Affair in Araby - Talbot Mundy
Grim said a few words to Narayan Singh in Arabic, which so far as the
sentry was concerned wasn't a language, but Narayan Singh spoke in turn
in Punjabi, and the man just out from India began to droop like Jonah's
gourd under the old soldier's scorn.
In consequence we got a full salute with arms presented, and walked in
without having to trouble anybody in authority, Narayan Singh leading
with the air of an old-time butler showing royalty to their rooms. He
even ascertained in an aside, that the doctor of the day was busy
operating, and broke that good news with consummate tact:
"The sahibs' lightest wish is law, but if they should wish to speak with
the doctor sahib, it would be necessary to call him forth from the
surgery, where he works behind locked doors. Is it desired that I
should summon him?"
"Operation serious?" asked Grim, and neither man smiled. It was perfect
acting.
"Very, sahib. He removes the half of a sepoy's liver."
"Uh! Couldn't think of interrupting him. Too bad! Lead the way."
But we didn't enter the ward until Narayan Singh and an orderly had
placed two screens around number nineteen cot, in the way they do when a
man is dying, and had placed three chairs at the bedside contrary to the
regulations printed on the wall. Then Narayan Singh stood on guard
outside the screens, but didn't miss much of the conversation, I
believe.
The man in bed was wounded badly, but not fatally, and though his eyes
blazed with fever he seemed to have some of his wits about him. He
recognized Grim after staring hard at him for about a minute.
"Jimgrim!"
"Sidi bin Tagim, isn't it? Well, well I thought it might be you," said
Grim, speaking the northern dialect of Arabic, which differs quite a bit
from that spoken around Jerusalem.
"Who are these?" asked the man in bed, speaking hoarsely as he stared
first at Jeremy and then at me.
"Jmil Ras, a friend of mine," Grim answered.
"And that one?"
He didn't like the look of me at all. Western clothes and a shaven face
spell nothing reassuring to the Arab when in trouble; he has been
"helped" by the foreigner a time or two too often.
"An American named Ramsden. Also a friend of mine."
"Oh! An Amirikani? A hakim?"
"No. Not a doctor. Not a man to fear. He is a friend of Feisul."
"On whose word?"
"Mine," Grim answered.
Sidi bin Tagim nodded. He seemed willing to take Grim's word for
anything.
"Why did you say a Jew stabbed you?" Grim asked suddenly.
"So that they might hang a Jew or two. Wallah! Are the Jews not at the
bottom of all trouble? If a Greek should kill a Maltese it would be a
Jew who planned it! May the curse of Allah change their faces and the
fire of Eblis consume them!"
"Did you see the man who stabbed you?"
"Yes."
And was he a Jew?"
"Jimgrim, you know better than to ask that! A Jew always hires another
to do the killing. He who struck me was a hireling, who shall die by my
hand, as Allah is my witness. But may Allah do more to me and bring me
down into the dust unburied unless I make ten Jews pay for this!"
"Any one Jew in particular?" Grim asked, and the man in bed closed up
like a clam that has been touched.
He was a strange-looking fellow--rather like one of those lean Spaniards
whom Goya used to paint, with a scant beard turning grey, and hollow
cheeks. He had thrown off the grey army blanket because fever burned
him, and his lean, hard muscles stood out as if cast in bronze.
"But for the Jews, Feisul would be king of all this land this minute!"
he said suddenly, and closed up tight again.
Grim smiled. He nearly always does smile when apparently at a loose
end. At moments when most cross-examiners would browbeat he grows
sympathetic--humours his man, and, by following whatever detour offers,
gets back on the trail again.
"How about the French?" he asked.
"May Allah smite them! They are all in the pay of Jews!"
"Can you prove it?"
"Wallah! That I can!"
Grim looked incredulous. Those baffling eyes of his twinkled with quiet
amusement, and the man in bed resented it.
"You laugh, Jimgrim, but if you would listen I might tell you
something."
But Grim only smiled more broadly than ever.
"Sidi bin Tagim, you're one of those fanatics who think the world is all
leagued against you. Why should the Jews think you sufficiently
important to be murdered?"
"Wallah! There are few who hold the reins of happenings as I do."
"If they'd killed you they'd have stopped the clock, eh?"
"That is as Allah may determine. I am not dead."
"Have you friends in Jerusalem?"
"Surely."
"Strange that they haven't been to see you."
"Wallah! Not strange at all."
"I see. They regard you as a man without authority, who might make
trouble and leave other men to face it, eh?"
"Who says I have no authority?"
"Well, if you could prove you have--"
"What then?" the man in bed demanded, trying to sit up. "Feisul, for
instance, is a friend of mine, and these men with me are his friends
too. You have no letter, of course, for that would be dangerous..."
"Jimgrim, in the name of the Most High, I swear I had a letter! He who
stabbed me took it. I--"
"Was the letter from Feisul?"
"Malaish--no matter. It was sealed, and bore a number for the
signature. If you can get that letter for me, Jimgrim--but what is the
use! You are a servant of the British."
"Tell me who stabbed you and I'll get you the letter."
"No, for you are clever. You would learn too much. Better tell the
doctor of this place to hurry up and heal me; then I will attend to my
own affairs."
"I'd like to keep you out of jail, if that's possible," Grim answered.
"You and I are old acquaintances, Sidi bin Tagim. But of course, if
you're here to sow sedition, and should there be a document at large in
proof of it, which document should fall into the hands of the police--
well, I couldn't do much for you then. You'd better tell me who stabbed
you, and I'll get after him."
"Ah! But if you get the letter?"
"I shall read it, of course."
"But to whom will you show it?"
"Perhaps to my friends here."
"Are they bound by your honour?"
"I shall hold them so."
There was the glint in Grim's eye now that should warn anyone who knew
him that the scent was hot; added to the fact that the rest of his
expression suggested waning interest, that look of his forebode fine
hunting.
"There's one other I might consult," he admitted casually. "On my way
here I saw one of Feisul's staff captains driving in a cab toward the
Jaffa Gate."
The instant effect of that remark was to throw the wounded man into a
paroxysm of mingled rage and fear. He almost threw a fit. His already
bloodless face grew ashy grey and livid blue alternately, and he would
have screamed at Grim if the cough that began to rack his whole body
would have let him. As it was, he gasped out unintelligible words and
sought to make Grim understand by signs. And Grim apparently did
understand.
"Very well," he laughed, "tell me who stabbed you and I won't mention
your name to Staff-Captain Abd el Kadir."
"And these men? Will they say nothing?"
"Not a word. Who stabbed you?"
"Yussuf Dakmar! May Allah cut him off from love and mercy!"
"Golly!" exploded Jeremy, forgetting not to talk English. "There's a
swine for you! Yussuf Dakmar's the son of a sea-cook who used to sell
sheep to the Army four times over--drive 'em into camp and get a
receipt--drive 'em out again next night--bring 'em back in the morning--
get a receipt again--drive 'em off--bring 'em back--us chaps too busy
shifting brother Turk to cotton on. He'll be the boy I kicked out of
camp once. Maybe remembers it too. I'll bet his backbone's twanging
yet! Lead me to him, Grim, old cock, I'd like another piece of him!"
But Grim was humming to himself, playing piano on the bed-sheet with his
fingers.
"Is that man not an Arab?" asked the fellow in bed, taking alarm all
over again.
"Arab your aunt!" laughed Jeremy: "I eat Arabs! I'm the only original
genuine woolly bad man from way back! I'm the plumber who pulled the
plug out of Arabia! You know English? Good! You know what a dose of
salts is then? You've seen it work? Experienced it, maybe? Hah!
You'll understand me. I'm a grain of the Epsom Salt that went through
Beersheba, time the Turks had all the booze in sight and we were
thirsty. Muddy booze it was too--oozy booze--not fit for washing hogs!
Ever heard of Anzacs? Well, I'm one of 'em. Now you know what the
scorpion who stung you's up against! You lie there and think about it,
cocky; I'll show you his shirt tomorrow morning."
"Suppose we go now," suggested Grim. "I've got the drift of this thing.
Get the rest elsewhere."
"You can fan that Joskins for a lot more yet," Jeremy objected. "The
plug's pulled. He'll flow if you let him."
Grim nodded.
"Sure he would. Don't want too much from him. Don't want to have to
arrest him. Get me?"
"Come on then," answered Jeremy, "I've promised him a shirt!"
Beyond the screen Narayan Singh stood like a statue, deaf, dumb,
immovable. Even his eyes were fixed with a blank stare on the wall
opposite.
"How much did you hear?" Grim asked him.
"I, sahib? I am a sick man. I have been asleep."
"Dream anything?"
"As your honour pleases!"
"Hospital's stuffy, isn't it? Think you could recover health more
rapidly outdoors? Sick-leave continued of course, but--how about a
little exercise?"
The Sikh's eyes twinkled.
"Sahib, you know I need exercise!"
"I'll speak to the doctor for you. In case he signs a new certificate,
report to me tonight."
"Atcha, Jimgrim sahib! Atcha!"
CHAPTER III
"Hum Dekta hai"
Like most of the quarters occupied by British officers, the house
occupied by Major Roger Ticknor and his wife Mabel was "enemy property,"
and its only virtue consisted in its being rent free. Grim, Jeremy,
little Ticknor and his smaller wife, and I sat facing across a small
deal table with a stuttering oil-lamp between us. In a house not far
away some Orthodox Jews, arrayed in purple and green and orange, with
fox-fur around the edges of their hats, were drunk and celebrating
noisily the Feast of Esther; so you can work out the exact date if
you're curious enough. The time was nine p.m. We had talked the Anzac
hurricane-drive through Palestine all over again from the beginning,
taking world-known names in vain and doing honour to others that will
stay unsung for lack of recognition, when one of those unaccountable
pauses came, and for the sake of breaking silence, Mabel Ticknor asked a
question. She was a little, plucky, pale-faced thing whom you called
instinctively by her first name at the end of half an hour--a sort of
little mother of loose-ended men, who can make silk purses out of sows'
ears, and wouldn't know how to brag if she were tempted.
"Say, Jim," she asked, turning her head quickly like a bird toward Grim
on my left, "what's your verdict about that man from Syria that Roger
took in a cab to the Sikh hospital? I'm out a new pair of riding
breeches if Roger has to pay the bill for him. I want my money's worth.
Tell me his story."
"Go ahead and buy the breeches, Mabel. I'll settle that bill," he
answered.
"No, you won't, Jim! You're always squandering money. Half your pay
goes to the scallywags you've landed in jail. This one's up to Roger
and me; we found him."
Grim laughed.
"I can charge his keep under the head of 'information paid for.' I shall
sign the voucher without a qualm."
"You'd get blood out of a stone, Jim! Go on, tell us!"
"I'm hired to keep secrets as well as discover them," Grim answered,
smiling broadly.
"Of course you are," she retorted. "But I know all Roger's secrets, and
he's a doctor, mind you! Am I right, Roger? Come along! There are no
servants--no eavesdroppers. Wait. I'll put tea on the table, and then
we'll all listen."
She made tea Australian fashion in a billy, which is quick and simple,
but causes alleged dyspepsia cures to sell well all the way from
Adelaide to the Gulf of Carpentraia.
"You'll have to tell her, Jim," said Jeremy.
"Mabel's safe as an iron roof," put in her husband. "Noisy in the rain,
but doesn't leak."
But neither man nor woman could have extracted a story from James
Schuyler Grim unless it suited him to tell it. Mabel Ticknor is one of
those honest little women who carry men's secrets with them up and down
the world. Being confided in by nearly every man who met her was a
habit. But Grim tells only when the telling may accomplish something,
and I wondered, as he laid his elbow on the table to begin, just what
use he meant to make of Mabel Ticknor. He uses what he knows as other
level-headed men use coin, spending thriftily for fair advantage.
"That is secret," he began, as soon as Mabel had dumped the contents of
the billy into a huge brown teapot. "I expect Narayan Singh here
presently. He'll have a letter with him, taken from the Syrian who
stabbed that man in the hospital."
"Whoa, hoss!" Jeremy interrupted. "You mean you've sent that Sikh to
get the shirt of Yussuf Dakmar?"
Grim nodded.
"That was my job," Jeremy objected.
"Whoa, hoss, yourself, Jeremy!" Grim answered. "You'd have gone down
into the bazaar like a bull into a china-shop. Narayan Singh knows
where to find him. If he shows fight, he'll be simply handed over to
the Sikh patrol for attacking a man in uniform, and by the time he
reaches the lock-up that letter will be here on the table between us."
"All the same, that's a lark you've done me out of," Jeremy insisted.
"That Yussuf Dakmar's a stinker. I know all about him. Two whole
squadrons had to eat lousy biscuit for a week because that swab sold the
same meat five times over. But I'll get him yet!"
"Well, as I was saying," Grim resumed, "there's a letter in Jerusalem
that's supposed to be from Feisul. But when Feisul writes anything he
signs his name to it, whereas a number is the signature on this. Now
that fellow Sidi bin Tagim in the hospital is an honest old kite in his
way. He's a great rooter for Feisul. And the only easy way to ditch a
man like Feisul, who's as honest as the day is long, and no man's fool,
is to convince his fanatical admirers that for his own sake he ought to
be forced along a certain course. The game's as old as Adam. You fill
up a man like Sidi bin Tagim with tales about Jews--convince him that
Jews stand between Feisul and a kingdom--and he'll lend a hand in any
scheme ostensibly directed against Jews. Get me?"
"So would I!" swore Jeremy. "I'm against 'em too! I camped alongside
the Jordan Highlanders one time when--"
But we had had that story twice that evening with variations. He was
balancing his chair on two legs, so I pushed him over backward, and
before he could pick himself up again Grim resumed.
"Feisul is in Damascus, and the Syrian Convention has proclaimed him
king. That don't suit the French, who detest him. The feeling's
mutual. When Feisul went to Paris for the Peace Conference, the French
imagined he was easy. They thought, here's another of these Eastern
princes who can be taken in the old trap. So they staged a special
performance at the Opera for him, and invited him to supper afterward
behind the scenes with the usual sort of ladies in full war-paint in
attendance."
"Shall we cut that too?" suggested Mabel.
"Sure. Feisul did! He's not that kind of moth. Ever since then the
French have declared he's a hypocrite; and because he won't yield his
rights they've been busy inventing wrongs of their own and insisting on
immediate adjustment. The French haven't left one stone unturned that
could irritate Feisul into making a false move."
"To hell with them!" suggested Jeremy, reaching for more tea.
"But Feisul's not easy to irritate," Grim went on. "He's one of those
rare men, who get born once in an epoch, who force you to believe that
virtue isn't extinct. He's almost like a child in some things--like a
good woman in others--and a man of iron courage all the time, who can
fire Arabs in the same way Saladin did five centuries ago."
"He looks like a saint," said Jeremy. "I've seen him."
"But he's no soft liver," continued Grim. "He was brought up in the
desert among Bedouins, and has their stoical endurance with a sort of
religious patience added. Gets that maybe from being a descendant of
the Prophet."
"Awful sort to have to fight, that kind are," said Jeremy. "They wear
you down!"
"So the French decided some time ago to persuade Feisul's intimates to
make a bad break which he couldn't repudiate."
"Why don't he cut loose with forty or fifty thousand men and boot the
French into the sea?" demanded Jeremy. "I'll make one to help him! I
knew a Frenchman once, who--"
"We'll come to that presently," said Grim. "I dare say you didn't hear
of Verdun."
"Objection sustained. Hand it to 'em. They've got guts," grinned
Jeremy. "Fire away, old top."
"Well, they ran foul of an awkward predicament, which is that there are
some darned decent fellows among the officers of their army of
occupation. There's more than a scattering of decent gentlemen who
don't like dirt. I won't say they tell Feisul secrets, or disobey
orders; but if you want to give a man a square deal there are ways of
doing it without sending him telegrams."
Mabel put the tea back on the kerosene stove to stew, with an extra
handful of black leaves in it. Grim continued:
"Another thing: The French are half afraid that if they take the field
against Feisul on some trumped-up pretext, he'll get assistance from the
British. They could send him things he needs more than money, and can't
get. Ninety-nine per cent of the British are pro-Feisul. Some of them
would risk their jobs to help him in a pinch. The French have got to
stall those men before they can attack Feisul safely."
"How d'you mean--stall 'em?" demanded Jeremy. "Not all the British are
fools--only their statesmen, and generals, and sixty percent of the
junior officers and rank and file. The rest don't have to be fed pap
from a bottle; they're good men. Takes more than talk to stall that
kind off a man they like."
"You've got the idea, Jeremy. You have to show them. Well, why not
stir up revolution here in Palestine in Feisul's name? Why not get the
malcontents to murder Jews wholesale, with propaganda blowing full blast
to make it look as if Feisul's hand is directing it all? It's as simple
as falling off a log. French agents who look like honest Arabs approach
the most hairbrained zealots who happen to be on the inside with Feisul,
and suggest to them that the French and British are allies; therefore
the only way to keep the British from helping the French will be to
start red-hot trouble in Palestine that will keep the British busy
protecting themselves and the Jews.
"The secret agents point out that although Feisul is against anything of
the sort, he must be committed to it for his own sake. And they make
great capital out of Feisul's promise that he will protect the Jews if
recognized as king of independent Syria. Kill all the Jews beforehand,
so there won't be any for him to protect when the time comes--that's the
argument."
Mabel interrupted.
"Haven't you warned Feisul?"
She had both elbows on the table and her chin between her hands, and I
dare say she had listened in just that attitude to fifty inside stories
that the newspapers would scatter gold in vain to get.
"I sure did. And he has sent one of his staff down here to keep an eye
on things. I saw him this afternoon riding in a cab toward the Jaffa
Gate. I said as much to that fellow in the hospital, and he was scared
stiff at the idea of my recovering the supposed Feisul letter and
showing it to an officer who is really in Feisul's confidence. That--I
mean the man's fear--linked everything up."
"You talk like Sherlock Holmes," laughed Jeremy. "I'll bet you a new
hat nothing comes of it."
"That bet's on," Grim answered. "It's to be a female hat, and Mabel
gets it. Order an expensive one from Paris, Mabel; Jeremy shall pay.
We've lots of other information. The troops here have been warned of an
intended massacre of Jews. The arrival of this letter probably puts a
date to it.
"But it puts a date to something else on which the whole future of the
Near East hangs; and that means the future of half the world, and maybe
the whole of it, because about three hundred million Mohammedans are
watching Feisul and will govern themselves accordingly. India, Persia,
Mesopotamia, Egypt, all Northern Africa--there's almost no limit to what
depends on Feisul's safety; and the French can't or won't understand
that."
There came the sound of heavy ammunition boots outside on the stone
step, followed by a cough that I believe I could recognize among a
thousand. Narayan Singh coughs either of two ways--once, deep bass, for
all's well; twice, almost falsetto, for a hint of danger. This time it
was the single deep bass cough. But it was followed after half a minute
by the two high-pitched barks, and Grim held up a hand for silence. At
the end of perhaps a minute there came from the veranda a perfect
imitation of the lascar's ungrammatical, whining singsong from a
fo'castle-head:
"Hum dekta hai!--I'm on the watch."
Grim nodded--to himself, I suppose, for none had spoken to him.
"Do you mind stepping out and getting that letter from him, Ramsden?
Keep in the shadow, please, and give him this pistol; he may need it."
So I slipped out through the screen door and spent a minute looking for
Narayan Singh. I'm an old hunter, but it wasn't until Narayan Singh
deliberately moved a hand to call attention to himself that I discovered
him within ten feet of me.
The risk of being seen from the street in case some spy were lurking out
there was obvious. So I walked all the way round the house, and came
and stood below him on his left hand where the house cast impenetrable
shadow; but though I took my time and moved stealthily he heard me and
passed me a letter through the veranda rails, accepting the pistol in
exchange without comment.
I could see him distinctly from that angle. His uniform on one side was
torn almost into rags, and his turban was all awry, as if he had lost it
in a scuffle and hadn't spared time to rewind it properly--a sure sign
of desperate haste; for a male tiger in the spring-time is no more
careful of his whiskers than a Sikh is of the thirty yards of cloth he
winds around his head.
As he didn't speak or make any more movement than was necessary to pass
me the letter and take the pistol, I returned the way I had come,
entered by the back door, tossed the letter to Grim, and crept back
again to bear a hand in case of need. Grim said nothing, but Jeremy
followed me, and two minutes later the Australian and I were crouching
in darkness below the veranda. This time I don't think Narayan Singh was
aware of friends at hand.
His eyes were fixed on the slightly lighter gap in a dark wall that was
the garden gate but looked more like a dim hole leading into a cave.
There being no other entrance that we knew of, Jeremy and I doubled up
on the same job, and a rat couldn't have come through without one of the
three of us detecting him. If we had had our senses with us we might
have realized that Narayan Singh was perfectly capable of watching that
single narrow space, and have used our own eyes to better advantage.
However, we're all three alive today, and two of us learned a lesson.
It wasn't long--perhaps five minutes--before a man showed himself
outside the gate, like a spectre dodging this and that way in response
to unearthly impulse. Once or twice he started forward, as if on the
point of sneaking in, but thought better of it and retreated. Once his
attitude suggested that he might be taking aim with a pistol; but if
that was so, he chose not to waste a shot or start an alarm by firing at
a mark he couldn't see. What he did accomplish was to keep six keen
eyes fixed on him.
And that gave three other men their chance to gain an entrance at the
rear of the wall in the garden, and creep up unawares. It was probably
sheer accident that led all three of them along the far side of the
house, but it was fortunate for Jeremy and me, for otherwise cold steel
between our shoulder-blades would likely have been our first intimation
of their presence.
We never suspected their existence until they gained the veranda by the
end opposite to where we waited; and I think they would have done their
murder if the man outside the gate hadn't lost his head from excitement,
or some similar emotion and tried to make a signal to them. All three
had brought up against the end window, where a shade torn in two places
provided a good view into the room in which Grim, Mabel and the doctor
were still sitting. Each of them had a pistol, and their intention
didn't admit of doubt.
"Are you there, sahib?" Narayan Singh whispered.
But Jeremy and I were aware of them almost as soon as he, and rather
than make a noise by vaulting the veranda rail, we took the longer route
by way of the front steps. Jeremy, who was wearing sandals, kicked them
off and not having to creep so carefully, moved faster.