uld please him. So one day he came to Simpson's show,
where I was second in command. "How many patients have you got
accommodation for here?" he asked me, Simpson being laid up with a
recurrence of his malaria. "Four hundred and fifty, sir," I said. "Very
good, have accommodation for a thousand to-morrow night," said Macassey
with a cock of his eye that I knew only too well. We were not full up,
as it was, although pretty hard-worked, being short-handed and with a
devil of a lot of enteric, and there wasn't the remotest likelihood of
any more patients arriving, as they were switching them off to Durban.
However, it was no use grousing, that only made old Macassey more wicked
than ever, but I thought I'd have it in black and white; so I saluted
and said, 'Bad memory, sir, my old wound in India, d'you mind writing
the order down?'"

"My dear B----," I interrupted, "you know you've the memory of a
Recording Angel."

"So I do, my son, and so I did. Also I knew that Macassey's memory,
like that of most fussy men, was as bad as mine was good. I thought I'd
catch him out sooner or later. He and I went round the camp, and, after
about half-an-hour of the most putrid crabbing, he suddenly caught sight
of some double-roofed Indian tents that Simpson had got together with
great difficulty for the worst cases. You see we'd mostly tin huts, and
in the African heat they're beastly. 'Ah, I see,' said Macassey
wickedly. 'I see you have some good double-roofed tents here; let me
have eight of them sent to me to-morrow night.' That left us with four,
and how we were to shift the patients was a problem. 'Very good, sir,' I
said, 'but I may forget the number. D'you mind?' And I held out my Field
Note-book, having turned over the page." (There are not many people who
can say 'No' to B----.) "He didn't mind, So he wrote it down. Naturally
I took care of those pages. Next day old Macassey must have remembered
that he had issued two contradictory orders in the same day. Ordered me
to expand and contract at the same time, like the third ventricle. And
he knew that I had first-class documentary evidence, and that I guarded
his autographs as though I were going to put 'em up for sale at
Sotheby's. He never troubled us any more."

"That was unkind of you, Major," I said insincerely.

"Not so, my son. You see, I knew he'd been worrying old Simpson, and he
wasn't fit to undo the latchet of Simpson's shoes. Why! have you never
heard the story of