Affair in Araby - Talbot Mundy
by Talbot Mundy
CHAPTER I
"I'll make one to give this Feisul boy a hoist"
Whoever invented chess understood the world's works as some men know
clocks and watches. He recognized a fact and based a game on it, with
the result that his game endures. And what he clearly recognized was
this: That no king matters much as long as your side is playing a
winning game. You can leave your king in his corner then to amuse
himself in dignified unimportance. But the minute you begin to lose,
your king becomes a source of anxiety.
In what is called real life (which is only a great game, although a
mighty good one) it makes no difference what you call your king. Call
him Pope if you want to, or President, or Chairman. He grows in
importance in proportion as the other side develops the attack. You've
got to keep your symbol of authority protected or you lose.
Nevertheless, your game is not lost as long as your king can move.
That's why the men who want to hurry up and start a new political era
imprison kings and cut their heads off. With no head on his shoulders
your king can only move in the direction of the cemetery, which is over
the line and doesn't count.
I love a good fight, and have been told I ought to be ashamed of it.
I've noticed, though, that the folk who propose to elevate my morals
fight just as hard, and less cleanly, with their tongue than some of us
do with our fists and sinews. I'm told, too, quite frequently that as
an American I ought to be ashamed of fighting for a king. Dear old
ladies of both sexes have assured me that it isn't moral to give aid and
comfort to a gallant gentleman--a godless Mohammedan, too; which makes
it much worse--who is striving gamely and without malice to keep his
given word and save his country.
But if you've got all you want, do you know of any better fun than
lending a hand while some man you happen to like gets his? I don't. Of
course, some fellows want too much, and it's bad manners as well as
waste of time to inflict your opinion on them. But given a reasonable
purpose and a friend who needs your assistance, is there any better
sport on earth than risking your own neck to help him put it over?
Walk wide of the man and particularly of the woman, who makes a noise
about lining your pocket or improving your condition. An altruist is my
friend James Schuyler Grim, but he makes less noise than a panther on a
dark night; and I never knew a man less given to persuading you. He
has one purpose, but almost never talks about it. It's a sure bet that
if we hadn't struck up a close friendship, sounding each other out
carefully as opportunity occurred, I would have been in the dark about
it until this minute.
All the news of Asia from Alexandretta to the Persian Gulf and from
Northern Turkestan to South Arabia reaches Grim's ears sooner or later.
He earns his bread and butter knitting all that mess of cross-grained
information into one intelligible pattern; after which he interprets it
and acts suddenly without advance notices.
Time and again, lone-handed, he has done better than an army corps, by
playing chief against chief in a land where the only law is individual
interpretation of the Koran.
But it wasn't until our rescue of Jeremy Ross from near Abu Kem, that I
ever heard Grim come out openly and admit that he was working to
establish Feisul, third son of the King of Mecca, as king of just as
many Arabs as might care to have him over them. That was the cat he had
been keeping in a bag for seven years.
Right down to the minute when Grim, Jeremy and I sat down with Ben Saoud
the Avenger on a stricken field at Abu Kem, and Grim and Jeremy played
their hands so cleverly that the Avenger was made, unwitting guardian of
Jeremy's secret gold-mine, and Feisul's open and sworn supporter in the
bargain, the heart of Grim's purpose continued to be a mystery even to
me; and I have been as intimate with him as any man.
He doles out what he has in mind as grudgingly as any Scot spends the
shillings in his purse. But the Scots are generous when they have to
be, and so is Grim. There being nothing else for it on that occasion,
he spilled the beans, the whole beans, and nothing but the beans.
Having admitted us two to his secret, he dilated on it all the way back
to Jerusalem, telling us all he knew of Feisul (which would fill a
book), and growing almost lyrical at times as he related incidents in
proof of his contention that Feisul, lineal descendant of the Prophet
Mohammed, is the "whitest" Arab and most gallant leader of his race
since Saladin.
Knowing Grim and how carefully suppressed his enthusiasm usually is, I
couldn't help being fired by all he said on that occasion.
And as for Jeremy, well--it was like meat and drink to him. You meet
men more or less like Jeremy Ross in any of earth's wild places,
although you rarely meet his equal for audacity, irreverence and riotous
good-fellowship. He isn't the only Australian by a long shot who
upholds Australia by fist and boast and astounding gallantry, yet stays
away from home. You couldn't fix Jeremy with concrete; he'd find some
means of bursting any mould.
He had been too long lost in the heart of Arabia for anything except the
thought of Sydney Bluffs and the homesteads that lie beyond to tempt him
for the first few days.
"You fellers come with me," he insisted. "You chuck the Army, Grim, and
I'll show you a country where the cows have to bend their backs to let
the sun go down. Ha-ha! Show you women too--red-lipped girls in
sunbonnets, that'll look good after the splay-footed crows you see out
here. Tell you what: We'll pick up the Orient boat at Port Said--no P.
and O. for me; I'm a passenger aboard ship, not a horrible example!--
and make a wake for the Bull's Kid. Murder! Won't the scoff taste
good!
"We'll hit the Bull's Kid hard for about a week--mix it with the fellers
in from way back--you know--dry-blowers, pearlers, spending it easy--
handing their money to Bessie behind the bar and restless because she
makes it last too long; watch them a while and get in touch with all
that's happening; then flit out of Sydney like bats out of--and hump
blue--eh?"
"Something'll turn up; it always does. I've got money in the bank--
about, two thousand here in gold dust with me,--and if what you say's
true, Grim, about me still being a trooper, then the Army owes me three
years' back pay, and I'll have it or go to Buckingham Palace and tear
off a piece of the King! We're capitalists, by Jupiter! Besides, you
fellers agreed that if I shut down the mine at Abu Kem you'd join me and
we'd be Grim, Ramsden and Ross."
"I'll keep the bargain if you hold me to it when the time comes," Grim
answered.
"You bet I'll hold you to it! Rammy here, and you and I could trade the
chosen people off the map between us. We're a combination. What's time
got to do with it?"
"We've got to use your mine," Grim answered.
"I'm game. But let's see Australia first."
"Suppose we fix up your discharge, and you go home," Grim suggested.
"Come back when you've had a vacation, and by that time Ramsden and I
will have done what's possible for Feisul. He's in Damascus now, but the
French have got him backed into a corner. No money--not much
ammunition--French propaganda undermining the allegiance of his men--
time working against him, and nothing to do but wait."
"What in hell have the French got to do with it?"
"They want Syria. They've got the coast towns now. They mean to have
Damascus; and if they can catch Feisul and jail him to keep him out of
mischief they will."
"But damn it! Didn't they promise the Arabs that Feisul should be King
of Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, and all that?"
"They did. The Allies all promised, France included. But since the
Armistice the British have made a present of Palestine to the Jews, and
the French have demanded Syria for themselves. The British are
pro-Feisul, but the French don't want him anywhere except dead or in
jail. They know they've given him and the Arabs a raw deal; and they
seem to think the simplest way out is to blacken Feisul's character and
ditch him. If the French once catch him in Damascus he's done for and
the Arab cause is lost."
"Why lost?" demanded Jeremy. "There are plenty more Arabs."
"But only one Feisul. He's the only man who can unite them all."
"I know a chance for him," said Jeremy. "Let him come with us three to
Australia. There are thousands of fellers there who fought alongside
him and don't care a damn for the French. They'll raise all the hell
there is before they'll see him ditched."
"Uh-huh! London's the place for him," Grim answered. "The British like
him, and they're ashamed of the way he's been treated. They'll give him
Mesopotamia. Baghdad's the old Arab capital, and that'll do for a
beginning; after that it's up to the Arabs themselves."
"Well? Where does my gold mine come in?" Jeremy asked.
"Feisul has no money. If it was made clear to him that he could serve
the Arabs best by going to London, he'd consider it. The objection
would be, though, that he'd have to make terms in advance with
hog-financiers, who'd work through the Foreign Office to tie up all the
oil and mine and irrigation concessions. If we tell him privately about
your gold mine at Abu Kem he can laugh at financiers."
"All right," said Jeremy, "I'll give him the gold mine. Let him erect a
modern plant and he'll have millions!"
"Uh-huh! Keep the mine secret. Let him go to London and arrange about
Mespot. Just at present High Finance could find a hundred ways of
disputing his title to the mine, but once he's king with the Arabs all
rooting for him things'll be different. He'll treat you right when that
time comes, don't worry."
"Worry? Me?" said Jeremy. "All that worries me is having to see this
business through before we can make a wake for Sydney. I'm homesick.
But never mind. All right, you fellers, I'll make one to give this
Feisul boy a hoist!"
CHAPTER II
"Atcha, Jimgrim sahib! Atcha!"
That conversation and Jeremy's conversion to the big idea took place on
the way across the desert to Jerusalem--a journey that took us a week on
camel-back--a rowdy, hot journey with the stifling simoom blowing grit
into our followers' throats, who sang and argued alternately
nevertheless. For, besides our old Ali Baba and his sixteen sons and
grandsons, there were Jeremy's ten pickups from Arabia's byways, whom he
couldn't leave behind because they knew the secret of his gold-mine.
Grim's authority is always at its height on the outbound trail, for then
everybody knows that success, and even safety, depends on his swift
thinking; on the way home afterward reaction sets in sometimes, because
Arabs are made light-headed by success, and it isn't a simple matter to
discipline free men when you have no obvious hold over them.
But that was where Jeremy came in. Jeremy could do tricks, and the
Arabs were like children when he performed for them. They would be good
if he would make one live chicken into two live ones by pulling it
apart. They would pitch the tents without fighting if he would swallow
a dozen eggs and produce them presently from under a camel's tail. If
he would turn on his ventriloquism and make a camel say its prayers,
they were willing to forgive--for the moment anyhow--even their nearest
enemies.
So we became a sort of travelling sideshow, with Jeremy ballyhooing for
himself in an amazing flow of colloquial Arabic, and hardly ever
repeating the same trick.
All of which was very good for our crowd and convenient at the moment,
but hardly so good for Jeremy's equilibrium. He is one of those
handsome, perpetually youthful fellows, whose heads have been a wee mite
turned by the sunshine of the world's warm smile. I don't mean by that
that he isn't a tophole man, or a thorough-going friend with guts and
gumption, who would chance his neck for anyone he likes without a
second's hesitation, for he's every bit of that. He has horse sense,
too, and isn't fooled by the sort of flattery that women lavish on men
who have laughing eyes and a little dark moustache.
But he hasn't been yet in a predicament that he couldn't laugh or fight
his way out of; he has never yet found a job that he cared to stick at
for more than a year or two, and seldom one that could hold him for six
months.
He jumps from one thing to another, finding all the world so interesting
and amusing, and most folk so ready to make friends with him, that he
always feels sure of landing softly somewhere over the horizon.
So by the time we reached Jerusalem friend Jeremy was ripe for almost
anything except the plan we had agreed on. Having talked that over
pretty steadily most of the way from Abu Kem, it seemed already about as
stale and unattractive to him as some of his oldest tricks. And
Jerusalem provided plenty of distraction. We hadn't been in Grim's
quarters half an hour when Jeremy was up to his ears in a dispute that
looked like separating us.
Grim, who wears his Arab clothes from preference and never gets into
uniform if he can help it, went straight to the telephone to report
briefly to headquarters. I took Jeremy upstairs to discard my Indian
disguise and hunt out clothes for Jeremy that would fit him, but found
none, I being nearly as heavy as Grim and Jeremy together. He had
finished clowning in the kit I offered him, and had got back into his
Arab things while I was shaving off the black whiskers with which Nature
adorns my face whenever I neglect the razor for a few days, when an auto
came tooting and roaring down the narrow street, and a moment later
three staff officers took the stairs at a run. So far, good; that was
unofficial, good-natured, human and entirely decent. The three of them
burst through the bed room door, all grins, and took turns pumping with
Jeremy's right arm--glad to see him--proud to know him--pleased to see
him looking fit and well, and all that kind of thing. Even men who had
fought all through the war had forgotten some of its red tape by that
time, and Jeremy not being in uniform they treated him like a fellow
human being. And he reciprocated, Australian fashion, free and easy,
throwing up his long legs on my bed and yelling for somebody to bring
drinks for the crowd, while they showered questions on him.
It wasn't until Jeremy turned the tables and began to question them that
the first cloud showed itself.
"Say, old top," he demanded of a man who wore the crossed swords of a
brigadier. "Grim tells me I'm a trooper. When can I get my discharge?"
The effect was instantaneous. You would have thought they had touched a
leper by the way they drew themselves up and changed face.
"Never thought of that. Oh, I say--this is a complication. You
mean...?"
"I mean this," Jeremy answered dryly, because nobody could have helped
notice their change of attitude: "I was made prisoner by Arabs and
carried off. That's more than three years ago. The war's over. Grim
tells me all Australians have been sent home and discharged. What about
me?"
"Um-m-m! Ah! This will have to be considered. Let's see; to whom did
you surrender?"
"Damn you, I didn't surrender! I met Grim in the desert, and reported
to him for duty."
"Met Major Grim, eh?"
"Yes," said Grim, appearing in the door. "I came across him in the
desert; he reported for duty; I gave him an order, and he obeyed it.
Everything's regular."
"Um-m-m! How'd you make that out--regular? Have you any proof he
wasn't a deserter? He'll have to be charged with desertion and tried by
court martial, I'm afraid. Possibly a mere formality, but it'll have to
be done, you know, before he can be given a clear discharge. If he
can't be proved guilty of desertion he'll be cleared."
"How long will that take?" Jeremy demanded.
His voice rang sharp with the challenge note that means debate has
ceased and quarrel started. It isn't the right note for dissolving
difficulties.
"Couldn't tell you," said the brigadier. "My advice to you is to keep
yourself as inconspicuous as possible until the administrator gets
back."
It was good advice, but Grim, standing behind the brigadier, made
signals to Jeremy in vain. Few Australians talk peace when there is no
peace, and when there's a fight in prospect they like to get it over.
"I remember you," said Jeremy, speaking rather, slowly, and throwing in
a little catchy laugh that was like a war-cry heard through a
microphone. "You were the Fusileer major they lent to the Jordan
Highlanders--fine force that--no advance without security--lost two men,
if I remember--snakebite one; the other shot for looting. Am I right?
So they've made you a brigadier! Aren't you the staff officer they sent
to strafe a regiment of Anzacs for going into action without orders? We
chased you to cover! I can see you now running for fear we'd shoot you!
Hah!"
Grim took the only course possible in the circumstances. The
brigadier's neck was crimson, and Jeremy had to be saved somehow.
"Touch of sun, sir--that and hardship have unhinged him a bit. Suffers
from delusions. Suppose I keep him here until the doctor sees him?"
"Um-m-m! Ah! Yes, you'd better. See he gets no whisky, will you? Too
bad! Too bad! What a pity!"
Our three visitors left in a hurry, contriving to look devilish
important. Grim followed them out.
"Rammy, old cock," said Jeremy, sprawling on the bed again and laughing,
"don't look all that serious. Bring back your brigadier and I'll kiss
him on both cheeks while you hold him! But say; suppose that doctor's
one of these swabs who serve out number nine pills for shell-shock,
broken leg, dyspepsia, housemaid's knee and the creeping itch? Suppose
he swears I'm luny? What then?"
"Grim will find somebody to swear to anything once," I answered. "But
you look altogether too dashed healthy--got to give the doctor-man a
chance--here, get between the sheets and kid that something hurts you."
"Get out! The doe 'ud put a cast-iron splint on it, and order me into a
hospital. How about toothache? That do? Do they give you bread and
water for it?"
So toothache was selected as an alibi, and Jeremy wrapped his jaw in a
towel, after jabbing his cheek with a pin so as to remember on which
side the pain should be. But it was artifice wasted, for Grim had
turned a better trick. He had found an Australian doctor in the
hospital for Sikhs--the only other Australian in Jerusalem just then--
and brought him cooee-ing upstairs in a way that proved he knew the
whole story already.
The autopsy, as he called it, was a riot. We didn't talk of anything
but fights at Gaza--the surprise at Nazareth, when the German General
Staff fled up the road on foot in its pyjamas--the three-day scrap at
Nebi Samwil, when Australians and Turks took and retook the same hill
half a dozen times, and parched enemies took turns drinking from one
flask while the shells of both sides burst above them. It seems to have
been almost like old-fashioned war in Palestine from their account of
it, either side conceding that the other played the game.
When they had thrashed the whole campaign over from start to finish,
making maps on my bed with hair brushes, razors and things, they got to
talking of Australia; and that was all about fighting too: dog fights,
fist fights between bullockies on the long road from Northern
Queensland, riots in Perth when the pearlers came in off the Barrier
Reef to spend their pay, rows in the big shearing sheds when the Union
men objected to unskilled labour--you'd have thought Australia was one
big battlefield, with nothing else but fights worth talking of from dawn
till dark.
The doctor was one of those tightly-knit, dark-complexioned little men
with large freckles and brown eyes, who surprise you with a mixture of
intense domestic virtue and a capacity, that shouldn't mix with it at
all, for turning up in all the unexpected places. You meet his sort
everywhere, and they always have a wife along, who worships them and
makes a home out of tin cans and packing-cases that would put the
stay-at-home housekeepers to shame. They always have a picture on the
wall of cows standing knee-deep in the water, and no matter what their
circumstances are, there's always something in reserve, for guests,
offered frankly without apology. Never hesitate with those folk, but
don't let them go too far, for they'll beggar themselves to help you in
a tight place, if you'll let them. Ticknor his name was. He's a good
man.
"Say, Grim, there's a case in the Sikh hospital that ought to interest
you," he said at last. "Fellow from Damascus--Arab--one of Feisul's
crowd. He wouldn't let them take him to the Zionist hospital--swore a
Jew knifed him and that the others would finish the job if they got half
a chance. They'd have been arguing yet, and he dead and buried, if I
hadn't gone shopping with Mabel. She saw the crowd first (I was in
Noureddin's store) and jabbed her way in with her umbrella--she yelled
to me and I bucked the line.
"The Jews wanted to tell me I had no right to take that chap to the Sikh
hospital, and no more had I; so I plugged him up a bit, and put him in
a cab, and let him take himself there, Mabel and me beside him. Seeing
I was paying for the cab, I didn't see why Mabel should walk. Of
course, once we had him in there he was too sick to be moved; but the
Army won't pay for him, so I sent a bill to the Zionists, and they
returned it with a rude remark on the margin. Maybe I can get the money
out of Feisul some day; otherwise I'm stuck."
"I'll settle that," said Grim. "What's the tune he plays?"
"Utter mystery. Swears a Jew stabbed him, but that Damascus outfit
blame the Jews for everything. He's only just down from Damascus. I
think he's one of Feisul's officers, although he's not in uniform--
prob'ly on a secret mission. Suppose you go and see him? But say,
watch out for the doc on duty--he's a meddler. Tell him nothing!"
"Sure. How about Jeremy? What's the verdict?"
"What do you want done with him?"
"I want him out of reach of trouble here pending his discharge. No need
to certify him mad, is there?"
"Mad? All Australians are mad. None of us need a certificate for that.
Have you arrested him?"
"Not yet."
"Then you're too late! He's suffering from bad food and exposure. The
air of Jerusalem's bad for him, and he's liable to get pugnacious if
argued with. That runs in the blood. I order him off duty, and shall
recommend him within twenty minutes to the P.M.O. for leave of absence
at his own expense. If you know of any general who dares override the
P.M.O. I'll show you a brass hat in the wind. Come on; d'you want to
bet on it?"
"Will the P.M.O. fall?" asked Grim.
"Like a new chum off a brumby. Signs anything I shove under his nose.
Comes round to our house to eat Mabel's damper and syrup three nights a
week. You bet he'll sign it: Besides, he's white; pulled out of the
firing-line by an Australian at Gaza, and hasn't forgotten it. He'd
sign anything but checks to help an Anzac. I'll be going.
"You trot up to the slaughter-shop, Grim, and interview that Arab--Sidi
bin Something-or-Other--forget his name--he lies in number nineteen cot
on the left-hand side of the long ward, next to a Pathan who's shy both
legs. You can't mistake him. I'll write out a medical certificate for
Jeremy and follow. And say; wait a minute! What price the lot of you
eating Mabel's chow tonight at our house? We don't keep a cook, so you
won't get poisoned. That's settled; I'll tell Mabel you're coming.
Tootleloo!"
But there was a chance that the brigadier might carry resentment to the
point of sending up a provost-marshal's guard to arrest Jeremy on the
well-known principle that a bird in the hand can be strafed more easily
than one with a medical certificate. The bush was the place for our
bird until such time as the P.M.O.'s signature should adorn the
necessary piece of paper; so we three rode up in a cab together to the
Sikh hospital, and had a rare time trying to get in.
You see, there was a Sikh on guard outside, who respected nothing under
heaven but his orders. He wouldn't have known Grim in any event, being
only recently from India; Grim's uniform would have passed him in, but
he and Jeremy were still arrayed as Arabs, and my civilian clothes
entitled me in the sentry's opinion to protection lest I commit the
heinous sin of impertinence. An Arab in his eyes was as an insect, and
a white man, who consorted with such creatures, not a person to be taken
seriously.
But our friend Narayan Singh was in the hospital, enjoying the wise
veteran's prerogative of resting on full pay after his strenuous
adventures along with us at Abu Kem. There was nothing whatever the
matter with him. He recognized Grim's voice and emerged through the
front door with a milk-white smile flashing in the midst of newly-curled
black hair--dignified, immense, and full of instant understanding.