Lost trumpet

THE LOST TRUMPET 31
My colonelcy vexed him. This but mildly sur¬
prised me. In my ten years in Cairo I had met
travellers and tourists by the dozen and in the gross
whom the most unexpected things vexed. I had
known a man who regarded the Sphinx as an insult
to his grandmother’s memory (he had also, as was
proper to an epileptic in Egypt, believed himself to
be Akhnaton); beside such obsession the militarist
dislikes of the thin, acidulous American seemed
negligible.
“The colonelcy need not worry greatly,” I said.
“And you may drop the ‘colonel’ when addressing
me. But I beg that you will not call me comrade.”
“Why not ?”
He was, I saw, if with a sense of humour in other
things, prepared to do battle in defence of even the
most minute curlicue on his political creed. I
explained, mildly.
“Because I’m not.”
Huebsch waved his colleague to silence. “Well,
well, and all that’s that. Colonel, we’re archaeolo¬
gists from Palestine. For the past three years we’ve
been engaged in excavation in the Jordan Valley—
ever been there ?”
I shook my head.
“Haven’t missed much—lice, liars and lizards.
We did nothing of great importance during the
first two years, but you may have heard something
of our work last September.”
Now, by a curious coincidence, I had. “Some¬
thing I read in the European journals,” I said. Then :