at the rear.
“Glad to see you, Grim. Sit down. General Kettle was here this morning. He gave you some orders himself, I believe?”
“I’ve apologized already.”
“Good. You’re in my bad books, though. I was absent in Egypt when that TNT was lost. That gave Jenkins a chance to shift the blame, and he made the most of it. Now, thanks to your recovering the stuff and your block-headed idiocy in falling foul of him, Jenkins gets a new lease.
“Between you and me, Grim, he is one of those—politicians. Friends in the War Office, you know, and all that kind of thing.
“There seems no way of getting rid of him. He reached his present eminence by being recommended for promotion by one C.O. after another, who couldn’t endure him by didn’t want to quarrel with his powerful friends.
“His career is one long story of innocent fellows punished or broke to hide his shortcomings. Now, thanks to your infernal hot temper, he looks like breaking poor young Catesby, who’s an efficient young officer.
“You’re the logical man to have followed up that TNT business. You had it in hand and were successful beyond expectation. If you’d held your idiotic tongue, instead of telling Jenkins what you thought of him, I could have turned you loose down here, and what with his dislike of you and your brains I don’t doubt he’d have tripped himself out of the Army in a week or so.
“But imagine what a whip hand it would give Jenkins over me if it transpired that I had proceeded against him on charges brought by a major who had been ordered to apologize to him for insubordination only a few days before! Do you see what your hotheadedness has done?
“Now I won’t hear a word from you against Jenkins—not one word! You’re to investigate the thieving that’s going on down here, but I shall make a point of telling Jenkins myself this afternoon that you are here in his interest as much as anyone’s.
“Now—is there anything I can do to simplify matters for you in any way?”
“I ought to have Catesby’s assistance, sir.”
“But he’s under arrest.”
“Catesby needs time and opportunity to hunt up evidence in his own defense, sir.”
“He has made no such request to me. It would have to come from him, not you.”
“I’m his next friend. If it comes to a court martial I shall defend him.”
“I see. You propose to ignore my wigging and fall foul of the brigadier in that way, don’t you?”
“Absolutely no, sir! I’ll carry out your orders to the letter.”
“All right; I’ll trust you. A note shall go to Jenkins asking him to release Captain Catesby’s parole for fourteen days to enable him to look up evidence. Anything else?”
“You’ve heard of the iblis, of course?”
“The leper who dances in the moonlight? Yes. He’s quite a problem. I was for having him hunted and bagged alive. The P.M.O. wants him interned as a danger to the health of the whole neighborhood, though where the—he’d intern him I don’t know. But some politician has been pulling strings. It seems the leper is a religious mystic held in high regard by the Moslems, and orders have come that he’s not to be interfered with.”
“They say in the lines that this iblis is the captain of the thieves.”
“I know they do. I’ve known of things ten times more improbable.”
“In that case,” said Jim, “whatever politician pulled the strings is probably interested in the thieving.”
“The order to let the leper alone came from Egypt.”
“Why not override it on the ground of military expediency?”
“Because, the war’s over, Grim, and the politicians are getting the upper hand. The way is being paved for civil government, and for every once that I override the political department I get ten defeats. I’m disposed now to let the politicians mix their own litter and lie in it.”
Jim was a lot too wise to ask permission after that to tackle the iblis. It was sufficient that he had no orders not to tackle him. But he was more mystified than ever. Just as Sir Henry Kettle had done that morning, General Anthony seemed to be deliberately leaving the course unobstructed which, if Jim could find it, might lead to Jenkins’ undoing. Why in thunder couldn’t they tackle Jenkins outright, he wondered.
* * * * *
He went straight to Jenkins’ ten and sent his name in by the orderly, but was kept waiting five minutes while the brigadier whistled a tune; for there is nothing like cooling a junior’s heels, according to some folk.
“Can you tell me anything, sir, that might lead to the discovery of who stole the TNT?” he asked when he was admitted.
“Hah! So our wonderful, astute American has come for assistance, eh? I thought you were such an expert intelligence officer that you never needed anyone’s advice? Glad to come to me after all, eh? What anticlimax! I dare say you wish now you’d made that apology a little more humble and less technical?”
There was no one else in the tent, although there might have been some eavesdropper listening behind it, for Jenkins knew no limits when his own advantage was in question. Jim took a grip on himself, and smiled.
“I’ve been rebuked twice this morning for what I said to you the other day. Twice I’ve pledged myself to make amends, if I can, buy getting all possible credit for you out of the clearing up of this thieving business.”
“Oh!”
If there was one thing more than another on which Brigadier-General Jenkins prided himself it was his ability to read men and take advantage of their peculiarities. Next to that he considered his claim to success lay in swift appraisal of subsurface reasons—political judgement in other words.
Jim Grim he assessed as one of those slaves of integrity, who value their own word above all other considerations; a slave, moreover, who had no influential backing. He did not doubt that whatever Jim had promised to do he would do, whoever might be discommoded in the process. There were only two men who could have made Jim promise—Kettle and Anthony—and only someone higher up still who could have actuated them; therefore somebody attached to headquarters in Cairo must have been pulling more than usually effective strings.
There might even have come definite instructions from the Foreign Office in London that the way must be paved for Brigadier-General Jenkins’ appointment to a civil post. The day of civil government was rapidly approaching. He himself had worked all the backstairs wires. There were more unlikely things.
Jenkins was no simpleton. He understood perfectly that both Kettle and Anthony detested and despised him; and, blinded by his own conceit, he supposed they would be willing to praise him with their tongues in their cheeks in order to get rid of him.
“Soho!” he remarked, and whistled a bar or two.
Jim, loathing him, skin, bone and stuffing, stood with a straight face, waiting while the brigadier turned his
