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“I was with them, first as an N. C. O., then as a lieutenant, up to June, 1917. Then I transferred to our—”

“Hold on! Hold on! You got the D. S. O. How?”

“Yes, the D. S. O. On the Somme, at Bazentin-le-Grand, for going out with ten men and cleaning up a machine-gun nest. I transferred—”

“Damn it all!” said Phil, “is that the best you can do with it? How did you do it?”

Stacey shook his head impatiently. “And then,” he went on, “as I said, I transferred to the American army and was made a captain. And I got the D. S. C. ‘for cool leadership and conspicuous bravery in action.’ ”

A sudden change came over Stacey’s face. It woke, as it were, to life—but to sinister life.

“I’ll tell you about that,” he said in a vibrant passionate voice. “I got the D. S. C. for carrying out an order that was sheer murder, for leading my company in a frontal attack against a perfectly worthless position over ground rotten with machine-guns. Not half of my men got off clear. A perfectly worthless position, I tell you, that we retired from next day because it wasn’t possible to hold and wouldn’t have done us any good if we could have held it.”