of gas I got. Believe me, Irving, I don't want any more of that. If you want my opinion of it, I'll tell you I think it's more cruel than submarine warfare where they sink passenger ships without warning. The doctors thought for a while that I was going to have the 'con,' but I'm about over the effects of my dose now."
"Well, while I was convalescing, I had to have some amusement-I mean after I was able to be up and around, but hardly strong enough to shovel snow. Say, we've had some awful heavy snow storms this winter. Regular blizzards, with snow over your shoetops when you're standing on your head. That's snowing some, isn't it?
"Well, about the time I was able to get around without doing myself any harm-the gas effects kept me pretty weak quite a while, – I went up to Toronto to visit some friends. I was invited up there by one of the boys who was gassed at the same time I was. He and others had organized a 'Gas club,' consisting of fellows who had been gassed in the war. Grewsome idea, wasn't it? But it took famously. They wanted me to join, and I went up there and was initiated.
"Well, while I was up there, I saw considerable outdoor life. Several of us went hunting on snowshoes one day, and that capped the climax of my physical exertions. I ought to have been more careful, for I was not strong enough yet for such life. Well, I became ill on the way, and the boys got me to a hospital in the outskirts of the city and a physician examined me. The doctor said there was nothing serious the matter with me, only over-exertion in my weakened condition, so I did not notify father and mother.
"Two days later the doctor said I was in good enough condition to leave the hospital, but advised me to go straight home and not try any more such vigorous exercise until I was in condition to return to the trenches. This was in the evening, and I decided to remain in the hospital until morning. I was sitting up when the doctor called, and after he left I went out into the hall to find a telephone to call up my friend and tell him of my plan to return home next day.
"The building is an old brick structure that undoubtedly would have been condemned for hospital purposes if the interior woodwork had not been of the best material and well put together. However, the layout was decidedly old-fashioned and confusing to one accustomed to modern architecture. Anyway, I got lost, so to speak, in the hall while trying to find my way to the stairway.
"I found a stairway, but soon realized that it was not the one I wanted, and was about to turn back, when something caught my attention and held it for several minutes. I was on a kind of half-floor landing before an entrance into a low rear addition, and from that position found myself gazing into a laboratory in which something very strange was going on. Three men were in the room, one of them little more than a boy and in the khaki uniform of a soldier; the other two in civilian clothes. In the upper half of the door were two glass panels, through which I could see very clearly, and the transom over the door was swung partly open.
"There was something peculiar about the two older men which almost fascinated me. Both had a decidedly foreign look. One was smooth-shaven, except