The wonderful thing about Moab is that everything happens in a story-book setting, with illustrations by Maxfield Parrish and Wyeth and Joe Coll, and all the rest of them, whichever way you look.
Imagine a blue sky—so clear-blue and pure that you can see against it the very feathers in the tails of wheeling kites, and know that they are brown, not black. Imagine all the houses, and the shacks between them, and the poles on which the burlap awnings hang, painted on flat canvas and stood up against that infinite blue. Stick some vultures in a row along a roof-top— purplish—bronze they'll look between the tiles and sky. Add yellow camels, gray horses, striped robes, long rifles, and a searching sun-dried smell. And there you have El-Kerak, from the inside.
From any point along the broken walls or the castle roof you can see for fifty miles over scenery invented by the Master-Artist, with the Jordan like a blue worm in the midst of yellow-and-green hills twiggling into a turquoise sea.
The villains stalk on-stage and off again sublimely aware of their setting. The horses prance, the camels saunter, the very street-dogs compose themselves for a nap in the golden sun, all in perfect harmony with the piece. A woman walking with a stone jar on her head (or, just as likely, a kerosene can) looks as if she had just stepped out of eternity for the sake of the picture. And not all the kings and kaisers, cardinals and courtezans rolled into one great swaggering splurge of majesty could hold a candle to a ragged Bedouin chief on a flea-bitten pony, on the way to a small-town mejlis.
So it was worth a little inconvenience, and quite a little risk to see those chiefs arrive at the castle gate, toss their reins to a brother cut-throat, and swagger in, the poorest and least important timing their arrival, when they could, just in advance of an important man so as to take precedence of him and delay his entrance.
Mindful of my charge to keep Anazeh sober, and more deadly afraid of it than of all the other risks, I hung about waiting for him, hoping he would arrive before Abdul Ali or ben Nazir. I wanted to go inside and be seated before either of those gentry came. But not a bit of it. I saw Anazeh ride up at the head of his twenty men, halt at a corner, and ask a question. His men were in military order, and looked not only ready but anxious to charge the crowd and establish their old chief's importance.
Mahommed ben Hamza, not quite so smelly in his new clothes, was standing at my elbow.
"Sheikh Anazeh beckons you," he said.
So the two of us worked our way leisurely through the crowd toward the side-street down which Anazeh had led his party. We found them looking very spruce and savage, four abreast, drawn up in the throat of an alley, old Anazeh sitting his horse at their head like a symbol of the ancient order waiting to assault the new. My horse was close beside him, held by Ahmed, acting servitor on foot.
The old man let loose the vials of his wrath on me the minute I drew near, and Mahommed ben Hamza took delicious pleasure in translating word for word.
"Is that the way an effendi in my care should be seen at such a time—on foot? Am I a maskin* that you do not ride? Is the horse not good enough?" [*Poor devil]
I made ben Hamza explain that I was to attend the mejlis as Sheikh Abdul Ali's guest. But that only increased his wrath.
"So said ben Nazir! Shall a lousy Damascene trick me out of keeping my oath? You are in my safekeeping until you tread on British soil again, and my honour is concerned in it! No doubt that effeminate schemer of schemes would like to display you at the mejlis as his booty, but you are mine! Did you think you are not under obligation to me?"
I answered pretty tactfully. I said that Allah had undoubtedly created him to be a protector of helpless wayfarers and the very guardian of honour. Mahommed ben Hamza added to the compliments while rendering mine into Arabic. But though Anazeh's wrath was somewhat mollified, he was not satisfied by any means.
"Am I a dog," he demanded, "that I should be slighted for the sake of that Damascene?"
It looked to me like the proper moment to try out Grim's magic formula.
"You are the father of lions. And a lion knows a lion in the dark!" said I.
The effect was instantaneous. He puffed his cheeks out in astonishment, and sucked them in again. The overbearing anger vanished as he leaned forward in the saddle to scrutinize my face. It was clear that he thought my use of that phrase might just possibly have been an accident.
"Jimgrim says—"
"Ah! What says Jimgrim? Who are you that know where he is?"
"A lion knows a lion in the dark!" I said again, that there might be no mistake about my having used the words deliberately.
He nodded.
"Praised be Allah! Blessings upon His Prophet! What says Jimgrim?"
"Jimgrim says I am to keep by Anazeh and watch him, lest he drink strong drink and lose his honour by becoming like a beast without decency or understanding!"
"Mount your horse, effendi. Sit beside me."
I complied. Ben Hamza took the place of Ahmed, who went to the rear looking rather pleased to get out of the limelight.
"What else says Jimgrim?" asked Anazeh.
"There will be a message presently, providing Sheikh Anazeh keeps sober!"
To say that I was enjoying the game by this time is like trying to paint heaven with a tar-brush. You've got to be on the inside of an intrigue before you can appreciate the thrill of it. Nobody who has not had the chance to mystify a leader of cheerful murderers in a city packed with conspirators, with the shadow of a vulture on the road in front, and fanged death waiting to be let loose, need talk to me of excitement.
"Well and good," said Anazeh. "When Jimgrim speaks, I listen!"
Can you beat that? Have you ever dreamed you were possessed of some magic formula like "Open Sesame," and free to work with it any miracle you choose? Was the dream good? I was awake—on a horse—in a real eastern alley—with twenty thieves as picturesque as Ali Baba's, itching for action behind me!
"Abdul Ali of Damascus thinks he will enter the mejlis last and create a great sensation," said Anazeh. "That son of infamies deceives himself. I shall enter last. I shall bring you. There will be no doubt who is important!"
Just as he spoke there clattered down the street at right angles to us a regular cavalcade of horsemen led by no less than Abdul Ali with a sycophant on either hand. Cardinal Wolsey, or some other wisehead, once remarked that a king is known by the splendour of his servants. Abdul Ali's parasites were dressed for their part in rose-coloured silk and mounted on beautiful white Arab horses so severely bitted that they could not help but prance.
Abdul Ali, on the other hand, played more a king-maker's role, dark and sinister in contrast to their finery, on a dark brown horse that trotted in a business-like, hurry-up-and-get-it-done- with manner. He rode in the German military style, and if you can imagine the Kaiser in Arab military head-dress, with high black riding boots showing under a brown cloak, you have his description fairly closely. The upturned moustaches and the scowl increased the suggestion, and I think that was deliberate.
"A dog—offspring of dogs! Curse his religion and his bed!" growled Anazeh in my ear.
The old sheikh allowed his enemy plenty of time. To judge by the way the men behind us gathered up their reins and closed in knee- to-knee, they would have liked to spoil Abdul Ali's afternoon by riding through his procession and breaking its formation. But Anazeh had his mind set, and they seemed to know better than to try to change it for him. We waited until noises in the street died down, and then Ahmed was sent to report on developments.
"Abdul Ali has gone into the mejlis and the doors are closed," he announced five minutes later. That seemed to suit Anazeh perfectly, for his eyes lit up with satisfaction. Evidently being excluded from the council was his meat and drink. He gave no order, but rode forward and his men followed as a snake's tail follows its head, four abreast, each man holding his rifle as best suited him; that gave them a much more warlike appearance than if they had imitated the western model of exact conformity.
We rode down-street toward the castle at a walk, between very interested spectators who knew enough to make way without being told. And at the castle gate we were challenged by a man on foot, who commanded about twice our number of armed guards.
"The hour is passed," he announced. "The order is to admit no late-comers."
"Who gives orders to me?" Anazeh retorted.
"It was agreed by all the notables."
"I did not agree. Wallah! Thou dog of a devil's dung-heap, say you I am not a notable?"
"Nevertheless—"
"Open that gate!"
They opened it. Two of the men began to do it even before their chief gave the reluctant order. Anazeh started to ride through with his men crowding behind. But that, it seemed, was altogether too much liberty to take with the arrangements. Shouting all together, the gate-guards surged in to take hold of bridles and force Anazeh's dependents back. Teeth and eyes flashed. It looked like the makings of a red-hot fight.
"No retainers allowed within the gate! Principals only!" roared the captain of the guard, in Arabic that sounded like explosions of boiling oil.
Anazeh, Mahommed ben Hamza and I were already within the courtyard. Four of Anazeh's followers made their way, through after us before any one could prevent them. At that moment there came a tremendous clattering of hoofs and the crowd outside the gate scattered this and that way in front of about a hundred of the other chiefs' dependents, who had dutifully stayed outside and had sought shade some little distance off.
Whether the sudden disturbance rattled him, or whether he supposed that all the other truculent ruffians were going to try to follow our example, at any rate the man on duty lost his head and shouted to his men to shut the gate again. Before they could do it every one of Anazeh's gang had forced his way through. There we all were on forbidden ground, with a great iron-studded gate slammed and bolted behind us. To judge by the row outside the keepers of the gate had got their hands full.
In front of us was a short flight of stone steps, and another great wooden door set in stone posts under a Roman arch. There were only two armed men leaning against it. They eyed Anazeh and our numbers nervously.
"Open!"
Anazeh could use his voice like a whip-crack. They fumbled with the great bolt and obeyed, swinging the door wide. I thought for a minute that my arrogant old protector meant to ride up the steps and through the door into the mejlis hall with all his men; but he was not quite so high-handed as that.
After a good long look through the door, I suppose to make sure there was no ambush inside waiting for him, he dismounted, and ordered his men to occupy a stable-building across the courtyard, from which it would have been impossible to dislodge them without a siege. Then, when he had seen the last man disappear into it, he led me and Mahommed ben Hamza up the steps.
Ben Hamza was grinning like a schoolboy, beside himself with delight at the prospect of elbowing among notables, as well as inordinately proud of his new clothes and the smell of imported soap that hung about him like an aura. But Anazeh looked like an ancient king entering into his own. Surely there was never another man who could stride so majestically and seem so conscious of his own ability to override all law.
We passed under the shadowy arch and down a cool stone passage to yet another heavy door that barred our way. Anazeh thundered on it with his rifle-butt, for there were no attendants there to do his bidding. There was no answer. Only a murmur of voices within. So he thundered again, and this time the door opened about six inches. A face peered through the opening cautiously, and asked what was wanted.
"What is this?" asked Anazeh. "Is a mejlis held without my presence? Since when?"
"You are too late!"
The face disappeared. Some one tried to close the door. Anazeh's foot prevented.
"Open!" he demanded. The butt of his rifle thundered again on the wood.
There was a babel of voices inside, followed by sudden silence. Anazeh made a sign to Mahommed ben Hamza and me. We all three laid our shoulders against the door and shoved hard. Evidently that was not expected; it swung back so suddenly that we were hard put to it to keep our feet. The man who had opened the door lay prone on the floor in front of us with his legs in the air, and Anazeh laughed at him—the bitterest sign of disrespect one Arab can pay to another.
"Since when does the word of a Damascene exclude an honourable sheikh from a mejlis in El-Kerak?" asked Anazeh, standing in the doorway.
He was in no hurry to enter. The dramatic old ruffian understood too well the value of the impression he made standing there. The room was crowded with about eighty men, seated on mats and cushions, with a piece of carpeted floor left unoccupied all down the centre—a high-walled room with beautifully vaulted ceiling, and a mullioned window from which most of the glass was gone. The walls were partly covered with Persian and other mats, but there was almost no furniture other than water-pipes and little inlaid tables on which to rest coffee-cups and matches. The air was thick with smoke already, and the draft from the broken windows wafted it about in streaky clouds.
Every face in the room was turned toward Anazeh. I kept as much as possible behind him, for you can't look dignified in that setting if all you have on is a stained golf suit, that you have slept in. It seemed all right to me to let the old sheikh have all the limelight.
But he knew better. Perhaps my erstwhile host ben Nazir had understood a little German after all. More likely he had divined Abdul Ali's purpose to make use of me. Certainly he had poured the proper poison in Anazeh's ear, and the old man understood my value to a nicety.
He took me by the arm and led me in, Mahommed ben Hamza following like a dog that was too busy wagging its tail to walk straight. You would have thought Anazeh and I were father and son by the way he leaned toward me and found a way for me among the crowded cushions.
He had no meek notions about choosing a low place. Expecting to be taken at his own valuation, he chose a high place to begin with. There were several unoccupied cushions near the door, and there were half-a-dozen servants busy in a corner with coffee- pots and cakes. He prodded one of the servants and ordered him to take two cushions to a place he pointed out, up near the window close to Abdul Ali. There was no room there. That was the seat of the mighty. You could not have dropped a handkerchief between the men who wanted to be nearest the throne of influence. But Anazeh solved that riddle. He strode, stately and magnificent, up the middle of the carpet amid a mutter of imprecations. And when one more than ordinarily indignant sheikh demanded to know what he meant by it, he paused in front of him and laid his right hand on my shoulder. (There was a loaded rifle in his left.)
"Who offers indignity to a distinguished guest?" he demanded.
The question was addressed to everybody in the room. He took care they were all aware of it. His stern eyes traveled from face to face.
"My men, who escorted him here, are outside the door. They can enter and escort him away, if there are none here who understand how to treat the stranger in our midst!"
There was goose-flesh all over me, and I did not even try to look unembarrassed. A man's wits, if he has any, work swiftly when he looks like being torn to pieces at a moment's notice. It seemed to me that the less insolent I appeared, the less likely they were to vent their wrath on me. I tried to look as if I didn't understand I was intruding—as if I expected a welcome.
"Good!" Anazeh whispered in my ear. "You do well."
There was a murmur of remonstrance. The sheikh who had dared to rebuke Anazeh found the resentment turned against himself. Somebody told him sharply to mend his manners. Anazeh, shrewd old opportunist, promptly directed the servant to place cushions on the edge of the carpet, in front of the first row of those who wished to appear important. That obliged the front rank to force the men behind them backward, closer to the wall, so that room could be made for us without our trespassing on the forbidden gangway.
So I sat down in the front row, five cushions from Abdul Ali. Anazeh squatted beside me with his rifle across his knees. Then Mahommed ben Hamza forced himself down between me and the man on my left, using his left elbow pretty generously and making the best of the edges of two cushions. As far as I could see there were not more than half-a-dozen other men in the room who had rifles with them, although all had daggers, and some wore curved scimitars with gold-inlaid hilts.
As soon as I could summon sufficient nerve to look about me and meet the brown, conjecturing eyes that did not seem to know whether to resent my presence or be simply curious, I caught the eye of Suliman ben Saoud in the front row opposite, ten or twelve cushions nearer the door than where I sat. He did not seem to notice me. The absence of eyebrows made his face expressionless. He didn't even vaguely resemble the Major James Grim whom I knew him to be. When his eyes met mine there was no symptom of recognition. If he felt as nervous as I did he certainly did not show it behind his mask of insolent indifference.
There was still a good deal of muttered abuse being directed at Anazeh. The atmosphere was electric. It felt as if violence might break out any minute. Abdul Ali seemed more nervous than any one else; he rocked himself gently on his cushion, as if churning the milk of desire into the butter of wise words. Suddenly he turned to the sheikh on his left, a handsome man of middle age, who wore a scimitar tucked into a gold-embroidered sash, and whispered to him.
Ben Hamza whispered to me: "That sheikh to whom Abdul Ali speaks is Ali Shah al Khassib, the most powerful sheikh in these parts. A great prince. A man with many followers."
Ali Shah al Khassib called for prayer to bring the mejlis to order. He was immensely dignified. The few words he pronounced about asking God to bless the assembled notables with wisdom, in order that they might reach a right decision, would have been perfectly in place in the Capitol at Washington, or anywhere else where men foregather to decide on peace or war.
At once a muballir* on his left opened a copy of the Koran on a cushion on his lap and began to read from it in a nasal singsong. There were various degrees of devoutness, and even of inattention shown by those who listened. Some knelt and prostrated themselves. Others, including Anazeh, sat bolt upright, closing their eyes dreamily at intervals. Over the way, Jim Suliman ben Saoud Grim was especially formally devout. His very life undoubtedly depended on being recognized as a fanatic of fanatics. [*A Moslem priest who recites prayers.]
But there were three Christian sheikhs in the room. One of them opposite me pulled out a Bible and laid it on the carpet as a sort of challenge to the Koran. It was probably a dangerous thing to do, although most Moslems respect the Bible as a very sacred book. The manner in which it was done suggested deliberate effort to provoke a quarrel.
Mahommed ben Hamza, dividing his time like a schoolboy in chapel between staring about him and attending by fits and starts, nudged me in the ribs and whispered:
"See that Christian! He would not dare do that, only on this occasion they like to think that Moslems and Christians are agreeing together."
The man who was reading to himself from the Bible looked up and caught my eye. He tapped the book with his finger and nodded, as much as to ask why I did not join him. At once I pulled my own from my pocket. He smiled acknowledgment as I opened it at random. Certainly he thought I did it to support his tactlessly ill-timed assertion of his own religion. Very likely my action, since I was a guest and therefore not to be insulted, saved him from violence. Incipient snarls of fanatical indignation died away.
But as a matter of fact my eye was on Jim Suliman ben Saoud Grim. As the reading from the Koran came to an end amid a murmur of responses from all the sheikhs, the crooked-faced Ichwan sat upright. In his sullen, indifferent way, he stared leisurely along the line until his eyes rested on me.
As his eyes met mine I marked the place where the Bible was open with a pencil, and closed the book, suspecting that he might be glad to know where a pencil could be found in a contingency.
He did not smile. The expression of his face barely changed. Just for a second I thought I saw a flicker of amused approval pass over the corners of his eyes and mouth.
So I left the book lying where it was with the pencil folded in it.
then very deliberately stared the other way, illustrating how some fighting men make pretty poor dissemblers; every one of his dark-skinned rank and file had observed all the details of our outfit without seeming to see us at all.
"We're using nothing but Sikhs on this job," said Turner. "British troops wouldn't appreciate the delicacy of the situation. Moslems couldn't be trusted not to talk. The Sikhs enjoy the surreptitious part of it, and don't care enough about the politics to get excited. Wish I might be in at the finish, though! Have you any notion what the real objective is?"
"No," said I, and tried not to feel, or look pleased with myself. But no mere amateur can conceal that, in the moment of discovery, he knows more about the inside of an official business than one of the Administration's lawful agents. That is nine-tenths of the secret of "bossed" politics—the sheer vanity of being on the inside, "in the know." I suppose I smirked. "Damn this ride to Haifa! What the hell have you done, I wonder, that you should have a front pew? Is the Intelligence short of officers?"
I had done nothing beyond making Grim's acquaintance and by good luck tickling his flair for odd friendship. I thought it better not to say that, so I went on lying.
"I don't suppose I know any more than you do."
"Rot! I posted the men who watched you into Djemal's place yesterday, and watched you out again. You acted pretty poorly, if you ask me. It's a marvel we didn't have to go in there and rescue you. I suppose you're another of Grim's favorites. He picks some funny ones. Half the men in jail seem to be friends of his."
I decided to change the subject.
"I was told to change clothes and walk back after a mile or so," I said. "Suppose we don't make it a Marathon. Why walk farther than we need to?"
"Uh!"
I think he was feeling sore enough to take me ten miles for the satisfaction of making me tramp them back to Jerusalem. But it turned out not to be his day for working off grievances. We were bowling along pretty fast, and had just reached open country where it would be a simple matter to change into other clothes without risk of being seen doing it, when we began to be overhauled by another, larger car that came along at a terrific pace. It was still too dark to make out who was in it until it drew almost abreast.
"The Administrator by the Horn Spoon! What next, I wonder! Pull up!" said Turner. "Morning, sir."
The two cars came to a standstill. The Administrator leaned out.
"I think I can save you a walk," he said, smiling. "How about changing your clothes between the cars and driving back with me?"
I did not even know yet what new disguise I was to assume, but Turner opened a hand-bag and produced a suit of my own clothes and a soft hat.
"Burgled your bedroom," he explained.
All he had forgotten was suspenders. No doubt it would have given him immense joy to think of me walking back ten miles without them.
Sir Louis gave his orders while I changed clothes.
"You'd better keep going for some time, Turner. No need to go all the way to Haifa, but don't get back to Jerusalem before noon at the earliest, and be sure you don't talk to anybody on your way."
Turner drove on. I got in beside the Administrator.
"Grim tells me that you don't object to a certain amount of risk. You've been very useful, and he thinks you would like to see the end of the business. I wouldn't think of agreeing to it, only we shall have to call on you as a witness against Scharnhoff and Noureddin Ali. As you seem able to keep still about what you know, it seems wiser not to change witnesses at this stage. It is highly important that we should have one unofficial observer, who is neither Jew nor Moslem, and who has no private interest to serve. But I warn you, what is likely to happen this morning will be risky."
I looked at the scar on his cheek, and the campaign ribbons, and the attitude of absolute poise that can only be attained by years of familiarity with danger.
"Why do you soldiers always act like nursemaids toward civilians?" I asked him. "We're bone of your bone."
He laughed.
"Entrenched privilege! If we let you know too much you'd think too little of us!"
We stopped at a Jew's store outside the city for suspenders, and then made the circuit outside the walls in a whirlwind of dust, stopping only at each gate to get reports from the officers commanding companies drawn up in readiness to march in and police the city.
"It's all over the place that disaster of some sort is going to happen today," said Sir Louis. "It only needs a hatful of rumours to set Jerusalemites at one another's throats. But we're ready for them. The first to start trouble this morning will be the first to get it. Now—sorry you've no time for breakfast— here's the Jaffa Gate. Will you walk through the city to that street where Grim talked with you from a roof last night? You'll find him thereabouts. Sure you know the way? Good-bye. Good luck! No, you won't need a pass; there'll be nobody to interfere with you."
"Dead or alive, sahib."
I did get breakfast nevertheless, but in a strange place. The city shutters were coming down only under protest, because, just as in Boston and other hubs of sanctity, shop-looting starts less than five minutes after the police let go control. There was an average, that morning, of about ten rumours to the ear. So the shop-keepers had to be ordered to open up. About the mildest rumour was that the British had decide to vacate and to leave the Zionists in charge of things. You couldn't fool an experienced Jew as to what would happen in that event. There was another rumour that Mustapha Kemal was on the march. Another that an Arab army was invading from the direction of El-Kerak. But there were British officers walking about with memorandum books, and a fifty-pound fine looked more serious than an outbreak that had not occurred yet. So they were putting down their shutters.
I had nearly reached the Haram-es-Sheriff, and was passing a platoon of Sikhs who dozed beside their rifles near a street corner, when Grim's voice hailed me through the half-open door behind them. He was back in his favourite disguise as a Bedouin, squatting on a mat near the entrance of a vaulted room, where he could see through the door without being seen.
"This is headquarters for the present," he explained. "Soon as we bag the game we'll run 'em in here quick as lightning. Most likely keep 'em here all day, so's not to have to parade 'em through the streets until after dark. A man's coming soon with coffee and stuff to eat."
"What's become of Suliman?"
"He's shooting craps with two other young villains close to where you left him last night. I'm hoping he'll get word with his mother."
Grim looked more nervous than I had ever seen him. There was a deep frown between his eyes. He talked as if he were doing it to keep himself from worrying.
"What's eating you?" I asked.
"Noureddin Ali. After all this trouble to bag the whole gang without any fuss there's a chance he's given us the slip. I watched all night to make sure he didn't come out of that door. He didn't. But I've no proof he's in there. Scharnhoff's in there, and five of the chief conspirators. Noureddin Ali may be. But a man brought me a story an hour ago about seeing him on the city wall. However, here's the food. So let's eat."
He sat and munched gloomily, until presently Goodenough joined us, looking, what with that monocle and one thing and another, as if he had just stepped out of a band-box.
"Well, Grim, the net's all ready. If that TNT is where you say it is, in that big barn behind the fruit-stalls near the Jaffa Gate, it's ours the minute they make a move."
"There isn't a doubt on that point," Grim answered. "Why else should Scharnhoff open a fruit-shop? The license for it was taken out by one of Noureddin Ali's agents, whose brother deals in fruit wholesale and owns that barn. Narayan Singh tracked some suspicious packages to that place four days ago. They'll start to carry it into the city hidden under loads of fruit just as soon as the morning crowd begins to pour in. We only need let them get the first consignment in, so as to have the chain of evidence complete. Are you sure your men will let the first lot go through?"
"Absolutely. Just came from giving them very careful instructions. The minute that first load disappears into the city they'll close in on the barn and arrest every one they find in there. But what are you gloomy about?"
"I'd hate to miss the big fish."
"You mean Noureddin Ali ?"
"It looks to me as if he's been a shade too wise for us. One man swore he saw him on the wall this morning, but he was gone when I sent to make sure. We've got all the rest. There are five in Djemal's Cafe, waiting for the big news; they'll be handcuffed one at a time by the police when they get tired of waiting and come out.
"But I'd rather bag Noureddin Ali than all the others put together. He's got brains, that little beast has. He'd know how to use this story against us with almost as much effect as if he'd pulled the outrage off."
He had hardly finished speaking when Narayan Singh's great bulk darkened the doorway. He closed the door behind him, as if afraid the other Sikhs might learn bad news.
"It is true, sahib. He was on the wall. He is there again."
"Have you seen him?"
"Surely. He makes signals to the men who are loading the donkeys now in the door of the barn. It would be a difficult shot. His head hardly shows between the battlements. But I think I could hit him from the road below. Shall I try?"
"No, you'd only scare him into hiding if you miss. Oh hell! There are three ways up on to the wall at that point. There's no time to block them all—not if he's signalling now. He'll see your men close in on the barn, sir, and beat it for the skyline. Oh, damn and blast the luck!"
"At least we can try to cut him off," said Goodenough. "I'll take some men myself and have a crack at it."
"No use, sir. You'd never catch sight of him. I wish you'd let Narayan Singh take three men, make for the wall by the shortest way, and hunt him if it takes a week."
"Why not? All right. D'you hear that, Narayan Singh?"
"Atcha, sahib."
"You understand?" said Grim. "Keep him moving. Keep after him."
"Do the sahibs wish him alive or dead?"
"Either way," said Goodenough.
"If he's gone from the wall when you get there," Grim added, "bring us the news. You'll know where to find us"
"Atcha"
The Sikh brought his rifle to the shoulder, faced about, marched out, chose three men from the platoon in the street, and vanished.
"Too bad, too bad!" said Goodenough, but Grim did not answer. He was swearing a blue streak under his breath. The next to arrive on the scene was Suliman, grinning with delight because he had won all the money of the other urchins, but brimming with news in the bargain. He considered a mere colonel of cavalry beneath notice, and addressed himself to Grim without ceremony.
"My mother brought out oranges in baskets and set them on benches on both sides of the door. Then she went in, and I heard her scream. There was a fight inside."
"D'you care to bet, sir?" asked Grim.
"On what?"
"I'll bet you a hundred piastres Scharnhoff has tried to make his get-away, and they've either killed him or tied him hand and foot. Another hundred on top of that, that Scharnhoff offers to turn state witness, provided he's alive when we show up."
"All right. I'll bet you he hangs."
"Are you coming with us, sir?"
"Wouldn't miss it for a king's ransom."
"The back way out, then."
Grim beckoned the Sikhs into the room, left one man in there in charge of Suliman, who swore blasphemously at being left behind, and led the way down a passage that opened into an alley connecting with a maze of others like rat runs, mostly arched over and all smelly with the unwashed gloom of ages. At the end of the last alley we entered was a flight of stone steps, up which we climbed to the roof of the house on which I had seen Grim the night before.
There was a low coping on the side next the street, and some one had laid a lot of bundles of odds and ends against it; lying down, we could look out between those without any risk of being seen from below, but Goodenough made the Sikhs keep well in the background and only we three peered over the edge. About two hundred yards in front of us the Dome of the Rock glistened in the morning sun above the intervening roofs. The street was almost deserted, although the guards at either end had been removed for fear of scaring away the conspirators. We watched for about twenty minutes before any one passed but occasional beggars, some of whom stopped to wonder why oranges should stand on sale outside a door with nobody in charge of them. Three separate individuals glanced right and left and then helped themselves pretty liberally from the baskets.
But at last there came five donkeys very heavily loaded with oranges and raisins, in charge of six men, which was a more than liberal allowance. When they stopped at the little stone house in front of us there was another thing noticeable; instead of hitting the donkeys hard on the nose with a thick club, which is the usual way of calling a halt in Palestine, they went to the heads and stopped them reasonably gently. So, although all six men were dressed to resemble peasants, they were certainly nothing of the kind.
Nor were they such wide-awake conspirators as they believed themselves, for they were not in the least suspicious of six other men, also dressed as peasants, who followed them up-street, and sat down in full view with their backs against a wall. Yet I could see quite plainly the scabbard of a bayonet projecting through a hole in the ragged cloak of the nearest of those casual wayfarers.
They had to knock several minutes before the door opened gingerly; then they off-loaded the donkeys, and it took two men to carry each basketful, with a third lending a hand in case of accident. Only one man went back with the donkeys, and two of the casual loafers against the wall got up to saunter after him; the other five honest merchants went inside, and we heard the bolt shoot into its iron slot behind them.
"How about it, Grim?" asked Goodenough then.
"Ready, sir. Will you give the order?"
We filed in a hurry down the steps into the alley, ran in a zig- zag down three passages, and reached another alley with narrow door at its end that faced the street. Grim had made every preparation. There was a heavy baulk of timber lying near the door, with rope-handles knotted into holes bored through it at intervals. The Sikhs picked that up and followed us into the street.
The mechanism of the Administration's net was a thing to wonder at. As we emerged through the door the "peasants" who were loafing with their backs against the wall got up and formed a cordon across the street. Simultaneously, although I neither saw nor heard any signal, a dozen Sikhs under a British officer came down the street from the other direction at the double and formed up in line on our lefthand. A moment later, our men were battering the door down with their baulk of timber, working all together as if they had practised the stunt thoroughly.
It was a stout door, three inches thick, of ancient olivewood and reinforced with forged iron bands. The hinges, too, had been made by hand in the days when, if a man's house was not his fortress, he might just as well own nothing; they were cemented deep into the wall, and fastened to the door itself with half- inch iron rivets. The door had to be smashed to pieces, and the noise we made would have warned the devils in the middle of the world.
"We shouldn't have let them get in with any TNT at all," said Goodenough. "They'll touch it off before we can prevent them."
"Uh-uh! They're not that kind," Grim answered. "They'll fight for their skins. Have your gun ready, sir. They've laid their plans for a time-fuse and a quick getaway. They'll figure the going may be good still if they can once get past us. Look out for a rush!"
But when the door went down at last in a mess of splinters there was no rush—nothing but silence—a dark, square, stone room containing two cots and a table, and fruit scattered all over the floor amid gray dust and fragments of cement. Grim laughed curtly.
"Look, sir!"
The fruit-baskets were on the floor by one of the cots, and the TNT containers were still in them. They had tipped out the fruit, and then run at the sound of the battering ram.
Goodenough stepped into the room, and we followed him. Beyond the table, half-hidden by a great stone slab, was a dark hole in the floor. Evidently the last man through had tried to cover up the hole, but had found the stone too heavy. The Sikhs dragged it clear and disclosed the mouth of a tunnel, rather less than a man's height, sloping sharply downward.
"What we need now is mustard gas. Smoke 'em out," said Goodenough.
"Might kill 'em," Grim objected.
"That'd be too bad, wouldn't it!"
"We could starve 'em out, for that matter," said Grim. "But they've probably got water down there, and perhaps food. Every hour of delay adds to the risk of rioting. We've got to get this hole sealed up permanently, and deny that it was ever opened."
"We could do that at once! But I won't be a party to sealing 'em up alive."
"Besides, sir, they've certainly got firearms, and they might just possible have one can of TNT down there."
"All right," said Goodenough. "I'll lead the way down."
"I've a plan," said Grim.
He took one of the fruit-baskets and began breaking it up.
"Who has a white shirt?" he asked.
I was the haberdasher. The others, Sikhs included, were all clothed in khaki from coat to skin. Grim's Bedouin array was dark-brown. I peeled the shirt off, and Grim rigged it on a frame of basket-work, with a clumsy pitch-forked arrangement of withes at the bottom. The idea was not obvious until he twisted the withes about his waist; then, when he bent down, the shirt stood up erect above him.
"If you don't mind, sir, we'll have two or three Sikhs go first. Have them take their boots off and crawl quietly as flat down as they can keep. I'll follow 'em with this contraption. They'll be able to see the white shirt dimly against the tunnel, and if they do any shooting they'll aim at that. Then if the rest of you keep low behind me we've a good chance to rush them before they can do any damage."
I never met a commanding officer more free from personal conceit than Goodenough, and as I came to know more of him later on that characteristic stood out increasingly. He was not so much a man of ideas as one who could recognize them. That done, he made use of his authority to back up his subordinates, claiming no credit for himself but always seeing to it that they got theirs.
The result was that he was simultaneously despised and loved— despised by the self-advertising school, of which there are plenty in every army, and loved—with something like fanaticism by his junior officers and men.
"I agree to that," he said simply, screwing in his monocle. Then he turned and instructed the Sikhs in their own language.
"You follow last," he said to me. "Now—all ready?"
He had a pistol in one hand and a flashlight in the other, but had to stow them both away again in order to crawl in the tunnel. Grim had no weapon in sight. The two Sikhs who were to lead had stripped themselves of everything that might make a noise, but the others kept both boots and rifles, with bayonets fixed, for it did not much matter what racket they made. In fact, the more noise we, who followed, made, the better, since that would draw attention from the Sikhs in front. All we had to do was to keep our bodies below Grim's kite affair, out of the probable line of fire.
Nevertheless, that dark hole was untempting. A dank smell came out of it, like the breath of those old Egyptian tombs in which the bones of horses, buried with their masters, lie all about on shelves. You couldn't see into it more than a yard or two, for the only light came through the doorway of the windowless room, and the tunnel led into the womb of rock where, perhaps, no light had been since Solomon's day.
But the leading Sikhs went in without hesitation and got down on their bellies. They might have been swallowed whole for all that I heard or saw of them from that minute. You could guess why the Turks and Germans had not really craved to meet those fellows out in No-man's-land.
Grim went in on all-fours like a weird animal, with my shirt dancing on its frame above his back. Goodenough went next, peering through that window-pane monocle like a deep-sea fish. All the rest of the Sikhs went after him in Indian file, dragging their rifle-butts along the tunnel floor and making noise enough to remind you of the New York subway.
I went in at the tail end, trying at intervals to peer around a khaki-covered Punjaub rump, alternately getting my head and fingers bruised by heels I could not see and a rifle-butt that only moved in jerks when you didn't expect it to. My nose was bleeding at the end of ten yards.
But you couldn't keep your distance. Whenever the men in front checked at some obstruction or paused to listen, all those behind closed up; and by the time those behind had run their noses against iron-shod heels the men in front were on their way again. You couldn't see a thing until you rammed your head into it, and then the sense of touch gave you a sort of sight suggestion, as when you see things in a dream. As for sound, the tunnel acted like a whispering gallery, mixing all the noises up together, so that you could not guess whether a man had spoken, or a stone had fallen, or a pistol had gone off, or all three.
Once or twice, when the line closed up on itself caterpillar- fashion, I was able to make out my white shirt dancing dimly; and once, where some trick of the tunnel sorted out the sounds, I caught a scrap of conversation.
"D'you suppose they'll be able to see the shirt?"
"God knows. I can hardly make it out from here."
"When it looks like the right time to you, sir, turn the flashlight on it."
"All right. God damn! Keep on going—you nearly knocked out my eye-glass!"
Even over my shoulder, looking backward, I could see practically nothing, for what little light came in through the opening was swallowed by the first few yards. There was a suspicion of paleness in the gloom behind, and the occasional suggestion of an outline of rough wall; no more.
Nor was the tunnel straight by any means. It turned and twisted constantly; and at every bend the men who originally closed it had built up a wall of heavy masonry that Scharnhoff had had to force his way through. In those places the broken stones were now lying in the fairway, as you knew by the suffering when you came in contact with them; some of the split-off edges were as sharp as glass.
It was good fun, all the same, while it lasted. If we had been crawling down a sewer, or a modern passage of any kind, the sense of danger and discomfort would, no doubt, have overwhelmed all other considerations. But, even supposing Scharnhoff had been on a vain hunt, and the veritable Tomb of the Kings of Judah did not lie somewhere in the dark ahead of us, we were nevertheless under the foundations of Solomon's temple, groping our way into mysteries that had not been disclosed, perhaps, since the days when the Queen of Sheba came and paid her homage to the most wise king. You could feel afraid, but you couldn't wish you weren't there.
I have no idea how long it took to crawl the length of that black passage. It seemed like hours. I heard heavy footsteps behind me after a while. Some one following in a hurry, who could see no better than we could, kept stumbling over the falling masonry; and once, when he fell headlong, I heard him swear titanically in a foreign tongue. I called back to whoever it was to crawl unless he wanted to be shot, but probably the words were all mixed up in the tunnel echoes, for he came on as before.
Then all at once Goodenough flashed on the light for a fraction of a second and the shirt showed like a phantom out of blackness. The instant answer to that was a regular volley of shots from in front. The flash of several pistols lit up the tunnel, and bullets rattled off the walls and roof. The shirt fell, shot loose from its moorings, and the leading Sikhs gave a shout as they started to rush forward.
We all surged after them, but there was a sudden check, followed by a babel worse than when a dozen pi-dogs fight over a rubbish- heap. You couldn't make head or tail of it, except that something desperate was happening in front, until suddenly a man with a knife in his hand, too wild with fear to use it, came leaping and scrambling over the backs of Sikhs, like a forward bucking the line. The Sikh in front of me knelt upright and collared him round the knees. The two went down together, I on top of both of them with blood running down my arm, for the man had started to use his knife at last, slashing out at random, and I rather think that slight cut he gave me saved the Sikh's life. But you can make any kind of calculation afterwards, about what took place in absolute darkness, without the least fear of being proven wrong. And since the Sikh and I agreed on that point no other opinion matters.
I think that between the two of us we had that man about nonplused, although we couldn't see. I had his knife, and the Sikh was kneeling on his stomach, when a hundred and eighty pounds of bone and muscle catapulted at us from the rear and sprawled on us headlong, saved by only a miracle from skewering some one with a bayonet as he fell.
He laughed while he fought, this newcomer, and even asked questions in the Sikh tongue. He had my arm in a grip like a vise and wrenched at it until I cursed him. Then he found a leg in the dark and nearly broke that, only to discover it was the other Sikh's. Still laughing, as if blindfolded fighting was his meat and drink, he reached again, and this time his fingers closed on enemy flesh. Judging by the yells, they hurt, too.
There must have been at least another minute of cat-and-dog-fight struggling—hands being stepped on and throats clutched—before Goodenough rolled himself free from an antagonist in front and, groping for the flashlight, found it and flashed it on. The first thing I recognized by its light was the face of Narayan Singh, with wonderful white teeth grinning through his black beard within six inches of my nose.
"Damn you!" I laughed. "You weigh a ton. Get off—you nearly killed me!"
"Nearly, in war-time, means a whole new life to lose, sahib. Be pleased to make the most of it!" he answered.
Within two minutes after that we had eight prisoners disarmed and subdued, some of them rather the worse for battery. The amazing thing was that we hadn't a serious casualty among the lot of us. We could have totaled a square yard of skin, no doubt, and a bushel of bruises (if that is the way you measure them) but mine was the only knife-wound. I felt beastly proud.
By the light of the electric torch we dragged and prodded the prisoners back whence they had come, and presently Grim or somebody found a lantern and lit it. We found ourselves in a square cavern—a perfect cube it looked like—about thirty feet wide each way.
In the midst was a plain stone coffer with its lid removed and set on end against it. In the coffer lay a tall man's skeleton, with the chin still bound in linen browned with age. There were other fragments of linen here and there, but the skeleton's bones had been disturbed and had fallen more or less apart.
Over in one corner were two large bundles done up in modern gunny- bags, and Grim went over to examine them.
"Hello!" he said. "Here's Scharnhoff and his lady friend!"
He ripped the lashings of both bundles and disclosed the Austrian and the woman, gagged and tied, both almost unconscious from inability to breathe, but not much hurt otherwise.
The Sikhs herded the prisoners, old alligator-eyes among them, into another corner. Grim tore my shirt into strips to bandage my arm with. Goodenough talked with Narayan Singh, while we waited for Scharnhoff to recover full consciousness.
"Those murderers!" he gasped at last. "Schweinehunde!"
"Better spill the beans, old boy," Grim said, smiling down at him. "You'll hang at the same time they do, if you can't tell a straight story."
"Ach! I do not care! There were no manuscripts—nothing! I don't know whose skeleton that is—some old king David, perhaps; for that is not David's real tomb that the guides show. Hang those murderers and I am satisfied!"
"Your story may help hang them. Come on, out with it!"
"Have you caught Noureddin Ali?"
"Never mind!"
"But I do mind! And you should mind!"
Scharnhoff sat up excitedly. He was dressed in the Arab garments I had seen in his cupboard that day when Grim and I called on him, with a scholar's turban that made him look very distinguished in spite of his disarray.
"That Noureddin Ali is a devil! Together we would look for the Tomb of the Kings. Together we would smuggle out the manuscripts —translate them together—publish the result together. He lent me money. He promised to bring explosives. Oh, he was full of enthusiasm! It was not until last night, when I had broken that last obstruction down and discovered nothing but this coffin, that I learned his real plan. The devil intended all along to fill this tomb with high explosive and to destroy the mosque above, with everybody in it! Curse him!"
"Never mind cursing him," said Grim, "tell us the story."
"He sent oranges here, all marked with the labels of a Zionist colony. When I told him that the explosive would arrive too late, he said I should use it to smash these walls and find another tomb. He himself disappeared, and when I questioned his men they told me the explosive would be brought in hidden under fruit in baskets. I waited then in the hope of killing him myself—"
"Hah-hah!" laughed Grim.
"That is true! But they bound me, and later on bound the woman, and laid us here to be blown up together with the mosque."
Grim turned to Goodenough, who had been listening.
"Do I win the bet, sir?"
"Ten piastoes!" said Goodenough. "Yes. Narayan Singh says Noureddin Ali was gone by the time they reached the wall."
"Sure, or he'd have brought Noureddin Ali. I've been thinking, sir. We've one chance left to bag that buzzard. Will you give me carte blanche?"
"Yes. Go ahead."
Grim crossed the place to the corner where old alligator-eyes stood herded with the other prisoners.
"Are you guilty?" he demanded.
"No. Guilty of nothing. I came out of curiosity to see what was happening here."
"Thought so. Can you hold your tongue? Then go! Get out of here!"
Alligator-eyes didn't wait for a second urging, nor stay to question his good luck, but went off in a shambling hurry.
"You are mad!" exclaimed Scharnhoff. "That man is the next-worst!"
"Grim, are you sure that's wise?" asked Goodenough.
"We can get him any time we want him, sir," Grim answered. "He lacks Noureddin Ali's gift of slipperiness."
He turned to Narayan Singh.
"Follow that man, but don't let him know he's followed. He'll show you where Noureddin Ali is. Get him this time!"
