“I know that. It was my doing. I wanted to give him every chance. I signed the order releasing him; but that doesn’t give him authority to arrest people and hold prisoners. I shall have to look into this.”
Jim hoped he would look into it, and held his tongue. Jenkins began to grow more obviously nervous every minute. The flatterers only irritated now, and he turned on them savagely.
“What are we all loafing here for? Is there nothing to do—no orders? You wait here a minute, Major Grim; I want to speak with you.”
The juniors remembered urgent business suddenly, and left in different directions. Jenkins, jerking at his buffalo-horn mustache, turned and faced Jim.
“What did you arrest Charkas for?”
“On his own confession of his part in stealing the TNT.”
“Um-m-m!”
The brigadier paced up and down the narrow room.
“What did he say?”
“That this is a full list of the thieves he has been employing.”
Jenkins seized the sheet of paper.
“Excellent! Excellent! We can seize all these men and they’ll be implicating one another within ten minutes. But you ought to have brought Charkas here to me before the provost interviews him. If this list is correct Charkas ought to be treated as a king’s witness and released after the trail. However, I’ll send this list to the provost with my compliments; it’ll make him wince. Did you get the iblis?”
“No.”
“Pouff!” sneered Jenkins.
Jim deliberately fed the fires of scorn, judging the man nicely.
“I thought I’d get some sleep, sir, and then go after him again.”
“Sleep! Sleep! ’Pon my soul! Is that an American habit, to sleep while your hunted man runs? All right, go to sleep then! I’ll attend to the rest of this myself. Good sunny night to you! Sweet dreams!”
But Jim did not sleep yet a while. He went first to Narayan Singh in the great hot hospital marquee. The Sikh was fretting in impotent fury at being out of action, lying down because that had been ordered, but tossing like a fritter on a pan.
“I am all right, sahib. My head hurts, but that is nothing. I was stunned for a few minutes by a stone from the paw of that black ape that calls himself an iblis; but it would take ten such stones all striking in the same place to make me give up the hunt. Catesby sahib, who is a precaution-wallah, ordered me in there and I obeyed.
“You let me out again, Jimgrim sahib, and turn me loose with a rifle and bayonet. I will bring back that iblis for you like a beetle on a pin.”
Jim had seen the doctor’s memorandum of the case.
“Do you want to go after him?”
“When was I ever chicken-hearted, Jimgrim sahib, that you ask me that?”
“All right, go to sleep them. When it stands written on your report card that you’ve had five hours’ sleep I’ll fetch you out of here and we’ll see.”
The Sikh promptly shut his eyes and lay down flat on the cot. But Jim had hardly turned his back before he signaled the Jat orderly.
“Oh, brother,” he said, “the doctor sahib will ask if I have slept, in order to write the report of it on a card. You know what the answer will be?”
“Always from me a truthful answer. So and so long you were sleeping—so and so long restless—so and so long talkative—so and so many drinks of water—temperature this and that. I am seeking promotion.”
“Ah! Do they promote cripples, these dakitars?”
“Nay. A man needs strength to lift great carcasses like thine.”
“If that dakitar learns I have not slept for five hours straight on end, you will be an orderly too badly crippled for promotion. This is my word. I have said it—I, Narayan Singh.”
The orderly returned to his stool by the door, grumbling about the trials of a man who seeks to rise in his profession, and Narayan Singh, with his mind at least quite relieved, dropped off into the land of dreams, from which he was awakened at intervals by the sound of Suliman’s voice behind the tent quarreling with two other urchins about the ever changing rules of chance.
At the end of an hour or two, when all the money in sight had found its way into Suliman’s pocket, the three boys sat back against the tent to smoke stale cigar butts and gossip. It was in that way that Narayan Singh picked up some information that he put to good use later on.
* * * * *
Jim meanwhile met Catesby coming into camp ahead of Ibrahim Charkas, who was in charge of the provost’s men.
“There’s one thing for you to do now,” he said. “Get conclusive proof of where you were on the afternoon of the third between four and five o’clock. The buffalo is going to blunder. I can see it coming.”
“That’s easy.”
“Get your proof then, and keep it absolutely to yourself.”
Jim still had one small errand before he could go to sleep himself. He went to General Anthony’s marquee, and found to his delight that Jenkins was there ahead of him. The Zionist-journalist Aaronsohn was in there too, looking horribly uncomfortable in a thin-lipped, calm and collected way. Jenkins was still holding forth.
“The evidence is all in. I’ve asked the provost-marshal to exert himself in rounding up that list of Charkas’ men. Charkas himself will swear that he was paid by the Zionists to steal rifles for them. The rifles were found in the Zionists’ store. What more do you want?”
General Anthony uncrossed his legs and recrossed them, tapping on his desk with a pencil. He said nothing—not at all a rare habit of his.
“I’ve one thing more to add,” said Jenkins. “I saw Charkas fifteen minutes ago. He tells me Major Grim has found the original memorandum from the R.T.O to me about the TNT that was stolen—found it in Charkas’ desk. Charkas proposes to turn king’s witness, and he vows he had the memorandum from Captain Catesby, to whom he paid money for it.”
Anthony looked visible distressed. Jim tried hard to do the same.
“Don’t you think we’d better cancel that parole altogether and order Catesby under close arrest?” said Jenkins stiffly.
Butter would not have melted in his mouth. You could tell at a glance how he hated to be mixed up, even in a judicial way, with such abominable misconduct in an officer.
“Yes,” said Anthony. “Yes, yes, I’m afraid so.”
He took pen and paper.
“One moment, sir,” Jim interposed. “May I ask a question?”
“Fire away, Grim.”
“Not you, sir; General Jenkins.”
“Well?”
There was fire in Jinks’ eyes, by way of reminder that he who can break captains can break majors just as easily. But Jim’s first words disarmed suspicion.
“About Charkas. He told me a long-winded story. I didn’t write it down, but from memory I should say it bears out certain points of which you’ve just said.”
Jenkins almost purred aloud. This was the handsome way to make amends. He there and then forgave Jim even that left-handed apology on the railway- station platform.
“Charkas told me among other things how he came to know about the existence of that railway memorandum. If what he said is true it may help cinch the case.
“He says you were