Well, I “referred” for some little time, and then, after a decent interval, made their acquaintance separately.  If anything was calculated to bring back memories of the lighter side of the War it was the gracious and suave manner in which I despatched and redespatched to other departments.  I might have been the buffest of buff slips the way I was “passed to you, please.”

Once again I cancelled all my work in the pursuit of where the rainbow ends.  Nor was this renunciation any great hardship, for I had been writing a book about the Realities of War, and had just found that all the horrors that ever might have happened had already been set down by one who saw most of the game, being an onlooker.  “But this,” I said, as I set out every morning—­“this is the life, pure adventure in every moment of it.”

My efforts were rewarded.  In late February three people came and left three coin-boxes—­in pieces.  Then I must admit that I did a foolish thing.  I wrote and said that I only wanted one box.  I was afraid that if I kept them all it would be, a case of “Thr-r-ree pennies, please,” instead of one.  (Mine is a penny district).

It annoyed them all.  They came and took all the boxes away again—­jealousy, I suppose.  So at the end of February I was back in my old trenches again and visitors were still saying, “Oh, do you mind if I ring up So-and-so?” and I was listening to myself answering, “Oh, do.  No, of course don’t bother about the twopence” (visitors always want calls just outside the radius; I do myself).

The crisis came in March.  It was then that I joined the criminal classes.  For many days I had haunted the telephone dump, taking a melancholy pleasure in watching real engineers come out with real coin-boxes for other people.  No Peri at the golden gate ever looked more wistful.  I know now that it is opportunity that makes the criminal, and one day the opportunity came.  It came in the form of a young and evidently new hand, who emerged from the dump and pitched upon me—­me of all people—­to ask, “Can you tell me where this place is?” As he spoke he began to get out a slip with the address, and in that moment my fate was sealed.  One glance showed me that he was the bearer of a perfectly good coin-box, and in a second I had seized the opportunity.

What he said I have not the slightest idea and it wouldn’t have mattered what the address had been; before he started I had assured him that by a curious coincidence I was going to that very place, and that by a still more curious coincidence I was the very man who wanted that coin-box.  Curious, wasn’t it, how such coincidences happened in real life as well as in books?