But watching him was no use; you couldn’t tell how he did it. He spun twenty coins of different sizes on the table and palmed the lot with one swipe of his hand. You could hear them click into place on top of one another, but half a second later when he opened his hand it was empty. It looked logical and easy after that when he produced them, with his other hand, out of the pup’s mouth.
Then came the provost marshal, whose profession is to spoil sport and put the lid on entertainment. He had been brought away from an afternoon bridge-party, and was in a corresponding frame of mind—didn’t know me—didn’t want to know me—hadn’t time to listen to me—ordered Jeremy under arrest at once—and threatened to arrest me in the bargain if I had any more to say.
So I saw a way to help Jeremy once more out of a military entanglement and said a great deal fervently. But I was careful what I said and the provost marshal wasn’t. An officer in uniform, who has the law and regulations on his side, simply can’t afford to be abusive to a civilian who isn’t scared. There never was a military regulation yet devised that couldn’t be off-set somehow, as the Belgians proved to Von Bissing.
He did exactly what I hoped he would do in the end—ordered me put out of the hotel, added one or two remarks about my nationality, called me a slacker because I wasn’t in uniform, and strode away fuming.
Meanwhile, Jeremy had been marched off in disgrace, even so looking not at all dejected. His black cock’s feather danced along jauntily; and even the provost sergeant couldn’t keep the guard from laughing at his jokes.
“Try your Embassy again!” he shouted to me from the street. But the U.S. doesn’t keep an embassy in Cairo, and a consulgeneral has his limitations; our consul might have made it all right for me, but couldn’t help Jeremy. Bankers are the boys, when they’re your friends; and you can’t live several years in Abyssinia, making money for other people, without being on good terms with a Cairo banker.
There was a man of millions, whose head office was in London, who had instructions from my financial twins to do anything he could for me at any time. I found him in his office, and the rest was easy, although it did take a day or two. He sent for my effects from the hotel and put me up in his private house at Ramleh, pending a settlement.
There was nothing that I wanted—not even an apology. The provost marshal hadn’t gone an inch beyond his rights in having me turned out of the hotel; and as for bad language, I’m no schoolgirl; I’ve listened to a lot of it, and used some too. But—well, you know the difference between men, whose troubles are their own affair and serve ’em right, and the other sort, whose part you’ll take whether they deserve punishment or not? I’d have stood by Jeremy if he’d committed murder.
The solution was all the easier because my banker acquaintance had social notions and didn’t like that provost marshal’s manners; and you may believe it or not, but when a war is on, and the army, and army contractors need money every day, he who deals in cash across the counter has more influence than any ten ambassadors.
THREE DAYS AFTER the incident I went down, armed with an official pass, to the Australian camp near the Pyramids to see Jeremy, and found him in a barbed-wire enclosure in the hot sun digging a nice square hole in the sand under the eyes of a sergeant-major.
They had reduced him to the ranks for absence without leave, but weren’t content with that. A theory was being tried just then that drasticism was the only physic for Australians; so, for having dared to sit and drink in a hotel reserved for the higher caste, he was sentenced to dig ten holes, each to be exactly ten feet square and ten deep, in yielding sand and afterward fill them up again. He was still in the first hole when I found him; and because my pass expressly stated that I might talk to him alone the sergeant-major had to withdraw out of earshot.
Jeremy didn’t say much at first. He smoothed the side of the hole with his shovel, grinned at me, patted another rough place, and presently expressed his judgment of the British Empire. “I hope the Hottentots get London,” he said. “I’d like to see an army of our Australian Aborigines looting the Bank of England. And the thing to do with the Royal Family is to put ’em in cages and send ’em on tour with the circus. The fall of Rome was a penny squib to what I hope happens to England, and I’d help anyone except the Kaiser who had sense enough to take a crack at it. No use helping the Kaiser; he hasn’t got guts; besides, if he won, he’d be worse, supposing that’s possible. But to think I volunteered—just think of it! Me that belonged to the regiment that won the Boer War and took oath to see the whole British Empire into Hell before we’d ever fight for that crowd again! But what’s the use of talking? Wait till I get out of uniform, and see. That’s all!”
I helped him out of the hole, gave him cigarets, and we sat down on the sand together, facing.
“How about that fellow Grim you told me about?” said I.
“Would you care to join him?”
“Wouldn’t I! Grim is for Feisul, and so am I. But it can’t be done. They keep Australians for the fighting and fatigues. They’re using Feisul the same way—ditch him soon as the war’s won—wait and see.”
“I can’t get your rank restored,” I said.
“Don’t try,” he answered. “I’d stuff the chevrons down the throat of the first British officer I met!”
“But I know a man who can get you transferred to Akaba under Grim,” I went on.
“Then you’re my enemy!”
“How so?”
“For not having done it already.”
So I got his promise not to fall foul of any regulations, nor of any man—not even a sergeant-major until he should set foot in Arabia; and with that understanding I returned to my banker, who by that time had set three club committees by the ears and had cabled London and the U.S.A. Financiers don’t stop short of taking pains when they pursue vendettas.
The cables weren’t working very well, and it was another week —Jeremy had dug more than half his holes—before the General Staff began to realize my nuisance value. I received an official call from a major, who knew nothing of what had taken place, but supposed he could straighten the matter out over a couple of cigars. He began by saying he thought it very decent of me not to have complained to the consul-general.
But I followed the banker’s instructions carefully and the major left with the impression that the least I wanted was the degradation of the provost marshal to the ranks, together with personal apologies from all concerned to almost everybody in America. The banker, who was present during the interview, dropped hints at intervals about my financial connections.
The General Staff was busy and worried, and in no mood to pause in its stride for the sake of a provost marshal’s dignity. Somebody higher up told him sharply that he must straighten the tangle out himself at once, or take the consequences; so he took the only course left to him and sent one of his assistants to ask for an appointment for his chief.
On the banker’s advice, I wasn’t in. But the door was open between the two rooms; the banker did the talking and I listened. “You know what these Americans are—pig-headed men. Once they’re set on a course they’re hard to turn. This man is a pretty good fellow, but he’s no man’s fool to be pacified with a perfunctory apology.”
“What does he want, then? Does he expect the provost to walk here on foot with peas in his boots and call out Peccavi through the back door? He’s crazy if he expects a man like Colonel Gootch to come and grovel to him.”
“I don’t think it would amuse him in the least to see anybody grovel.”
“Well, what does he want?”