ver Question! I'm going to bed if you begin squabbling
Thank Goodness, here's Anthony--looking like a ghost.

Enter ANTHONY, Indian Medical Staff, very white and tired.

ANTHONY. 'Evening, Blayne. It's raining in sheets. Whiskey peg lao,
khitmatgar. The roads are something ghastly.

CURTISS. How's Mingle?

ANTHONY. Very bad, and more frightened. I handed him over to Few-ton.
Mingle might just as well have called him in the first place, instead of
bothering me.

BLAYNE. He's a nervous little chap. What has he got, this time?

ANTHONY. 'Can't quite say. A very bad tummy and a blue funk so far. He
asked me at once if it was cholera, and I told him not to be a fool.
That soothed him.

CURTIS. Poor devil! The funk does half the business in a man of that
build.

ANTHONY. (Lighting a cheroot.) I firmly believe the funk will kill him
if he stays down. You know the amount of trouble he's been giving Fewton
for the last three weeks. He's doing his very best to frighten himself
into the grave.

GENERAL CHORUS. Poor little devil! Why doesn't he get away?

ANTHONY. 'Can't. He has his leave all right, but he's so dipped he can't
take it, and I don't think his name on paper would raise four annas.
That's in confidence, though.

MACKESY. All the Station knows it.

ANTHONY. "I suppose I shall have to die here," he said, squirming all
across the bed. He's quite made up his mind to Kingdom Come. And I know
he has nothing more than a wet-weather tummy if he could only keep a
hand on himself.

BLAYNE. That's bad. That's very bad. Poor little Miggy. Good little
chap, too. I say--

ANTHONY. What do you say?

BLAYNE. Well, look here--anyhow. If it's like that--as you say--I say
fifty.

CURTISS. I say fifty.

MACKESY. I go twenty better.

DONE. Bloated Croesus of the Bar! I say fifty. Jervoise, what do you
say? Hi! Wake up!

JERVOISE. Eh? What's that? What's that?

CURTISS. We want a hundred rupees from you. You're a bachelor drawing a
gigantic income, and there's a man in a hole.

JERVOISE. What man? Any one dead?

BLAYNE. No, but he'll die if you don't give the hundred. Here! Here's a
peg-voucher. You can see what we've signed for, and Anthony's man will
come round to-morrow to collect it. So there will be no trouble.

JERVOISE. (Signing.) One hundred, E. M. J. There you are (feebly). It
isn't one of your jokes, is it?

BLAYNE. No, it really is wanted. Anthony, you were the biggest
poker-winner last week, and