Books › Blue Book v026 n04 [1918-02], 1918 › scan 3
Scan 3
Blue Book v026 n04 [1918-02], 1918
18 lines. Read by computer on 17 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1For Honor
3Brice, Lieutenant Millett said, acted exactly as usual. He stopped only a minute and seemed to be in great haste, but while he was getting the handkerchief and money, he joked about his carelessness in leaving his quarters penniless and promised to assess himself a penalty at the officers' club on the first convenient occasion.
5Within twenty-four hours the Colonel had the city and county hospitals searched and the police record of accidents within the city limits combed to make certain there was no unidentified victim who might answer Brice's description. This produced only a negative result. The young man's fellow-officers did everything they could think of, without avail. After a few days the help of the newspapers was enlisted, but it amounted to naught. From the moment he sprang aboard the city-bound trolley-car, Brice might have dematerialized into the air, for all trace that could be found of him.
7June passed, and July. Army officers seeking relief from the heat of the Southwestern summer under electric fans and on roof-gardens, turned by degrees to other topics of conversation than the disappearance of their associate. Lieutenant Garnet Brice, after having been carried on the rolls for ninety days as "Absent," in accordance with regulations, was reported to the War Department as "Missing."
9In due time, and as a matter of routine, the lieutenants below him on the army list moved up a number, and his place was filled. Five years later there came a day when important increases were made in the army establishment, with the result that many first lieutenants became captains. The list of promotions extended far below Brice's old number. By that time all but a few of his army friends had forgotten him; his disappearance, once a common subject of speculation at the post, had passed out of most men's minds.
11Colonel Eldridge became a brigadier-general and was transferred to a post in the East. He had liked Brice, and he never entirely forgot him. He believed, of course, that the young man was dead; there was no other reasonable explanation. But where he died, and how—these were conundrums not likely to be answered, at least this side of the day when all secrets shall be made known.
13But Lieutenant Brice was not dead. He was in a light and care-free mood, that June evening in 1911, as he stepped briskly past the officers' houses toward the great gate of the post. He was in a considerable hurry because, just as he was almost ready to leave his quarters, a freshly pressed suit of clothes that should have come hours before had been delivered, and he had decided to change into it. So much hurried he was, in fact, that he completely neglected to change his belongings from the other clothes that he had donned when his day's work was done. So, happening to drop a hand into his pocket when he was seven or eight houses from his own quarters, he suddenly became aware that he had not a cent or a pocket handkerchief or anything else whatever but empty pockets.
15He had a military promptness in keeping appointments. He had told Mrs. Dassler he would be at her house at eight-thirty o'clock. Already there was a possibility that he would be late. He saved the minutes that would be needed to return to his rooms by dropping in on Tom Millett, who cheerfully and promptly accommodated him with money and a handkerchief. He went to town in the street-car, transferred to the San Sebastian Avenue line and rode to Huisache Heights. A walk of less than three blocks from the car brought him to the residence of Mr. Walter Dassler. As he ascended the steps, he smiled with satisfaction at the time he had made; a clock somewhere inside the house chimed the half-hour.
17Mrs. Dassler herself opened the door to his ring. She was a petite, vivacious girl of twenty-five, with long-lashed violet eyes which she used for desperate flirtations. This flirtation with Brice was her latest, although perhaps not her most desperate. It had been in progress barely a fortnight, and was giving much pleasure to both, without really being especially dangerous to either.
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