The Last Shot | Page 9

for
the end of service. His subordinates, whose respect he held by the
power of his intellect, said that his brain never tired and he had not
enough body to tire. He was one of the wheels of the great army
machine and loved the work for its own sake too well to be embittered
at being overshadowed by a younger man. As a master of detail
Westerling regarded him as an invaluable assistant, with certain
limitations, which were those of the pigeonhole and the treadmill.
As for Bouchard, nature had meant him to be a wheel-horse. He had
never had any hope of being chief of staff. Hawk-eyed, with a great
beak nose and iron-gray hair, intensely and solemnly serious, lacking a
sense of humor, he would have looked at home with his big, bony
hands gripping a broadsword hilt and his lank body clothed in chain
armor. He had a mastiff's devotion to its master for his chief.
"Since Lanstron became chief of intelligence of the Browns
information seems to have stopped," said Westerling, but not
complainingly. He appreciated Bouchard's loyalty.
"Yes, they say he even burns his laundry bills, he is so careful,"
Bouchard replied.
"But that we ought to know," Westerling proceeded, referring very
insistently to a secret of the Browns which had baffled Bouchard. "Try
a woman," he went on with that terse, hard directness which reflected
one of his sides. "There is nobody like a woman for that sort of thing.
Spend enough to get the right woman."
Turcas and Bouchard exchanged a glance, which rose suggestively
from the top of the head of the seated vice-chief of staff. Turcas smiled
slightly, while Bouchard was graven as usual.
"You could hardly reach Lanstron though you spent a queen's ransom,"
said Bouchard in his literal fashion.

"I should say not!" Westerling exclaimed. "No doubt about Lanstron's
being all there! I saw him ten years ago after his first aeroplane flight
under conditions that proved it. However, he must have susceptible
subordinates."
"We'll set all the machinery we have to work to find one, sir,"
Bouchard replied.
"Another thing, we may dismiss any idea that they are concealing either
artillery or dirigibles or planes that we do not know of," continued
Westerling. "That is a figment of our apprehensions. The fact that we
find no truth in the rumors proves that there is none. Such things are
too important to be concealed by one army from another."
"Lanstron certainly cannot carry them in his pockets," remarked Turcas.
"Still, we must be sure," he added thoughtfully, more to himself than to
Westerling, who had already turned his attention to a document which
Turcas had laid on the desk.
"A recommendation by the surgeon-in-chief," said Turcas, "for a new
method of prompt segregation of ghastly cases among the wounded. I
have put it in the form of an order. If reserves coming into action see
men badly lacerated by shell fire it is bound to make them
self-conscious and affect morale."
"Yes," Westerling agreed. "If moving pictures of the horrors of Port
Arthur were to be shown in our barracks before a war, it would hardly
encourage martial enthusiasm. I shall look this over and then have it
issued. It will not be necessary to wait on action of the staff in council."
Turcas and Bouchard exchanged another glance. They had fresh
evidence of Westerling's tendency to concentrate authority in himself.
"The 128th Regiment has been ordered to South La Tir, but no order
yet given for the 132d, whose place it takes," Turcas went on.
"Let it remain for the present!" Westerling replied.

After they had withdrawn, the look that passed between Turcas and
Bouchard was a pointed question. The 132d to remain at South La Tir!
Was there something more than "newspaper talk" in this latest
diplomatic crisis between the Grays and the Browns? Westerling alone
was in the confidence of the premier of late. Any exchange of ideas
between the two subordinates would be fruitless surmise and against
the very instinct of staff secrecy, where every man knew only his work
and asked about no one else's.
Westerling ran through the papers that Turcas had prepared for him. If
Turcas had written the order for the wounded, Westerling knew that it
was properly done. Having cleared his desk into the hands of his
executive clerk, he looked at the clock. It had barely turned four. He
picked up the final staff report of observations on the late Balkan
campaign, just printed in book form, glanced at it and laid it aside.
Already he knew the few lessons afforded by this war "done on the
cheap," with limited equipment and over bad roads. No dirigibles had
been used and few planes. It was no criterion, except in the