Affair in Araby - Talbot Mundy
"So you know Damascus?" answered Yussuf Dakmar. "I hope you will come
and see me in Damascus. I will give you my address. If Ramsden effendi
has only engaged you temporarily, perhaps I can show you a way to make
money with those accomplishments of yours."
"Make money?" answered Jeremy, prattling away like a madman. "I am
weary of the stuff. I'm hunting the world over, in search of a friend.
Nobody loves me. I want to find someone who'll believe the lies I tell
him without expecting me to believe the truth he tries to foist on me.
I want to find a man as tricky with his brains as I am with my hands.
He must be a politician and a spy, because I love excitement. That's
why I called you a spy. If you were one, you might have admitted it,
and then we could have been friends, like two yolks in one eggshell.
But I see you're only a shell without a yolk in it. Who cleaned you?"
"How long have you been in the service of Ramsden effendi?" Yussuf
Dakmar asked him.
"Not long, and I am tired of it. He is strong, and his fist is heavy.
When he gets drunk he is difficult to carry upstairs to bed, and if I am
also drunk the feat is still more difficult. It is a mystery how such a
man as he should be entrusted with a secret mission, for he drinks with
anyone. Aha! He scowls at me because I tell the truth about him, but
if I had a bottle of whisky to offer him he would soon look pleasant
again, and would give me a drink too, when he had swallowed all he could
hold."
If he had really been my servant I would naturally have kicked him off
the train for a fraction of such impudence. I didn't exactly know what
to do. There is a thoughtful motive behind every apparently random
absurdity that Jeremy gets off, but I was uncomfortably conscious of the
fact that my wits don't work fast enough to follow such volatile
manoeuvres. Perhaps it's the Scotian blood in me. I can follow a
practical argument fast enough, when the axioms' are all laid down and
we're agreed on the subject.
However, Grim came to my rescue. He had his pencil out, and contrived
to flick a piece of paper into my lap unseen by Yussuf Dakmar.
Jeremy's cue is good [the note ran]. Dismiss him for talking about you
to a stranger. Trust him to do the rest.
So I acted the part of an habitually heavy drinker in a fit of sudden
rage, and dismissed Jeremy from my service on the spot.
"Very well," he answered blandly. "Allah makes all things easy. Let us
hope that other fellow finds it easy to put you to bed tonight! Allah
is likewise good, for I have my ticket to Damascus, and all I need to
beg for is a bed and food at Haifa."
I muttered something in reply about his impudence, and the conversation
ceased abruptly. But at the end of ten minutes or so Yussuf Dakmar went
out into the corridor, signaling to Jeremy to follow him.
CHAPTER VIII
"He'll forgive anyone who brings him whiskey."
You remember, of course, that line that Shakespeare put into the mouth
of Puck? "What fools these mortals be!" The biggest fools are the
extra smart ones, whose pride and peculiar joy it is to "beat the game."
Yussuf Dakmar assessed all other humans as grist for his mill. Character
to him was expressed in degrees of folly and sheer badness. Virtue
existed only as a weakness to be exploited. The question that always
exercised him was, wherein does the other fellow's weakness lie? It's a
form of madness. Where a sane man looks for strength and honesty that
he can yoke up with, a Yussuf Dakmar spies out human failings; and
whereas most of us in our day have mistaken pyrites for fine gold, which
did not hurt more than was good for us, he ends by mistaking gold for
dross.
You can persuade such a man without the slightest difficulty that you
are a fool and a crook. Jeremy had turned the trick for his own
amusement as much as anything, although his natural vein of shrewdness
probably suggested the idea. Yussuf Dakmar, ready to believe all evil
and no good of anyone, was convinced that he had to deal with a scatter-
brained Arab who could be used for almost any purpose, and Jeremy's
riotous bent for jumping from one thing to another fixed the delusion
still more firmly.
But Lord, he had caught a Tartar! Outside at the end of the corridor,
in full view, but out of earshot, of Narayan Singh, Yussuf Dakmar made a
proposal to Jeremy that was almost perfect in its naive obliquity.
There was nothing original or even unusual about it, except the
circumstances, time and place. Green-goods men and blue-sky stock
salesmen, race-course touts and sure-thing politicians get away with the
same proposition in the U.S. every day of the week, and pocket millions
by it. Only, just as happens to all such gentry on occasion, Yussuf
Dakmar had the wrong fish in his net.
He jerked his head toward where Narayan Singh sat stolid and sleepy-
looking on a camp-stool with his curly black beard resting on the heel
of one hand.
"Do you know that man?" he asked.
"Wallah! How should I know him?" Jeremy answered. "He looks like a
Hindu thinking of reincarnation. Inshallah, he will turn into a tiger
presently!"
"Beware of him! He is an Administration spy. He is watching me talk to
you, and perhaps he will ask you afterward what I have said. You must
be very careful how you answer him."
"I will tell him you asked me for a love-potion for the engine-driver's
wife," Jeremy answered.
"I am listening. What is it you are really going to say?"
"That master of yours--that Ramsden, who dismissed you so tyrannically
just now--"
"That drunkard? There is nothing interesting to be said about him,"
Jeremy answered. "He is a fool who has paid my fare as far as Damascus.
May Allah reward him for it!"
"Are you telling me the truth?" demanded Yussuf Dakmar, fixing his eyes
sternly on Jeremy's.
Your con man never overlooks a chance to put his intended victim on the
defensive at an early stage in the proceedings. "How can he have paid
your fare as far as Damascus? This line only goes to Haifa, where you
have to change trains and buy another ticket."
"I see you are a clever devil," Jeremy retorted. "May Allah give you a
belly ache, if that is where you keep your brains! It was I who bought
the tickets. The fool gave me sufficient money for three first-class
fares all the way to Damascus, and I have the change. He forgot that
when he dismissed me."
"Then you won't need to beg board and lodging in Haifa?"
"Oh, yes. I need my money for another matter. It is high time I
married, and a fellow without money has to put up with any toothless
that nobody else will take."
"So you hope to find a wife in Damascus?"
"Inshallah," Jeremy answered piously.
"Well, I will find you a good-looking girl for wife, provided you first
prove that you will make a good son-in-law. I take men as I find them,
not as they represent themselves. He who wishes for the fire must first
chop wood. You understand me?"
"Wallah! I can chop wood like an axe with two heads. Is the woman your
daughter?"
"That is as may be. Let us talk business. I reward my friends, but woe
betide the fool who betrays my confidence!" said Yussuf Dakmar darkly.
"I see you are a man after my own heart," answered Jeremy; "a thorough
fellow who stops at nothing! Good! Allah must have brought us two
together for an evil purpose, being doubtless weary of the League of
Nations; Unbosom! I am like a well, into which men drop things and
never see them any more."
"You are a fine rascal, I can see that clearly! So you think that Allah
is cooking up evil, do you? Tee-hee! That is an original idea, and
there may be something in it. Let us hope there is something in it for
us two, at all events. Now, as to that fellow Ramsden--"
"Avoid him unless he is drunk," advised Jeremy. "The weight of his fist
would drive a man like you like a nail into a tree."
"Who fears such an ox?" the Syrian retorted. "A fly can sting him; a
little knife can bleed him; a red rag can enrage him; and the crows who
devour that sort of meat won't worry as to whether he was killed
according to ritual! He has money for Feisul, has he? Well, never
mind. He has a letter as well, and that is what I want. Will you get
it for me?"
"Do you need it badly?"
"By Allah, I must have it!"
"By Allah, then I am in good luck, for that makes me indispensable,
doesn't it? And an indispensable man can demand what he pleases!"
"Not at all," Yussuf Dakmar answered, frowning. "I have taken a fancy
to you, or I would see you to the devil. When we reach Haifa, ten or
even twenty men will present themselves to do this business for me. Or,
if I choose, I can use that fellow Omar who is travelling with Ramsden;
he would like to be my accomplice, but I don't trust him very much."
"In that you are perfectly right," answered Jeremy. "He is not at all
the sort of man for you to trust. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that
he has warned Ramsden against you already! Better beware of him!"
According to Jeremy's account of the conversation afterward, it was not
until that moment that he saw clearly how to prevent Yussuf Dakmar from
calling in thugs to attack me either at Haifa or at some point between
there and Damascus. Until then he had been feeling his way along--
"spieling," as he calls it--keeping his man interested while he made all
ready for the next trick.
"To tell you the truth," he went on, "Omar isn't that fellow's real
name. He is a sharp one, and he is after the letter every bit as much
as you are."
"How do you know that?"
"Wallah, how not? because he himself told me! just like you, he tried
to get me into partnership. He offered me a big reward, but he's not
like you, so I didn't believe him; and he has no daughter; I've no use
for a man who hasn't a good-looking daughter. What he's afraid of is
that someone else may get the letter first. And he's a desperate
fellow. He told me his intentions and whether you believe me or not,
they're worthy of a wolf!"
"I'm glad I resolved to take you into my confidence," said Yussuf
Dakmar, nodding. "Go on; I'm listening. Tell me what he told you."
"He plans to get hold of the letter between Haifa and Damascus. He
thinks that's safest, because it's over the border and there won't be
any British officers to interfere. Somewhere up the Lebanon Valley,
after most of the passengers have left the train, looks good to him.
But I think he knows who you are."
"Yes, he knows me. Go on."
"And He's afraid you'll get help and forestall him. So he's going to
watch Ramsden like a cat watching a mouse-hole, and he's going to watch
you too. And if anybody tries to interfere at Haifa, or if men get on
the train between Haifa and Damascus who look like being accomplices of
yours, he's going to murder Ramsden there and then, seize the letter,
and make a jump for it! You see, he's one of those mean fellows--a
regular dog-in-the-manger; he'd rather get caught by the police and
hanged for murder than let anybody else get what he's after. Oh,
believe me, I didn't trust him! I laughed when he made his proposal to
me."
"Now that is very interesting," said Yussuf Dakmar. "To tell you the
truth I had a little experience with him last night myself. He came on
me by accident in a certain place, and we conversed. I pretended to
agree with him for the sake of appearances, but I formed a very poor
opinion of him. Well, suppose we put him out of the way first; how
would that be? You look like a strong man. Suppose you watch for an
opportunity to push him off the train?"
"Oh, that would never do!" Jeremy answered, shaking his head from side
to side. "You mustn't forget that Indian who sits in the corridor. It
was you yourself who told me he is an Administration spy. If he
suspects you already, he will suspect me for having talked with you, and
will watch me; and if I try to push that fellow Omar off the train, he
will come to the rescue. Surely you don't expect me to fight both of
them at once! Besides, you must consider Ramsden.
"That fellow Ramsden is big and strong, but he is a nervous wreck. Give
him the least excuse and he will yell for the police like a baby crying
for its mother! He looks on Omar as his bodyguard now that he has
dismissed me; and if Omar should get killed, or disappear between here
and Haifa, Ramsden would demand an escort of police. In fact, I think
he'd lose courage altogether and put that letter in a strong-room in the
Haifa bank. What is the letter, anyway? What's in it? How much will
you pay me if I get it for you?"
"Never mind what's in it. Will you get it, that's the point--will you
get it and bring it to me?"
"That isn't the point at all," answered Jeremy. "The point is how much
will you pay me if I do that?"
"Very well, I will pay you fifty pounds."
"Mashallah! You must need it awfully badly. I could have been hired
for fifty shillings to do a much more dangerous thing!"
"Well, twenty-five pounds ought to be enough. I will pay you twenty-
five."
"Nothing less than fifty!" Jeremy retorted. "I always get fifty of
everything. Fifty lashes in the jail--fifty beans at meal-time--fifty
pairs of boots to clean for Ramsden--fifty is my lucky number. I have
made forty-nine attempts to get married, and the next time I shall
succeed. If it isn't the woman's lucky number too, that's her affair.
Show me the fifty pounds."
"I haven't that much with me," answered Yussuf Dakmar. "I will pay you
in Damascus."
"All right. Then I will give you the letter in Damascus."
"No, no! Get it as soon as possible."
"I will."
"And give it to me immediately. Then if you like you can stay close to
me until I pay you in Damascus."
"'The ass is invited to a wedding to carry wood and water, and they beat
him with one of the sticks he carried,'" Jeremy quoted. "No, no, no! I
will get the letter, for I know how. After I have it you may keep close
to me until we reach Damascus. I will show it to you, but I won't give
it to you until after I get the fifty pounds."
"Very well, since you are so untrustful."
"Untrustful? I am possessed by a demon of mistrust! Why? Because I
know I am not the worst person in the world, and what I can think of,
another might do. Now, if you were I and I were you, which God forbid,
because I am a happy fellow and you look bilious, and you stole the
letter for me because I promised to pay you in Damascus, but wouldn't
give me the letter until I paid you, do you know what I would think of
doing? I would promise a few tough fellows ten pounds among them to
murder you. Thus I would get the letter and save forty pounds."
"Ah? But I am not that kind of man," said Yussuf Dakmar.
"Well, you will learn what kind of man you are in the next world when
you reach the Judgment Seat. What is most interesting now is the kind
of fellow I am. I will steal the letter from Ramsden, and keep it until
you pay me in Damascus. But I shan't sleep, and I shall watch you; and
if I suspect you of making plans to have me robbed or murdered I shall
make such a noise that everybody will come running, and then I shall be
a celebrity but they'll put you in jail."
"Very well; you steal the letter, and I'll keep close to you," said
Yussuf Dakmar. "But how are you going to do it, now that Ramsden has
dismissed you from his service?"
"Oh, that's easy. You get me some whisky and I'll take it to him for a
peace offering. He'll forgive anyone who brings him whisky."
"Tee-hee! That is quite an idea. Yes. Now--how can I get whisky on
the train? If only I could get some! I have a little soporific in a
paper packet that could be mixed with the whisky to make him sleep
soundly. Wait here while I walk down the train and see what I can
find."
Yussuf Dakmar was gone twenty minutes, and whether he begged, bought or
stole did not transpire, but he returned with a pint flask containing
stuff that looked and smelt enough like whisky to get by if there had
been a label on the bottle. He poured a powder into it in Jeremy's
presence, the two of them squatting on the floor of the corridor with
the bottle between them so that no one else might see what was taking
place.
"Now, you would better get rid of that fellow Omar while you attend to
this," Yussuf Dakmar cautioned him. "Can you think of any way of doing
that?"
"Oh, easily!" Jeremy answered. "He is a great one for the women. I will
tell him there is a pretty Armenian girl in the car behind. He will run
like any other Turk to have a good look at her."
"Very well. I will wait here. But understand now; I am a dangerous
man. You have fortune in one hand, but destruction in the other!"
"Very well; but this may take me an hour, and if you grow impatient,
and that Indian sees you peering into the compartment after having
watched you and me talking all this time, he'll grow suspicious."
"All right; I'll go to the car behind. As soon as you have the letter,
come and tell me."
So Jeremy came back and entertained Grim and me with a burlesque account
of the interview, after whispering to Narayan Singh to give the alarm in
the event of Yussuf Dakmar returning forward to spy on us. Grim put the
doped whisky into his valise after a sniff at it, instead of throwing it
out of the window at my suggestion; and after a suitable interval he
went out in the part of the Turk to look for the imaginary beautiful
Armenian. Then I gave Jeremy the fake letter back, and went to sleep.
So it's no use asking me what the country looks like between Ludd and
Haifa. I didn't even wake up to see the Lake of Tiberias, Sea of
Galilee, or Bahr Tubariya, as it is variously called. A rather common
sickness is what Sir Richard Burton called Holylanditis and I've had it,
as well as the croup and measles in my youth. Some folk never recover
from it, and to them a rather ordinary sheet of water and ugly modern
villages built on ruins look like the pictures that an opium smoker
sees.
The ruins and the history do interest me, but you can't see them from
the train, and after a night without sleep there seemed to me something
more profitable in view than to hang from a window and buy fish that
undoubtedly had once swum in Galilee water, but that cost a most
unrighteous price and stank as if straight from a garbage heap.
The whole train reeked of putrid fish when we reached Haifa in the
evening, in time to watch the sun go down across the really glorious Bay
of Acre.
CHAPTER IX
"The rest will be simple!"
Haifa was crowded with Syrians of all sorts, and there were two or three
staff officers in the uniform of Feisul's army lounging on the platform,
who conned new arrivals with a sort of childlike solicitude, as if by
looking in a man's face they could judge whether he was friendly to
their cause or not. Mabel had wired to her friend, and was met at the
station, so we had nothing to worry over for the present on her score.
Our own troubles began when we reached the only hotel and found it
crowded. The proprietor, a little wizened, pockmarked Arab in a black
alpaca jacket and yellow pants, with a tarboosh balanced forward at a
pessimistic angle, suggested that there might be guests in the hotel who
would let us share their beds...
"Although there will be no reduction of the price to either party in
that event," he hastened to explain.
It was a wonder of an hotel. You could smell the bugs and the sanitary
arrangements from the front-door step, and although the whole place had
been lime-washed, dirt from all over the Near East was accumulating on
the dead white, making it look leprous and depressing.
The place fronted on a main street, with its back toward the Bay of Acre
at a point where scavengers used the beach for a dumping place. There
was a hostel of British officers about a mile away, where Grim might
have been able to procure beds for the whole party; but I noticed no
less than five men who followed us up from the station and seemed to be
keeping a watchful eye on Yussuf Dakmar and it was a sure bet that if we
should show our hands so far as to mess with British officers, the train
next day would be packed with men to whom murder would be simple
amusement.
Yet Grim and Jeremy needed sleep and so did Narayan Singh. We offered
to rent an outhouse for the night--a cellar--the roof, but there was
nothing doing, and it was Yussuf Dakmar at last who solved the problem
for us.
He found a crony of his, who had occupied for several days a room
containing two beds. With unheard-of generosity, accompanied, however,
by a peculiar display of yellow teeth and more of the jaundiced whites
of his eyes than I cared to see, this individual offered to go elsewhere
for the night and to place the room at my disposal.
"But there is this about it," he explained. "Where I am going there is
no room for my friend Yussuf Dakmar Bey, so I must ask you to let him
share this with you. You and he could each have a bed, of course, but
it seems to me that your servants look wearier than you do. I suggest
then that you take one bed, effendi, and share it with my friend Yussuf
Dakmar Bey, leaving the other to your servants, who I hope will be
suitably grateful for the consideration shown them."
Grim nodded to me from behind the Syrians' backs, and I jumped at the
offer. Payment was refused. The man explained that he had the room by
the week and the loan of it to me for one night would cost him nothing.
In fact, he acted courteously and with considerable evidence of
breeding, merely requesting my permission to lock the big closet where
he kept his personal belongings and to take the key away with him. Even
if we had been in a mood to cavil it would have been difficult to find
fault, for it was a spacious, clean and airy room--three characteristics
each of which is as scarce as the other in that part of the world.
The beds stood foot to foot along the right wall as you entered. Against
the opposite wall was a cheap wooden wash-stand and an enormous closet
built of olive wood sunk into a deep recess. The thing was about eight
feet wide and reached to the ceiling; you couldn't tell the depth
because he locked it at once and pocketed the key, and it fitted into
the recess so neatly that a knife-blade would hardly have gone into the
crack.
Outside the bedroom door, in a lobby furnished with odds and ends, was a
wickerwork sofa that would do finely for Narayan Singh, and that old
soldier didn't need to have it pointed out to him. Without word or sign
from us he threw his kit on the floor, unrolled his blankets, removed
his boots, curled up on the sofa, and if he didn't go to sleep at once,
gave such a perfect imitation of it that somebody's fox terrier came and
sniffed him, and, recognizing a campaigner after his own wandering
heart, jumped on his chest and settled down to sleep too.
As soon as our host had left the room, all bows and toothy smiles,
Jeremy with his back to me drew from one pocket the letter he was
supposed to have stolen from me, flourished it in Yussuf Dakmar's face,
and concealed it carefully in another. Then a new humorous notion
occurred to him. He pulled it out again, folded it in the pocket wallet
in which he had carried it from the first, wrapped the whole in a
handkerchief, which he knotted carefully and then handed it to me.
"Effendi," he said, "you are a fierce master and a mighty drunkard, but
a man without guile. Keep that till the morning. Then, if Omar wants to
steal it he will have to murder you instead of me, and I would rather
sleep than die. But you must give it back at dawn, because the prayers
are in it that a very holy ma'lim wrote for me, and unless I read those
prayers properly tomorrow's train will come to grief before we reach
Damascus."
He acted the part perfectly of one of those half-witted, wholly shrewd
mountebanks, who pick up a living by taking advantage of tolerance and
good nature. You've all seen the type. It's commonest at race-meetings
but you'll find it anywhere in the world where vagrant men of means
foregather.
Again Yussuf Dakmar's face became a picture of suppressed emotion. I
pocketed the wallet with the same matter-of-fact air with which I have
accepted a servant's money to keep safe for him scores of times. He
believed me to be a drunkard, who had been thoroughly doped that day and
would probably drink hard that night to drown the after-taste. It ought
to be easy to rob me while I slept. Any fool could have read his
thoughts.
He came down and ate supper with us at a trestle table in the dimly
lighted dining-room, and I encouraged his new-born optimism by ordering
two bottles of whisky to take upstairs. Jeremy, who can't be happy
unless playing his part for all it's worth, became devoutly religious
and made a tremendous fuss because ham was put on the table. He accused
the proprietor of using pig's fat to smear all the cooking utensils,
demanded to see the kitchen, and finally refused to eat anything but
leban, which is a sort of curds. If Yussuf Dakmar had entertained
suspicions of Jeremy's real nationality they were all resolved by the
time that meal was finished.