"
Courtenay laughed. "There's a good many in the same British Army can
say the same as you," he said.
"I was in London when the flare-up came, an' bein' interested in
business I didn't ball up my intellect with politics an' newspaper war
talk. So a cable I had from the firm hit me wallop, an' plumb dazed me.
It said, 'Try secure war contract. One hundred full-powered available
now. Two hundred delivery within month.' Then I began to sit up an'
take notice. Y' see, I'm in with a big firm of auto builders--mebbe you
know 'em--Rawbon an' Spedding, the Rawbon bein' my dad? No? Well,
anyhow, I got the contract, got it so quick it made my head swim. Gee,
that fellow in the War Office was buyin' up autos like I'd buy
pipe-lights. The hundred lorries was shipped over, an' I saw 'em safe
through the specified tests an' handed 'em over. Same with the next two
hundred, an' this"--tapping his toe on the floor--"is one of 'em right
here."
"I see how the lorry got here," said Courtenay, hugely interested, "but
I don't see how you've managed to be aboard. You and a suit of khaki
and a sergeant's stripes weren't all in the contract, I suppose?"
"Nope," said the sergeant, "not in the written one, mebbe. But I took a
fancy to seein' how the engines made out under war conditions, an'
figured I might get some useful notes on it for the firm, so I fixed it
to come right along.
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