"A sort of bite himself with his own fangs, eh?" Dicky seemed only idly watching the moving figures by the hospital.
"Yes, but what is it? I can't inoculate him with bacilli. That's what'd do the work, I fancy."
"Pocket your fancy, Fielding," answered Dicky. "Let me have a throw."
"Go on. If you can't hit it off, it's no good, for my head doesn't think these days: it only sees, and hears, and burns."
Dicky eyed Fielding keenly, and then, pouring out some whiskey for himself, put the bottle on the floor beside him, casually as it were. Then he said, with his girlish laugh, not quite so girlish these days: "I've got his sentence pat—it'll meet the case, or you may say, 'Cassio, never more be officer of mine.'"
He drew over a piece of paper lying on the piano—for there was a piano on the Amenhotep, and with what seemed an audacious levity Fielding played in those rare moments when they were not working or sleeping; and Fielding could really play! As Dicky wrote he read aloud in a kind of legal monotone:
The citizen Mustapha Kali having asserted that there is no cholera, and circulated various false statements concerning the treatment of patients, is hereby appointed as hospital-assistant for three months, in the Cholera Hospital of Kalamoun, that he may have opportunity of correcting his opinions. —Signed Ebn ben Hari, Mudir of Abdallah.
Fielding lay back and laughed—the first laugh on his lips for a fortnight. He laughed till his dry, fevered lips took on a natural moisture, and he said at last: "You've pulled it off, D. That's masterly. You and Norman have the only brains in this show. I get worse every day; I do—upon my soul!"
There was a curious anxious look in Dicky's eyes, but he only said: "You like it? Think it fills the bill, eh?"
"If the Mudir doesn't pass the sentence I'll shut up shop." He leaned over anxiously to Dicky and gripped his arm. "I tell you this pressure of opposition has got to be removed, or we'll never get this beast of an epidemic under, but we'll go under instead, my boy."