The Most Maddening Story in the World

The first man I met in my club was John Chester, M.P. It must have been
some time in the March of 1920, and I was just home from four years'
service in India. And to be candid I was not at all certain that I
altogether appreciated this changed England into which I had come. Some
things I did not at first understand; others I soon discovered would
never be in the least to my liking. But it was good to see John Chester
again, he, I knew well, would not have changed for all the wars in the
world. And to see him there, cool and dignified, in the well-remembered
grey morning coat, was like finding a piece of the old England which for
all those four years had for ever been in my mind.

He stared at me in that curiously magisterial manner of his, and held my
hand in his own for a rather longer time than Englishmen generally give
to the business. Then he took me away to his own particular corner.

"Since you went away," he said, "the powers that be have made many
astonishing discoveries. The one that chiefly concerns us at the moment
has reference to drink. I am sorry to say, my dear friend, that for
years we have all been drinking far too much alcohol. Far too much," he
repeated solemnly, and then smiled. "We are now forbidden to drink
during the hours when a drink is most welcome." He looked at his watch.
"H'm, just an hour and a half to wait. Well, that will be enough for a
short history of India during the Great War, with details of the Hunnish
plots you unearthed, and what the Amir of Afghanistan----"

I was lighting my pipe. "For four years," I told him, "I have been
soldiering after a fashion, and occasionally playing detective. I don't
want to hear another word about the Army or the Police. Both are
excellent bodies, but you can have too much of them. Here I am back in
my club and you're the first person I see. Doesn't that suggest
something to you? Don't you think that after four years away I deserve
something in the nature of a--story?"

"A story?" John Chester repeated the word with the air of a man who has
never told a story in his life. "A story from a man who has spent four
years of his life making crutches very slowly and very badly for
soldiers who had never done him any harm? What sort of a story d'you
suppose _I_ have to tell _you_?" But I could see that he was pleased.
There was that queer little twinkle in his eye--the preparatory twinkle.