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 doe '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.