THE WORLD WAR COLLECTION OF H. C. MCNEILE (SAPPER). Sapper
rudiments of it. And the third evening after my arrival, we sat down to our first genuine rubber.
"It was an electric sort of night: even the exertion of dealing made one sweat. There was a storm about, and every living thing seemed to know it. Not a sound broke the silence outside: it seemed as if a heavy blanket was pressing on one's head.
"Aldridge had just dealt, and Rogerson was on his left: don't forget they were absolute beginners. Aldridge called a spade, I think it was, and Rogerson, who was playing with me, was trying to remember what I had told him.
"'Now, I'm allowed to say two hearts,' he was beginning, when suddenly the silence was broken by the sound of church bells. The chimes came drifting through the open window and in my surprise I turned round in my chair. The thing was so unexpected, for I knew there was no church anywhere near. And the next moment I got a blow in the side that almost winded me. It was the edge of the table, pushed violently by Rogerson, who was standing up with the veins on his forehead like whipcord. 'Damn and curse that drunken sot!' he said savagely. 'How can a man be expected to think straight with that foul noise going on?'
"'Hold hard,' I remarked mildly. 'Until you very nearly winded me, I thought it was rather pretty.'
"'Sorry, Anstruther,' he cried, sitting down again. 'But you wouldn't think it pretty if you had to listen to that same blasted record over and over again night after night. It's enough to drive one perfectly frantic.'
"So it was a gramophone, and I asked who was the owner.
"'A man who calls himself Jones,' answered Congleton briefly. 'I'll tell you about him later. Get on with it, Rogerson: you ought to be used to it by now.'
"'One day, Congleton,' said the other, and his voice had an ugly ring in it, 'that record is going to die a nasty death. I say two hearts.'
"And so we went on with the game, while the church bells still continued to chime. Six times in succession was that record played, and at the end I confessed there was some justification for Rogerson's outburst. The monotony became maddening: one felt oneself on the verge of shouting—'For Heaven's sake, play something else.' But there was something rather intriguing about the whole thing, and I was not sorry when Aldridge got up after the second rubber and the two of them left.
"'What's the story of the gramophone player?' I asked my host.
"He pushed the whisky towards me and lit a cigarette. 'A fairly common one,' he answered, 'though it has one or two points about it that are of interest. Needless to say, his name is not Jones, though what it really is I have no idea. He arrived here about a year ago, pretty well done in, and as Mary was not here I gave him a shakedown for a couple of nights. Couldn't place him at all, and he volunteered no information about himself. But I soon found out that he was frankly impossible. Drink! Great Scott! old boy, his consumption per week would have floated a battleship. He seemed to have a certain amount of money, though where it came from I don't know, and apparently he still has since whisky has to be paid for. However, just as I was wondering how to get rid of him without being too rude, he settled the matter for me by saying he was going into the bungalow over the way. You can see the light now if you look through the window. It was in a very bad state of repair, but he didn't seem to mind, and he's done nothing to it since. Shortly after that I had to go on trek, and when I came back a month later I found him settled in. It was a little awkward with us being so close, for so far as I could make out he was practically never sober. Then one day a packing-case arrived, and that night the performance you heard this evening began. He'd sent for a gramophone, and some records, and from then on whenever he was not too tight to wind up the machine we were given a concert.
"At first it wasn't too bad; he varied the tunes. But after a time he became more and more set on the one he was playing tonight. How the darned thing hasn't got worn out, I don't know: I believe he must have got two or three of the same one. And one night when he'd played it about eight times, I felt I could stand it no more, and I went over to see him.
"'For the love of Allah, Jones,' I cried, 'give that tune a rest.'
"He was sitting at the table, with a photograph in his hand and a glass of neat whisky by his side. There was a filmy look in his eyes, and I doubt if he even saw me. Certainly my words didn't penetrate his brain. 'The river,' he said huskily, 'the river down Henley way, with the sun setting behind the hills and the sound of the church bells stealing softly over the fields.'
"'That's all very fine and large,' I answered irritably, 'but this isn't Henley. And the sun has set, and there aren't any fields—only a damned great forest. Can't you play something else, man?' His only answer was to switch back to the beginning of the tune, an operation which was not accomplished without difficulty. And then he started talking again—to himself, not to me. Honestly I don't think he knew I was there. And as I listened I learned the story of the man called Jones, and a certain pity took possession of me.
"There was a girl in it—the girl whose photograph he held in his hand. And there was no getting away from it, she was a fizzer. Evidently her people had a house on the river near Henley, and he and she had been engaged. Then she had been bathing one morning, and been drowned. Such, baldly, were the facts that I pieced together from his incoherent ramblings, and the rest was easy to fit in. It showed pitiable weakness on his part admittedly, but I could not help feeling a bit sorry for him. He'd simply let himself go, and the only thing left him was to get drunk and then, with the help of the record, dream that he was back again in a punt drifting down the river with his girl.' Congleton paused and shrugged his shoulders. 'He's a hopeless case: he can't last long at the rate he's going. And so I put up with it. At first it used to get on my nerves: Rogerson is passing through that stage at present. But now I've got used to it, and it doesn't worry me any more.'
"And on that we turned in. As Congleton had said, it showed abject weakness, but there was something a bit pathetic about the case. Drinking himself to death with a gramophone record as his only companion: one couldn't help being sorry for the poor devil. At the same time, I was frankly glad that it would not be my lot to have to go on listening to it ad nauseam. I was leaving two days later, and Rogerson was going on leave at the same time. And so the night before we started bridge was off, since he had to square up everything before he left. He'd been celebrating his approaching departure during the day, and when I saw him just before tiffin he was a bit sprung.
"'Got about two hours' work on accounts to do tonight,' he growled. 'And if that infernal machine tunes up, it'll be out of action for good.'
"A casual remark: I thought no more about it. And even when at ten o'clock the church bells started their nightly chime I had no premonition of trouble. Congleton was giving me one or two commissions to do for him in Rangoon: the record was half-way through, and then it happened. Six revolver shots rang out in rapid succession: the gramophone stopped: there was dead silence.
"But only for a few seconds: then there came a yell of such maniacal fury that we both sprang to our feet. It was followed by a heavy crash, and a grunting noise like a beast worrying its quarry. 'Quick!' shouted Congleton. 'This is serious.' We raced across the road to Joneses' bungalow, and the sight that met our eyes pulled us up short for a moment. Lying on the floor was Rogerson. He was unconscious, with a huge lump already forming on his forehead. Bending over him, making animal noises in his throat, was Jones. His hands were embedded in the flesh of the big man's throat: he was strangling him before our eyes. It took both of us all we knew to pull him off: he was mad drunk and fought like a tiger. In fact, it wasn't till Congleton caught him a beauty on the point of the jaw, and laid him out good and proper, that we could breathe again. Then we took stock of the room, which looked as if a bull elephant had run amok in it.
"In one corner was the gramophone splintered to bits, with the over-turned table beside it. Rogerson's revolver was by the door, and a broken bottle lay at his side, from which a pool of whisky had spread all over his clothes. Jones, his shirt ripped off, sprawled face downwards in the centre of the room, breathing stertorously. The jolt on the chin on top of the whisky he'd drunk would keep him quiet for some time, and so we straightened things up a bit, laid him on the bed, and turned our attention to Rogerson. He was still unconscious, and the bump on his forehead had grown to the size of a grape-fruit.
"'Caught