A flicker of annoyance crossed the Englishman's face and his jaw muscles hardened.
'What's the matter?' the King asked abruptly.
After a pause Peter Marlowe said, 'Nothing.' He looked at the egg. He wasn't due an egg for six days. 'If you're sure I won't be putting you out, I'd like it fried.'
'Coming up,' the King said. He knew he had made a mistake somewhere, for the annoyance was real. Foreigners are weird, he thought. Never can tell how they're going to react. He lifted his electric stove onto the table and plugged it into the electric socket. 'Neat, huh?' he said pleasantly.
'Yes.'
'Max wired it for me,' he said, nodding down the hut.
Peter Marlowe followed his glance.
Max looked up, feeling eyes on him. 'You want something?'
'No,' the King said. 'Just telling him how you wired the hot plate.'
'Oh! It working all right?'
'Sure.'
Peter Marlowe got up and leaned out of the window, calling out in Malay.
'I beg thee do not wait. I will see thee again tomorrow, Suliman.'
'Very well, tuan, peace be upon thee.'
'And upon thee.' Peter Marlowe smiled and sat down once more and Suliman walked away.
The King broke the eggs neatly and dropped them into the heated oil. The yolk was rich-gold and its circling jelly sputtered and hissed against the heat and began to set, and all at once the sizzle filled the hut. It filled the minds and filled the hearts and made the juices flow. But no one said anything or did anything. Except Tex. He forced himself up and walked out of the hut.
Many men who walked the path smelled the fragrance and hated the King anew. The smell swept down the slope and into the MP hut. Grey knew and Masters knew at once where it came from.
Grey got up, nauseated, and went to the doorway. He was going to walk around the camp to escape the aroma. Then he changed his mind and turned back.
'Come on, Sergeant,' he said. 'We'll pay a call on the American hut.
Now'd be a good time to check on Sellars' story!'
'All right,' Masters said, almost ruptured by the smell. 'The bloody bastard could at least cook before lunch — not just after — not when supper's five hours away.'
'The Americans are the second shift today. They haven't eaten yet.'
Within the American hut, the men picked up the strings of time. Dino tried to go back to sleep and Kurt continued sewing and the poker game resumed and Miller and Byron Jones III resumed their interminable chess.
But the sizzle destroyed the drama of an inside straight and Kurt stuck the needle in his finger and swore obscenely, and Dino's sleep-urge left him and Byron Jones III watched appalled as Miller took his queen with a lousy stinking pawn.
'Jesus H. Christ,' Byron Jones III said to no one, choked. 'I wish it would rain.'
No one answered. For no one heard anything except the crackle and the hiss.
The King too was concentrating. Over the frypan. He prided himself that no one could cook an egg better then he. To him a fried egg had to be cooked with an artist's eye, and quickly — yet not too fast.
The King glanced up and smiled at Peter Marlowe, but Marlowe's eyes were on the eggs.
'Christ,' he said softly, and it was a benediction, not a curse. 'That smells so good.'
The King was pleased. 'You wait till I've finished. Then you'll see the goddamnedest egg you've ever seen.' He powdered the eggs delicately with pepper, then added the salt. 'You like cooking?' he asked.
'Yes,' said Peter Marlowe. His voice sounded unlike his real voice to him.
'I do most of the cooking for my unit.'
'What do you like to be called? Pete? Peter?'
Peter Marlowe covered his surprise. Only tried and trusted friends called you by your Christian name — how else can you tell friends from acquaintances? He glanced at the King and saw only friendliness, so, in spite of himself, he said, 'Peter.'
'Where do you come from? Where's your home?'
Questions, questions, thought Peter Marlowe. Next he'll want to know if I'm married or how much I have in the bank. His curiosity had prompted him to accept the King's summons, and he almost cursed himself for being so curious. But he was pacified by the glory of the sizzling eggs.
'Portchester,' he answered. 'That's a little hamlet on the south coast. In Hampshire.'
'You married, Peter?'
'Are you?'
'No.' The King would have continued but the eggs were done. He slipped the frypan off the stove and nodded to Peter Marlowe. 'Plates're in back of you,' he said. Then he added not a little proudly, 'Lookee here!'
They were the best fried eggs Peter Marlowe had ever seen, so he paid the King the greatest compliment in the English world. 'Not bad,' he said flatly. 'Not too bad, I suppose,' and he looked up at the King and kept his face as impassive as his voice and thereby added to the compliment.
