Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/125

Rh strong then—about seven feet high and four feet through."

"Adequate chap. Infernally adequate," said Tertius, pulling his mustache and staring into the fire.

"Got very near court-martialed and broke in Egypt in '84," the Infant volunteered. "I went out in the same trooper with him—raw as he was. Only I showed it, and Stalky didn't."

"What was the trouble? " said McTurk, reaching forward absently to twitch a dress-tie into position.

"Oh, nothing. His colonel weakly trusted him to take twenty Tommies out to wash, or groom camels, or something at the back of Suakin, and Stalky got embroiled with Fuzzies five miles in the interior. Conducted a masterly retreat and wiped up eight of 'em. He knew jolly well he'd no right to go out so far, so he took the initiative and pitched in a letter to his colonel, who was frothing at the mouth, complaining of the 'paucity of support accorded to him in his operations.' Gad, it might have been one fat brigadier slangin' another! Then he went into the Staff Corps."

"That—is—entirely—Stalky," said Abanazar from his armchair.

"You've come across him, too?" I said.

"Oh, yes," he replied in his softest tones. "I was at the tail of that—that epic. Don't you chaps know?"

We did not—Infant, McTurk, and I; and we called for information very politely.

Twasn't anything," said Tertius. "We got into a mess up in the Khye-Kheen Hills a couple o' years ago, and Stalky pulled us through. That's all."

McTurk gazed at Tertius with all an Irishman's contempt for the tongue-tied Saxon.

"Heavens!" he said. "And it's you and your likes govern Ireland. Tertius, aren't you ashamed?"

"Well, I can't tell a yarn. I can chip in when the other fellow starts buhking. Ask him." He pointed to Dick Four, whose nose gleamed scornfully over the rug.

"I knew you wouldn't," said Dick Four. "Give me a whisky and soda. I've been drinking lemonade squash and ammoniated quinine while you chaps were bathin' in champagne, and my head's singin' like a top."

He wiped his ragged mustache above the drink; and, with his teeth chattering in his head, began:

"You know the Khye-Kheen-Malôt expedition, when we scared the souls out of 'em with a field force they daren't fight against? Well, both tribes—there was a coalition against us—came in without firing a shot; and a lot of hairy villains, who had no more power over their men than I had, promised and vowed all sorts of things. On that very slender evidence, Pussy dear—"

"I was at Simla," said Abanazar, hastily.

"Never mind, you're tarred with the same brush. On the strength of those tuppenny-ha'penny treaties, your asses of Politicals reported the country pacified, and the Government, being a fool, as usual, began road-makin'—dependin' on local supply for labor. 'Member that, Pussy? Rest of our chaps who'd had no look in