Unofficially

by Owen Oliver

UNOFFICIALLY

By OWEN OLIVER

AN unofficial rumour met two staff officers and a cavalry colonel and a subaltern of infantry as they walked toward the Engineer mess; and they turned back, one after another, doing by the Engineers as they would have the Engineers do by them. The rumour met Surgeon-Major Steel, R.A.M.C., also, but he went on. Unofficial rumours never became official through the doctor.

There was no light in the card-room, and no clicking of billiard balls when he approached the building. The verandah was strangely still and silent, but legs projected from three of the wicker chairs. Steel knew that they would be the legs of the Colonel, the Senior Major, and the Adjutant. He took the creakings of the wicker to mean that he had received three nods. He nodded and dropped into a fourth chair. A hand from out the darkness indicated a siphon. He took some soda and flavoured it with a little whisky, and then the Engineers knew that he knew. For Steel was a teetotaler on ordinary occasions.

"How much is it?" he asked.

"About two hundred pounds," the Colonel said hoarsely.

"The usual thing," the Senior added. "He let his foreman have the cash, and didn't look after him."

"He's straight enough himself, of course," the Adjutant observed.

"Of course," Steel agreed. "I saw him through the enteric. It's unofficial, I gather, at present?"

He lit a cigarette.

"I'll have to report it," the Colonel answered, after a gloomy interval. "It's a case for a court-martial."

Steel gave his cigarette an impatient wave in the air.

"The regulations——" the Second began.

Steel waved again.

"We know of it officially, you see," the Adjutant pointed out. "Of course, if he'd made up the money and said nothing—— He hadn't nearly enough. So he reported it to the Colonel."

Steel gave another wave.

"If it were only a question of finding the money," the Colonel muttered, "I dare say we'd manage it. I was with his father in Burmah, and with his uncle at Colombo. But one has no right to condone these—er—irregularities when they come before one officially. Young fellows are a deuced sight too slack about their accounts nowadays."

"It leads their men into temptation," the Second commented. "What can you expect of a non-com. with a family? They generally have about ten kids."

He helped himself to more whisky and soda.

"Jackson isn't a slacker, really," the Adjutant apologised. "The fact is, a Sapper is expected to be everything—soldier, builder, clerk of works, electrician. Then they clap on garrison duty, and expect a chap to be paymaster and paymaster's clerk."

"And to look after stores," the Second added. "Well, they've given us a quarter-master for that, but they expect us to look after him."

"And he's more cunning than a non-com.," the Colonel grunted. "Still, the boy had his duty to do, and it was plainly before him. I carpeted all the youngsters and warned them to look after their accounts. I suppose he had no gift that way. I haven't myself. But I had the sense to lock up the till even when I was a sub. It's much the same with you, I suppose, Steel? You've your patients to doctor, and your hospital to keep straight; but they make you enter up diet sheets and render returns of extras. They turn us all into clerks nowadays."

"But you don't have to pay a big staff," the Second suggested.

"I did once," Steel said.

"I'll bet your balance wasn't short," the Adjutant asserted.

Steel took a drink.

"It wasn't when the auditor took it," he stated grimly.

The three Engineers sat bolt upright in their chairs.

"If you could get into a mess with your accounts," the Colonel observed, "anyone might."

"Well, I did," Steel asserted.

"Not a mess like this," the Colonel said unbelievingly.

"A mess like this," Steel asserted.

"Did it come before the authorities?"

The Colonel said "authorities" as if every letter were a capital.

"It didn't," Steel replied, "or before anyone but myself and a certain wily Baboo—I hope he's hanged by now—till this very moment. He won't tell, and you won't. It was at Baschar. You know the hole, Colonel. I was single-handed. The Paymaster came into hospital with enteric. I took on the job of Acting Paymaster. I'd have taken on O.C., or governor of the province, pretty lightly in those days!"

"And done them both pretty well," the Adjutant commented. The Second said nothing, but he gave a grunt.

"Better than I could do pay lists! It wasn't just a case of wages lists for workmen, you know, but the lovely Indian Army pay list—interleaved, and a hundred and thirty-something columns, to cover everything, from an anna for washing Tommy's socks to twelve rupees for a coffin if he came to his end. I couldn't have compiled a pay list to save him from the coffin; and, if I had compiled one, I couldn't have balanced it. What was more, I couldn't check the balance when it was made by the esteemed Baboo who was head clerk in the Pay Office. He was a very learned gentleman, and had a degree or something. 'I confide upon Your Honour's appreciation that the computation and exhibition thereof is exemplary,' he told me; and the Paymaster assured me that it was waste of time to check him, and he never did. He was one of the old school. Poor chap, he went where you have to balance your own account a few days after I took over. A good many more seemed going the same way. I might have mastered the pay lists if it hadn't been for that."

"You would have," the Adjutant asserted, and the Colonel nodded. "You're that sort."

"Anyhow," Steel said, "I'm not the sort to turn from saving men's lives to go and tick accounts. I left the pay business to the Baboo entirely. He had paid the men and had held the duplicate key of the safe before my time. The Paymaster used to check the cash balance against the ledgers, he told me, because it only took five minutes. As he didn't check the accounts, and I couldn't, it seemed to me that the five minutes might as well be saved. So I let the whole thing rip, and went on physicking. I think I physicked pretty well. I gather that young Jackson built a pretty good bridge?"

"A—fine bridge!" the Colonel stated. "Still, discipline must be maintained, you know, Steel."

"He hadn't your excuse," the Adjutant stated. "I gather it wasn't an excuse, but a reason. I expect you didn't get six hours' sleep a day."

The Second kept a gloomy silence.

Steel cracked his fingers.

"There's no excuse for a shortage," he said, "to an auditor; but we aren't auditors, but men. Jackson built up a healthy bridge, and I built up healthy men. When I'd finished my building, I began to look round. I didn't quite like the look of things."

"Ah!" said the Colonel.

"Umph!" said the Second.

"Just so!" chimed the Adjutant.

"In particular," said Steel, "I didn't like what I learnt about the highly educated and admirable Baboo. He had too big a house, and he had too big a family—too big to keep so sumptuously arrayed out of his modest salary. He was too much respected among his compatriots—altogether too much respected. He was patron of this, and patron of that; the beggars salaamed to him as if he were a general. I gathered that he did a little money-lending, and owned a little house as well as the big one. I guessed at once that he had had his fingers in the till. But how was I to find out?"

"Take his balance!" the Adjutant cried, with the impetuosity of youth. "If it was wrong, you could run him in!"

"Only," Steel observed, "that wouldn't have put the balance right."

"No," the Colonel agreed. "Half a dozen courts-martial can't put back the cash that's gone!"

"It's the one thing that even you couldn't do, Steel," the Adjutant declared.

"Umph!" said Steel. "It's what I'd propose doing with Jackson's balance, anyhow! But I was telling you about my affair. After I'd been worrying over the matter for a week, I had a very official typed letter. I handed it to the Baboo to read. 'You see that the Comptroller of Accounts is coming to inspect us in three days' time,' I said. 'Of course, he will find the accounts all right.' He seemed a trifle perturbed for a moment, but he soon recovered himself. 'I call to Your Excellency's honoured remembrance that never has been a query on my accounts,' he said, with dignity. That was right enough. There were never any audit queries. So I suspected that he kept the accounts correctly, and that it was only the cash that was incorrect."

"You mean," the Adjutant suggested, "that he hadn't faked the books, but that the balance they showed wasn't in the safe?"

"I thought he hadn't faked the accounts themselves," Steel said, "but he'd probably faked the ledgers—entered them wrongly from the accounts, so as to show a false balance, you see."

"Ah!" said the Adjutant rather doubtfully. "Ye-es."

"I knew that, if he had, I'd never see through the fake, but the auditors would."

"Yes," the Adjutant agreed, with more certainty.

"I told him that I was sure that the accounts would be correct. 'And, of course,' I said, 'there will be no difficulty with the balance. I rely upon you.' He bowed with his hand on his heart. He owed it to my esteemed trustworthiness, he declared—he meant trust—that my dignified honour should not be derogated from to the extent of one anna in the balance. He would overcast his unworthy eye upon the venerated records, and see that all was 'in apple-pie,' he assured me. I overcast my eye upon him during the next few days. He appeared to me to be re-writing the ledgers, so I felt pretty sure that my guess was correct. I mean that he had rendered quite genuine accounts for audit, but had faked the office books to show a less balance in cash than there ought to be."

"It seems to me," the Colonel observed, "that you understand accounts a good bit better than we do."

"Oh," Steel said, "I read a book on double entry when I was on a trooper going home. It passed the time. Well, I saw him busy at the books; and, when I was out in the town, I observed him holding animated conferences with villains of his own colour. I recognised one of them as a money-lender. Also I watched him pass my bungalow on his way to the office one morning. He carried bags which appeared to be heavy. I had looked in the safe just before I spoke to him. The balance was then about three hundred rupees. On the evening before the inspection was due, it had become six thousand five hundred and twenty-one, plus some annas and pice! He insisted upon my counting it and comparing it with the books. The entries in these had a curious look of being made all at one recent time. It was clear even to me that the books and the balance agreed, and I told him so. 'Now we are in exemplary apple-pie, preliminary to the esteemed inspection,' he said, rubbing his hands. 'I shall trust to recognition on official record certainly of exemplary rectitude.' Do you know, I nearly spoiled the whole business—I had such an itching to introduce him to a swagger-stick. However, I didn't. I told him that I trusted that his exemplary rectitude might be recognised in the form of an increase of salary. 'By the way,' I remarked, 'I believe the officer is supposed to keep both keys, isn't he? You'd better give me yours, in case the inspectors should ask to see them.' He said that I was quite right, and handed over the key, exhorting me feelingly to keep it in careful custody. I locked it up in the safe, being satisfied with one. 'Now,' he said, 'we await with full consciousness of unimpeachable integrity the visit of the inspector.' We awaited with confidence, but the inspector never came.

"When I told the Baboo that the inspection was postponed sine die, he looked quite annoyed for a moment, but then he smiled blandly. It was well to have reviewed that all things were in apple-pie, he remarked, even at some noteworthy expenditure of his own unexampled industry. But since the inspector was no longer to be expected, I could give him back his key, and we could go on the same as before. I was tempted again to whack him with my cane, but I smiled instead. 'Not,' I told him, 'quite the same. I will look after my own apple-pie in future. I shall keep both keys. I have put my initials to all the balances in the new ledger. The old one was destroyed as unclean, I think, was it not? It could not have been for any other reason, could it, Ah Sin?' I called him that as a pet name. Some people will tell you that a brown man can't turn white. I tell you that he can. The Baboo did then. If I had not consciousness of his unfaltering integrity, he said, he would resignate his honoured appointment. I said he would not resign. He would be kicked out of the building. He was. But he picked himself up from the dust outside and told me that he regarded his dismissal as informal, and should send in his written resignation that afternoon. On reflection, I placed it with the official file. It saved explanations.

"He disappeared a few days later. There was a trouble, I gathered, about some loans which he had raised very recently and could not repay. The new Paymaster came up just after he left. He was an energetic young man, who plunged into the accounts and swam about in them, and read the office books as if they were novels. He said that he had never found things in better order, and the balance was right to an anna. He told me that I was wasted in the Medical Department, and that I was fit to be a paymaster, or even a paymaster's clerk!"

Steel laughed—which was unusual with him—and rubbed his hands.

"I don't deny that you used your opportunity cleverly," the Colonel said, "but you'd have been in a deep hole if that letter from the Controller of Audit hadn't come along."

"It was a bit of luck," the Second observed.

"Did you ever find out why they didn't come?" the Adjutant asked.

"Well," Steel said calmly, "I think it is explained by the fact that I wrote both letters myself!"

There was a sudden roar of laughter from the depths of two wicker chairs, and two depressed subalterns in a corner of the billiard-room rose and turned up the lights.

"If the Colonel can laugh," one remarked, "we may as well play a hundred. I bet old Steel has shown him a way of putting poor old Jackson's accounts square."

"It's a pity Steel isn't a Sapper," the other remarked. "He's an extraordinary chap. I shouldn't wonder if he understood accounts even."

"It's all very well to laugh," the Colonel said presently, "but Jackson hadn't the sense to square his balance. To tell you the truth, Steel, we can't make out now what it ought to be. We'll have to call in a Paymaster to make it out for us."

"And you can't expect him to be a party to squaring it up quietly," the Adjutant pointed out. "It's Othello's occupation, don't you know."

"He mightn't find anything to square up," Steel suggested, "if he went over it carefully. He might call in a personal friend to help him, I suppose—someone not connected with the matter officially? I'll run in and have a chat with him, if you like."

"Ah!" said the Colonel. "Well, of course, if the balance turned out to be correct—— He ought to have a chance of going over the figures to—er——"

"To eliminate clerical errors," Steel said.

"Er—exactly!" said the Colonel. "I'll give him till noon to-morrow, before I go into the matter officially. He may take it that when he mentioned to me—unofficially—that he had a difficulty in balancing his accounts, I ordered—I mean advised unofficially—that he should set to work and try to make sure how he stood before making a formal report to—to his superior officer, who would have to deal with the matter according to regulations. I shall, of course, if he makes an official report to-morrow that there is a shortage."

"Exactly," Steel agreed. "Exactly. I gather that he mentioned—unofficially, of course—that he was puzzled to the extent of about two hundred pounds."

"It was his foreman of works who named the figure," the Colonel said. "The scoundrel who—— Well, it isn't before me officially. If it were——"

He seemed to swell.

"Of course," Steel agreed. "Of course."

"As a personal friend," the Colonel observed, "not in any way as his commanding officer, if Jackson wanted a loan of a couple of hundred, I——"

"We," the Second, the Adjutant, and Steel corrected in one breath.

"We could arrange it between us," the Colonel said. "It would be purely a private matter. As to the rumours that I have heard about Jackson's foreman, if he applied for his discharge to pension, I should see no object in treating unofficial rumours officially. You will explain this to Jackson, no doubt, Steel."

Surgeon-Major Steel came out from Lieutenant Jackson's quarters two hours later. The Second was walking up and down the road. He turned and walked along with Steel.

"The old chief," he remarked, "is like a Government mule when he gets the official bit between his teeth. The more unpleasant a duty is, the more he regards it as a duty. Even you wouldn't have turned him, if you hadn't told him that story."

"No," Steel agreed.

"Or if you hadn't told it as your own," the Second added.

Steel stood still and looked at the Second.

"How did you guess?" he asked.

"Well," the Second said, "for one thing, I don't believe you ever kept that account; but, if you did, you kept it properly. For another thing, I heard that yarn in 1901, at the Garrison Mess in Pretoria. Three years before you were at Baschar, my son! When this row is settled, and the old boy has cooled down, I shall tell him—unofficially!"

The two men laughed, shook hands, turned to their separate ways. Steel looked back over his shoulder.

"It's a queer thing," he said. "They starch us with drill, and steep us in regulations, and swaddle us in gold lace, but we remain men—unofficially!"