Chapter II

“Atcha, Jimgrim sahib! Atcha!”

That conversation and Jeremy’s conversion to the big idea took place on the way across the desert to Jerusalem--a journey that took us a week on camel-back--a rowdy, hot journey with the stifling simoom blowing grit into our followers’ throats, who sang and argued alternately nevertheless. For, besides our old Ali Baba and his sixteen sons and grandsons, there were Jeremy’s ten pickups from Arabia’s byways, whom he couldn’t leave behind because they knew the secret of his gold-mine.

Grim’s authority is always at its height on the outbound trail, for then everybody knows that success, and even safety, depends on his swift thinking; on the way home afterward reaction sets in sometimes, because Arabs are made light-headed by success, and it isn’t a simple matter to discipline free men when you have no obvious hold over them.

But that was where Jeremy came in. Jeremy could do tricks, and the Arabs were like children when he performed for them. They would be good if he would make one live chicken into two live ones by pulling it apart. They would pitch the tents without fighting if he would swallow a dozen eggs and produce them presently from under a camel’s tail. If he would turn on his ventriloquism and make a camel say its prayers, they were willing to forgive--for the moment anyhow--even their nearest enemies.

So we became a sort of travelling sideshow, with Jeremy ballyhooing for himself in an amazing flow of colloquial Arabic, and hardly ever repeating the same trick.

All of which was very good for our crowd and convenient at the moment, but hardly so good for Jeremy’s equilibrium. He is one of those handsome, perpetually youthful fellows, whose heads have been a wee mite turned by the sunshine of the world’s warm smile. I don’t mean by that that he isn’t a tophole man, or a thorough-going friend with guts and gumption, who would chance his neck for anyone he likes without a second’s hesitation, for he’s every bit of that. He has horse sense, too, and isn’t fooled by the sort of flattery that women lavish on men who have laughing eyes and a little dark moustache.

But he hasn’t been yet in a predicament that he couldn’t laugh or fight his way out of; he has never yet found a job that he cared to stick at for more than a year or two, and seldom one that could hold him for six months.

He jumps from one thing to another, finding all the world so interesting and amusing, and most folk so ready to make friends with him, that he always feels sure of landing softly somewhere over the horizon.

So by the time we reached Jerusalem friend Jeremy was ripe for almost anything except the plan we had agreed on. Having talked that over pretty steadily most of the way from Abu Kem, it seemed already about as stale and unattractive to him as some of his oldest tricks. And Jerusalem provided plenty of distraction. We hadn’t been in Grim’s quarters half an hour when Jeremy was up to his ears in a dispute that looked like separating us.

Grim, who wears his Arab clothes from preference and never gets into uniform if he can help it, went straight to the telephone to report briefly to headquarters. I took Jeremy upstairs to discard my Indian disguise and hunt out clothes for Jeremy that would fit him, but found none, I being nearly as heavy as Grim and Jeremy together. He had finished clowning in the kit I offered him, and had got back into his Arab things while I was shaving off the black whiskers with which Nature adorns my face whenever I neglect the razor for a few days, when an auto came tooting and roaring down the narrow street, and a moment later three staff officers took the stairs at a run. So far, good; that was unofficial, good-natured, human and entirely decent. The three of them burst through the bed room door, all grins, and took turns pumping with Jeremy’s right arm--glad to see him--proud to know him--pleased to see him looking fit and well, and all that kind of thing. Even men who had fought all through the war had forgotten some of its red tape by that time, and Jeremy not being in uniform they treated him like a fellow human being. And he reciprocated, Australian fashion, free and easy, throwing up his long legs on my bed and yelling for somebody to bring drinks for the crowd, while they showered questions on him.

It wasn’t until Jeremy turned the tables and began to question them that the first cloud showed itself.

“Say, old top,” he demanded of a man who wore the crossed swords of a brigadier. “Grim tells me I’m a trooper. When can I get my discharge?”

The effect was instantaneous. You would have thought they had touched a leper by the way they drew themselves up and changed face.

“Never thought of that. Oh, I say--this is a complication. You mean... ?”

“I mean this,” Jeremy answered dryly, because nobody could have helped notice their change of attitude: “I was made prisoner by Arabs and carried off. That’s more than three years ago. The war’s over. Grim tells me all Australians have been sent home and discharged. What about me?”

“Um-m-m! Ah! This will have to be considered. Let’s see; to whom did you surrender?”

“Damn you, I didn’t surrender! I met Grim in the desert, and reported to him for duty.”

“Met Major Grim, eh?”

“Yes,” said Grim, appearing in the door. “I came across him in the desert; he reported for duty; I gave him an order, and he obeyed it. Everything’s regular.”

“Um-m-m! How’d you make that out--regular? Have you any proof he wasn’t a deserter? He’ll have to be charged with desertion and tried by court martial, I’m afraid. Possibly a mere formality, but it’ll have to be done, you know, before he can be given a clear discharge. If he can’t be proved guilty of desertion he’ll be cleared.”

“How long will that take?” Jeremy demanded.

His voice rang sharp with the challenge note that means debate has ceased and quarrel started. It isn’t the right note for dissolving difficulties.

“Couldn’t tell you,” said the brigadier. “My advice to you is to keep yourself as inconspicuous as possible until the administrator gets back.”

It was good advice, but Grim, standing behind the brigadier, made signals to Jeremy in vain. Few Australians talk peace when there is no peace, and when there’s a fight in prospect they like to get it over.

“I remember you,” said Jeremy, speaking rather, slowly, and throwing in a little catchy laugh that was like a war-cry heard through a microphone. “You were the Fusileer major they lent to the Jordan Highlanders--fine force that--no advance without security--lost two men, if I remember--snakebite one; the other shot for looting. Am I right? So they’ve made you a brigadier! Aren’t you the staff officer they sent to strafe a regiment of Anzacs for going into action without orders? We chased you to cover! I can see you now running for fear we’d shoot you! Hah!”

Grim took the only course possible in the circumstances. The brigadier’s neck was crimson, and Jeremy had to be saved somehow.

“Touch of sun, sir--that and hardship have unhinged him a bit. Suffers from delusions. Suppose I keep him here until the doctor sees him?”

“Um-m-m! Ah! Yes, you’d better. See he gets no whisky, will you? Too bad! Too bad! What a pity!”

Our three visitors left in a hurry, contriving to look devilish important. Grim followed them out.

“Rammy, old cock,” said Jeremy, sprawling on the bed again and laughing, “don’t look all that serious. Bring back your brigadier and I’ll kiss him on both cheeks while you hold him! But say; suppose that doctor’s one of these swabs who serve out number nine pills for shell-shock, broken leg, dyspepsia, housemaid’s knee and the creeping itch? Suppose he swears I’m luny? What then?”

“Grim will find somebody to swear to anything once,” I answered. “But you look altogether too dashed healthy--got to give the doctor-man a chance--here, get between the sheets and kid that something hurts you.”

“Get out! The doc ‘ud put a cast-iron splint on it, and order me into a hospital. How about toothache? That do? Do they give you bread and water for it?”

So toothache was selected as an alibi, and Jeremy wrapped his jaw in a towel, after jabbing his cheek with a pin so as to remember on which side the pain should be. But it was artifice wasted, for Grim had turned a better trick. He had found an Australian doctor in the hospital for Sikhs--the only other Australian in Jerusalem just then-- and brought him cooee-ing upstairs in a way that proved he knew the whole story already.

The autopsy, as he called it, was a riot. We didn’t talk of anything but fights at Gaza--the surprise at Nazareth, when the German General Staff fled up the road on foot in its pyjamas--the three-day scrap at Nebi Samwil, when Australians and Turks took and retook the same hill half a dozen times, and parched enemies took turns drinking from one flask while the shells of both sides burst above them. It seems to have been almost like old-fashioned war in Palestine from their account of it, either side conceding that the other played the game.

When they had thrashed the whole campaign over from start to finish, making maps on my bed with hair brushes, razors and things, they got to talking of Australia; and that was all about fighting too: dog fights, fist fights between bullockies on the long road from Northern Queensland, riots in Perth when the pearlers came in off the Barrier Reef to spend their pay, rows in the big shearing sheds when the Union men objected to unskilled labour--you’d have thought Australia was one big battlefield, with nothing else but fights worth talking of from dawn till dark.

The doctor was one of those tightly-knit, dark-complexioned little men with large freckles and brown eyes, who surprise you with a mixture of intense domestic virtue and a capacity, that shouldn’t mix with it at all, for turning up in all the unexpected places. You meet his sort everywhere, and they always have a wife along, who worships them and makes a home out of tin cans and packing-cases that would put the stay-at-home housekeepers to shame. They always have a picture on the wall of cows standing knee-deep in the water, and no matter what their circumstances are, there’s always something in reserve, for guests, offered frankly without apology. Never hesitate with those folk, but don’t let them go too far, for they’ll beggar themselves to help you in a tight place, if you’ll let them. Ticknor his name was. He’s a good man.

“Say, Grim, there’s a case in the Sikh hospital that ought to interest you,” he said at last. “Fellow from Damascus--Arab--one of Feisul’s crowd. He wouldn’t let them take him to the Zionist hospital--swore a Jew knifed him and that the others would finish the job if they got half a chance. They’d have been arguing yet, and he dead and buried, if I hadn’t gone shopping with Mabel. She saw the crowd first (I was in Noureddin’s store) and jabbed her way in with her umbrella--she yelled to me and I bucked the line.

“The Jews wanted to tell me I had no right to take that chap to the Sikh hospital, and no more had I; so I plugged him up a bit, and put him in a cab, and let him take himself there, Mabel and me beside him. Seeing I was paying for the cab, I didn’t see why Mabel should walk. Of course, once we had him in there he was too sick to be moved; but the Army won’t pay for him, so I sent a bill to the Zionists, and they returned it with a rude remark on the margin. Maybe I can get the money out of Feisul some day; otherwise I’m stuck.”

“I’ll settle that,” said Grim. “What’s the tune he plays?”

“Utter mystery. Swears a Jew stabbed him, but that Damascus outfit blame the Jews for everything. He’s only just down from Damascus. I think he’s one of Feisul’s officers, although he’s not in uniform-- prob’ly on a secret mission. Suppose you go and see him? But say, watch out for the doc on duty--he’s a meddler. Tell him nothing!”

“Sure. How about Jeremy? What’s the verdict?”

“What do you want done with him?”

“I want him out of reach of trouble here pending his discharge. No need to certify him mad, is there?”

“Mad? All Australians are mad. None of us need a certificate for that. Have you arrested him?”

“Not yet.”

“Then you’re too late! He’s suffering from bad food and exposure. The air of Jerusalem’s bad for him, and he’s liable to get pugnacious if argued with. That runs in the blood. I order him off duty, and shall recommend him within twenty minutes to the P.M.O. for leave of absence at his own expense. If you know of any general who dares override the P.M.O. I’ll show you a brass hat in the wind. Come on; d’you want to bet on it?”