Stiff Upper Lip by Lawrence Durrell

the rest of this thing and send you back to your mother by air!” cried Polk-Mowbray in a transport of fury. I felt for him.
    The awful thing was that the Dutch were due to dine with us that evening. It always seemed to be the fate of the Dutch to be invited on crisis evenings. That evening was a real kermesse héroique. Percy was a poor butler at the best of times but tonight he bordered on the really original. He shambled round and round the room sniffing, half anaesthetized by gin and … well, you can imagine our guests’ faces when a mailed hand appeared over their shoulder holding a soup-plate. They must have felt that there was something uncanny about it. Clearly they longed to pop a question but the Iron Laws of the Corps forbade it. They held their curiosity in leash. They were superb. Normally Percy always got his thumb in the soup—but the thumb this evening was an iron one. I shudder to recall it. Yet by a superhuman effort we remained calm and Talked Policy as coolly as we could. The old training dies hard. Somehow we managed to carry it off. Yet I think our hosts felt themselves to be in the presence of irremediable tragedy. They pressed our hands in silent sympathy as we tucked them into their cars. All of a sudden one felt terribly alone again—alone with the Iron Hand.…
    Well, my dear fellow, everyone had a go at that blasted hand—the Chaplain, the cipher staff, finally the doctor. The latter wanted to heat the whole thing up with a blowtorch until the press-stud expanded but that would have incinerated Percy. By this time, of course, I hardly cared what they did to him. I would willingly have amputated the arm from somewhere just above the waist, myself. But meanwhile an urgent appeal had gone out to the Museum for a professor of armour to advise us; but the only available specialist in chain-mail was away in Italy on leave. He would not return for another two days. Two days! I know that it doesn’t sound a great deal. But in the middle of the night Percy found that he had lost all trace of feeling in the arm. It had got pins and needles. He sat up in bed, haunted by a new terror. It seemed to him that gangrene had perhaps set in; he had heard the doctor muttering something about the circulation of the blood.… He bounded down the stairs into the Residence roaring like a lion and galloped into Polk-Mowbray’s bedroom waving the object. Our esteemed Chief Of Mission, after the nervous strain of that evening, had turned in early, and was enjoying a spell of blameless slumber. Awakened by this apparition, and being unable to understand a word of Percy’s gibberish, he jumped to the purely intuitive conclusion that a fire had broken out upstairs. It was a matter of moments to break glass and press button. Woken by that fateful ringing the Embassy are squads swept gallantly into life, headed by Morgan find Chowder, pyjama-clad and in steel helmets. Just how Percy and his Ambassador escaped a thorough foam-bath that night is a mystery to me. Neither seemed very coherent to the gallant little band of rescuers as they swept through the dining-room with their sprinklers and up the stairs.
    At last order was restored and the doctor summoned, who did much to soothe Percy’s fears. But he did on the other hand take a serious view of the pins and needles. The circulation was being impeded by the gauntlet apparently. Percy must somehow keep the blood flowing in it—keep the circulation going—until help from the outer world arrived. How? By banging it, if you please, banging it repeatedly on anything that was to hand, banging it day and night lest the gangrene set in. I tell you, my dear chap, that that fateful banging, which lasted two whole days and nights, rings in my ears even now. Banging on the walls, the buttery table, on the floor. Neither work nor sleep was possible. An army of poltergeists could not have done half as well. Bang, bang, bang … now loud