Buttons | Page 5

in the head. Almost with the flash and the crash Cottingham demolished the light globe with the barrel of his revolver and dropped underneath the table.
In the pitch black and the silence of the room not a man dared move. The lieutenant's wound was evidently not serious. He huddled there in a daze, but listening for a sound that would tell him the position of the Fritzies. He could hear the scurrying outside which the report had caused. It seemed as though they waited in this breathless stillness for hours. Perhaps it was two minutes.
Then some one shouted in the door: "Come on out 'ere, Fritzie, or I'm dingin' yer ter 'ell Three I'm givin' yer--wan--two--"
But Sergeant Sands never got to three. There was a tumult of yelps in that dugout, and those four officer Fritzies bolted through the little door into the waiting arms of the Bradford bombers with such haste that the undersized door couldn't accommodate as many as wanted to get through at the same time. Cottingham staggered after them.
"Have they got yer, Liftinint?" demanded the sergeant.
"Bit of a head wound," replied Cottingham.
"Are your bombs placed?"
"They are, sir."
"Fire them and let's go."
Another minute and the raiders went back over the parapet with two machine-guns and eleven Fritz prisoners, including four officer Fritzies. They were out of danger when the bombs exploded, wrecking the concrete emplacements.
After that the whole German line for half a mile burst into a sheet of rifle and machine-gun fire that forced them, prisoners and all, flat on their stomachs.
The terrifying and agonizingly slow crawl back to the British trenches to the blackest hour of the night seemed miles long. The sergeant half dragged the semiconscious Cottingham with him as they moved forward. Four of the men were seriously wounded before they finally gained the shelter of the little advance trench from which they had started. But that was nothing. "Another successful raid by the Bradford bombers," the dispatches would say.
And madame was wondering and worrying again about that Emilie. Never had she delayed when her time was up at the hospital before.
Probably she was flirting with one of the doctors--or perhaps, with one of those Tommee Atkeens who was hurt in that raid last week.
This last was a very shrewd conjecture, because that was exactly what Emilie was doing.
She was sitting on the edge of that unscrupulous Cottingham's cot pretending to be ministering to his needs when in reality she was submitting to his makings of love with great joy. On the white coverlet, all arranged in order, was a great array of military buttons. They were very precious, because this beloved Veek had been all the way to Berleen after them. Each time she counted them and found the correct number present, she watched her chance and kissed the defenseless lieutenant on the cheek or nose or the bandaged head.
"You know, Emilie," he said, "I brought back your Gottlieb as well as your buttons. Thought you might want him, you know."
"But no, mon cher Veek--I am content with only the buttons and--you."
2 RTEXTR*ch

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