Chapter VI: Part 6

"Ach! You joke again; but I tell you I am not joking. Such people as those Hebrews are naturally secretive and so proud that they wrote down for posterity all the doings of their puny kings, would never have let their records fall into the hands of the Assyrians. They themselves were marched away in slave-gangs, but they left their Book behind them, safely hidden. Be sure of it! Ten years ago I found a manuscript in the place they now call Nablus, which in those days was Schechem. Schechem was the capital of the Kingdom of Israel, just as Jerusalem was the capital of the Kingdom of Judah, or the Jews. I sold that manuscript for a good price after I had photographed it. The idiots to whom I sold it--historians they call themselves!--value it only as a relic of antiquity. I made a digest of it--analyzed it--studied it--compared it with other authentic facts in my possession--and came to the definite conclusion that I hold the clue to the whereabouts of that lost Book of Chronicles."

"Let's see the photograph," Grim suggested.

"It has been impounded with other so-called 'enemy property' by your friends the British. I suppose they thought the German General Staff might get hold of it and conquer the Suez Canal! But what good would the sight of it do? You couldn't understand a word of it. It convinced me, after months of study, that when the Ten Tribes were carried away into captivity by the Assyrians they sent their records secretly to Jerusalem. Ever since the secession the Israelites and Jews had been jealous enemies. But they were relatives after all, boasting a common ancestor, proud of the same history, more or less observing the same religion. And Schechem was only about thirty miles from Jerusalem, which was considered an impregnable fortress until the Babylonians took it later on. So they sent their records to Jerusalem, and the Jews hid them. Where? Where do you suppose?"

"The likeliest place would be Solomon's Temple."

"You think so? Then you think superficially, my young friend. Let us return to that Tomb of the Kings again for a moment. That place that you visited is such an obvious fake that even the guide-books make light of it. The one all-important thing in Palestine that never yet has been discovered is the real Tomb of the Kings. Yet Jerusalem, where it certainly must be, has been searched and looted a hundred times from end to end. Therefore-- you follow me?--the Jews must have concealed it very cunningly. Answer me, then: would the Jews, who were always a practical people and not corpse-worshippers like the Egyptians, have taken all that trouble to hide the tomb of their kings unless there were important treasure in it? Answer me!"

"So you expect to find treasure in addition to the lost Book of Chronicles?"

"Certainly I do! The treasure will make the whole proceeding safe. Let the British have it! The fools will be so blinded by the glamour of gold, that I shall easily extract the things of real value--the invaluable manuscripts! Then let the men who call themselves historians take a back seat!"

He rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

"Were you looking for the Tomb of the Kings, then, before the War?" Grim asked him.

"Not exactly. Under the Turks it was difficult. The Turks were beautifully corrupt. By paying for it I could get permission to excavate on any property owned by Christians. But the minute I touched Moslem places the Turks became fanatical. The Arabs, now, are different--fanatics, too, but with a new sort of fanaticism--new to them, I mean--the kind that made the French revolutionists destroy everything their ancestors had set value on. There are plenty of Arabs so full of this disease of Bolshevism that they would make it easy for me to desecrate what others believe is holy ground. But these idiots of English are worse than the Turks! They have stopped all excavation. They are so afraid of Bolshevism that, if they could, they would imitate Joshua and make the sun stand still!"

"Well, what's the idea?" asked Grim, finishing his whiskey.

Scharnhoff shrugged his shoulders.

"You know my position. I am helpless--here on suffrance--obliged by idiotic regulations to sit in idleness. But if I could find a British officer with brains--surely there must be one somewhere! --one with some authority, who is considered above suspicion, I could show him, perhaps, how to get rich without committing any crime he need feel ashamed of."

I could not see Grim's eyes from where I sat, and he did not make any nervous movement that could have given him away. Yet I was conscious of a new alertness, and I think Scharnhoff detected it, too, for he changed his tactics on the instant.

"Hah! Hah! I was joking! Nobody who is fool enough to be a professional soldier would be clever enough to find the Tomb of the Kings and keep the secret for ten minutes! Hah! Hah! But I have a favour I would like to beg of you, Major Grim."

"I've no particular authority, you know."

"Ach! The Administrator listens to you; I am assured of that."

"He listens sometimes, yes, then usually does the other thing. Well, what's the request?"

"A simple one. There is a risk--not much, but just a little risk that some fool might stumble on that secret of the Tomb of the Kings and get away with the treasure. Now, did you ever set a thief to catch a thief? Hah! Hah! I would be a better watch-dog than any you could find. I know Jerusalem from end to end. I know all the likely places. Why don't you get permission for me to wander about Jerusalem undisturbed and keep my eye open for tomb-robbers? If I am not to have the privilege of discovering that Book of Chronicles, at least I would like to see that no common plunderer gets it. Surely I am known by now to be harmless! Surely they don't suspect me any longer of being an agent of the Kaiser, or any such nonsense as that! Why not make use of me? Get me a permit, please, Major Grim, to go where I please by day or night without interference. Tomb-robbers usually work at night, you know."

"All right," said Grim. "I'll try to do that."

"Ah! I always knew you were a man of good sense! Have more whiskey? A cigar then?"

"Can't promise anything, of course," said Grim, "but you shall have an answer within twenty-four hours."

Outside, as we turned our faces toward Jerusalem's gray wall, Grim opened up a little and gave me a suggestion of something in the wind.

"Did you see what he has in that cupboard?"

"Yes. Two Arab costumes. Two short crow-bars."

"Did you notice the grayish dust on the rug--three or four footprints at the corner near the cupboard?"

"Can't say I did."

"No. You wouldn't be looking for it. These men who pose as intellectuals never believe that any one else has brains. They fool themselves. There's one thing no man can afford to do, East of the sun or West of the moon. You can steal, slay, intrigue, burn--break all the Ten Commandments except one, and have a chance to get away with it. There's just one thing you can't do, and succeed. He's done it!"

"And the thing is?"

"Cheat a woman!"

"You mean his house keeper? She who answered the door?"

Grim nodded.

Chapter Twelve

"You know you'll get scuppered if you're found out!"

Two days passed again without my seeing Grim, although I called on him repeatedly at the "Junior Staff Officers' Mess" below the Zionist Hospital. Suliman, the eight-year-old imp of Arab mischief, who did duty as page-boy met me on each occasion at the door and took grinning delight in disappointing me.

He was about three and a half feet high--coal-black, with a tarboosh worn at an angle on his kinky hair and a flashing white grin across his snub-nosed face that would have made an archangel count the change out of two piastres twice. Suliman and cool cheek were as obvious team-mates as the Gemini, and I was one of a good number, that included every single member of that unofficial mess, who could never quite see what Grim found so admirable in him. Grim never explained.

Taking the cue from his master, neither did Suliman ever explain anything to any one but Grim, who seemed to understand him perfectly.

"Jimgrim not here. No, not coming back. Much business. Good-bye!"

Somehow you couldn't suspect that kid of telling the truth. However, there was nothing for it but to go away, with a conviction in the small of your back that he was grinning mischievously after you.

Grim had found him one day starving and lousy in the archway of the Jaffa Gate, warming his fingers at a guttering candle-end preparatory to making a meal off the wax. He took him home and made Martha, the old Russian maid-of-all-work, clean him with kerosene and soft soap--gave him a big packing-case to sleep in along with Julius Caesar the near-bull-dog mascot--and thereafter broke him in and taught him things seldom included in a school curriculum.

In the result, Suliman adored Grim with all the concentrated zeal of hero-worship of which almost any small boy is capable; but under the shadow of Grim's protection he feared not even "brass- hats" nor regarded civilians, although he was dreadfully afraid of devils. The devil-fear was a relic of his negroid ancestry. Some Arab Sheikh probably captured his great-grandmother on a slave-raid. Superstition lingers in dark veins longer than any other human failing.

I think I called five times before he confessed at last reluctantly that Grim was in. That was in the morning after breakfast, and I was shown into the room with the fireplace and the deep armchairs. Grim was reading but seemed to me more than usually reserved, as if the book had been no more than a screen to think behind, that left him in a manner unprotected when he laid it down. I talked at random, and he hardly seemed to be listening.

"Say," he said, suddenly interrupting me, "you came out of that El-Kerak affair pretty creditably. Suppose I let you see something else from the inside. Will you promise not to shout it all over Jerusalem?"

"Use your own judgment," I answered.

"You mustn't ask questions."

"All right."

"If any one in the Administration pounces on you in the course of it, you'll have to drop out and know nothing."

"Agreed."

"It may prove a bit more risky than the El-Kerak business."

"Couldn't be," I answered.

"You can't talk enough Arabic to get away with. But could you act deaf and dumb?"

"Sure--in three languages."

"You understand--I've no authority to let you in on this. I might catch hell if I were found out doing it. But I need help, of a certain sort. I want a man who isn't likely to be spotted by the gang I'm after. Get behind that screen--quick!"

It was a screen that hid a door leading to the pantry and the servants' quarters. There was a Windsor chair behind it, and it is much easier to keep absolutely still when you are fairly comfortable. I had hardly sat down when a man wearing spurs, who trod heavily, entered the room and I heard Grim get up to greet him.

"Are we alone?" a voice asked gruffly.

Instead of answering Grim came and looked behind the screen, opened the door leading to the pantry, closed it again, locked it, and without as much as a glance at me returned to face his visitor.

"Well, general, what is it?"

"This is strictly secret."

"I'll bet it isn't," said Grim. "If it's about missing explosives I know more than you do."

"My God! It's out? Two tons of TNT intended for the air force gone without a trace? The story's out?"

"I know it. Catesby sent me word by messenger last night from Ludd, after you put him under arrest."

"Damn the man! Well, that's what's happened. Catesby's fault. They'll blame me. The truck containing the stuff was run into a siding three days ago. Through young Catesby's negligence it was left there without a guard. Catesby will be broke for that as sure as my name is Jenkins. But, by the knell of hell's bells, Grim, more than Catesby will lose their jobs unless we find the stuff! Two tons. Half enough to blow up Palestine!"

"Too bad about Catesby," said Grim.

"Never mind, Catesby. Damn him! Consider my predicament! How can I go to the Administrator with a lame-duck story about missing TNT and nothing done about it?"

"Nothing done? You've passed the buck, haven't you? Catesby is under arrest, you say."

"What do you mean?"

"I know Catesby," Grim retorted quietly. "He made that fine stand at Beersheba--when the Arabs rushed the camp, and you weren't looking. He took the blame for your carelessness, and never squealed. You took the credit for his presence of mind, and have treated him like a dog ever since. You expect me to try to save your bacon and forget Catesby's?"

"Nonsense, Grim! You're talking without your book. Here's what happened: the stuff arrived at Ludd in a truck attached to the end of a mixed train. The R.T.O.* sent me a memorandum and stalled the truck on a siding. I gave the memorandum to Catesby." [*Railway Traffic Officer.]

"He tells me in the note I received last night that you did nothing of the kind."

"Then he's a liar. He forgot all about it and did nothing. When the Air Force sent to get the stuff the truck was empty."

"And you want me to find it, I suppose?"

"Yes. The quicker the better!"

"And be a party to breaking Catesby? I like my job, but not that much!"

"You refuse then to hunt for the TNT?"

"I take my orders straight from the Administrator. He expects me in half an hour. You want me to smooth the way for you with Sir Louis. I'm much more interested in Catesby, who would face a firing party sooner than soak another fellow for his own fault. Catesby assures me in writing that the first he ever heard of that TNT was when you ordered him arrested after discovery of the loss. His word goes, as far as I'm concerned. If you want me to help you, find another goat than Catesby. That's my answer."

There followed quite a long pause. Perhaps Brigadier-General Jenkins was wondering what chance he would stand in a show-down. Whoever had heard the mess and canteen gossip knew that Jenkins' career had been one long string of miracles by which he had attained promotion without in any way deserving it, and a parallel series of even greater ones by which he had saved himself from ruin by contriving to blame some one else.

"You want me to white-wash Catesby?" he said at last. "If you pounce quickly on the TNT, no one need know it was lost."

"If you court-martial Catesby, the public shall know who lost it, and who didn't, even if it costs me my commission!"

"Blast you! Insubordination!"

"Is your car outside?" Grim answered. "Why don't you drive me up to the Administrator and charge me with it?"

"Don't be an idiot! I came to you to avoid a scandal. If this news gets out there'll be a panic. Things are touchy enough as it is."

"Yes."

"Well--if I drop the charge against Catesby--?"

"Then I shall not have to fight for him."

"I'll see what I can do."

"Be definite!"

"Damn and blast you! All right, I'll clear Catesby."

In that ominous minute, like the devil in an old-time drama, Suliman knocked at the door leading from the outer hall. Grim opened it, and I heard the boy's voice piping up in Arabic. The Administrator was in his car outside, waiting to know whether Major Grim was indoors.

"Where's your car?" I heard Grim ask.

"I sent the man to get a tire changed," Jenkins answered.

"Then Sir Louis needn't know you're here. Do you want to see him?"

"Of course not."

"You can get behind that screen if you like."

I thought Jenkins would explode when he found me sitting there. He was a big, florid-faced man with a black moustache waxed into points, and a neck the color of rare roast beef--a man not given to self-restraint in any shape or form. But he had to make a quick decision. Sir Louis' footsteps were approaching. He glared at me, made a sign to me to sit still, twisted his moustache savagely, and listened, breathing through his mouth to avoid the tell-tale whistle of his hairy nostrils. I heard Grim start toward the hall, but Sir Louis turned him back and came straight in.

"It occurred to me I'd save you the time of coming up to see me this morning, Grim, and look in on you instead before I start my rounds. Any new developments?"

"Not yet, sir. I'll need forty-eight hours. If we move too fast they may touch the stuff off before we get the whole gang in the net."

"You're sure you'd rather not have the police?"

"Quite. They mean well, but they're clumsy."

"Um-m-m! All the same, the thing's ticklish. There are rumours about all ready. The Grand Mufti* came to me before breakfast with a wild tale. I've promised him some Sikhs for special sentry duty. He'd hardly gone before some Zionists came with a story that the Arabs are planning to blow up their hospital; I gave them ten men and an officer." [*The religious head of the Moslem community.]

"Is the city quiet?" Grim asked him.

"Fair to middling. The Jews refused to take their shutters down this morning. I had to issue an order about it. I hear now that they're doing business about as usual, but I've ordered the number of men on duty within the city walls to be doubled. At the first sign of disturbance I shall have the gates closed. Are you quite sure you're in touch?"

"Quite. sure, sir. I'm positive of what I told you last night. Will you be seeing Colonel Goodenough?"

"Yes, in ten minutes."

"Please ask him to hold his Sikhs at my disposal for the next two days. You might add, sir, that if he cares to see sport he could do worse than lend his own services."

"I'll do that. You can count on Goodenough. That's a soldier devoid of nonsense. Anything else?"

"That's all."

"Keep me informed. Remember, Grim, I'm responsible for all you do. I've endorsed you in blank, as it were. Don't overlook that point."

"I won't, sir."

Sir Louis walked out. Almost before his spurs ceased jingling in the tiled hall, Brigadier-General Jenkins strode out in a towering rage from behind the screen.

"'Pon my soul, a spy's trick!" he exploded. "Had an eavesdropper, did you? Listening from behind a screen while you tricked me into a promise on Catesby's account!"

"Sure," Grim answered, folding the screen back, and letting his face wrinkle in smiles all the way up to the roots of his hair. Very comical he looked, for his eyebrows were only partly sprouted again. "Had two of you to listen in on the Administrator!"

"Endorses you in blank, eh? How long would he let the endorsement stand if he knew I was behind that screen while he was talking to you?"

"Try him!" Grim suggested. "Shall I call him back? He doesn't want to break you--told me so, in fact, last night--but he could change his mind, I daresay. My tip to you is to get back to Ludd as fast as your car can take you, release Catesby, and say as little as possible to any one!"

"Damn you for a Yankee!" Jenkins answered. "You've got me cornered for the moment, and you make the most of it. But wait till my turn comes! As for you, sir," Jenkins turned and looked me up and down with all the arrogance that nice new crossed swords on his shoulder can give a certain sort of man, "don't let me catch you trying to interfere in any Administration business, that's all!"

I offered him a cigarette, grinning. There was no sense in picking a quarrel. No man likes to discover that a perfect stranger has overheard his intimate confessions. His annoyance was understandable. But he hadn't nice manners. He knocked the cigarette case out of my hand and kicked it across the room. So I got into one of the deep armchairs and laughed at him in self- defense, to preserve my own temper from boiling up over the top.

"To hell with both of you!" Jenkins thundered, and strode out like Mars on the war-path.

"Poor old Jinks!" said Grim, as soon as he had gone. "As Sir Louis said last night, he has a wife and family besides the unofficial ladies on his string. All they'll have to divide between them soon, at the rate he's going, will be his half-pay. He has fought for promotion all his days, to keep abreast of expenses. What that string of cormorants will do with his four hundred pounds a year, when he oversteps at last and gets retired, beggars imagination! However, let's get busy."

Business consisted in dressing me up as an Arab with the aid of Suliman, and drilling me painstakingly for half-an-hour, both of them using every trick they knew to make me laugh or show surprise, and Grim nodding approval each time I contrived not to. More difficult than acting deaf and dumb was the trick of squatting with my legs crossed, but I had learned it after a fashion in India years ago, and only needed schooling.

"You'll get scuppered if you're caught," he warned me. "If Suliman wasn't so scared of devils I wouldn't risk it, but I must have somebody to keep an eye on him when the time comes; that'll be tomorrow, I think."

"Suppose you tell me the object of the game," I suggested. "I'm sick of only studying the rules."

"Well--your part will be to sit over those two tons of TNT and see that nobody explodes them ahead of time. There's a conspiracy on foot to blow up the Dome of the Rock."

"You mean the Mosque of Omar?"

"The place tourists call the Mosque of Omar. The site of Solomon's Temple--the Rock of Abraham--the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite. Next after the shrine at Mecca it's the most sacred spot in the whole Mahommedan world."

"Good lord!" I said. "Are the Zionists so reckless?".

"No, the Arabs are. Remember what old Scharnhoff said the other day about the new fanaticism?"

"Is Scharnhoff mixed up in it?"

"He's being watched. If the Arabs pull it off, they'll accuse the Jews of doing it, and set to work to butcher every Jew in the Near East. That will oblige the British to protect the Jews. That in turn will set every Mohammedan in the world--'specially Indians, but Egyptians, too--against the British. Jihad--green banner--holy war--all the East and Northern Africa alight while the French snaffle Syria. Sound good to you?"

"Sir Louis knows this?"

"He, is paid to know things."

"And he lets you play cat and mouse with it?"

"Got to be careful. Suppose we draw the net too soon, what then? Most of the conspirators escape. The story leaks out. The Jews get the blame for the attempt, and sooner or later the massacre begins anyhow. What we've got to do is bag every last mother's son of them, and suppress the whole story--return the TNT to store, and swear it was never missing."

"The Administrator has his nerve," I said.

"You'll need yours, too, before this game's played," Grim answered. "D'you see now why I picked on you for an accomplice?"

"I do not."

"You're the one man in Jerusalem whom nobody will suspect, or be on the look-out for. The men we're up against are the shrewdest rats in Palestine. They've got a list of British officers, my name included, of course. They'll know which men are assigned to special duty, and they'll keep every one of us shadowed."

"Won't that--I mean, how can you work if you're shadowed?"

"Me? I shall catch my spur in the carpet, fall downstairs and break a leg at ten-fifteen. At ten-thirty the doctor comes, and finds me too badly hurt to be moved. He sends word of it to Sir Louis by an orderly who can be trusted to talk to any one he meets on the way. I leave by the back way at ten forty-five. However, here's a chance for you to practise deaf-and-dumb drill. There's some one coming. Squat down in that corner. Look meek and miserable. That's the stuff. Answer the door, Suliman."

Chapter Thirteen

"You may now be unsafe and an outlaw and enjoy yourself!"

The man who entered was a short, middle-aged Jew of the type that writes political reviews for magazines--black morning coat, straw hat, gold pince-nez--a neatly trimmed dark beard beginning to turn gray from intense mental emotion--nearly bald--a manner of conceding the conventions rather than argue the point, without admitting any necessity for them--a thin-lipped smile that apologized for smiling in a world so serious and bitter. He wore a U.S.A. ten-dollar gold piece on his watch chain, by way of establishing his nationality.

"Well, Mr. Eisernstein? Trouble again? Sit down and let's hear the worst," said Grim.

Eisernstein remained standing and glanced at me over in the corner.

"I will wait until you are alone."

"Ignore him--deaf and dumb," Grim answered. "Half a minute, though--have you had breakfast?"

"Breakfast! This is no time for eating, Mister--I beg your pardon, Major Grim. I have not slept. I shall not break my fast until my duty is done. If it is true that the Emperor Nero fiddled while Rome burned, then I find him no worse than this Administrator!"

"Has he threatened to crucify you?" Grim asked. "Take a seat, do."

"He may crucify me, and I will thank him, if he will only in return for it pay some attention to the business for which he draws a salary! I drove to Headquarters to see him. He was not there. Nobody would tell me where he is. I drove down again from the Mount of Olives and luckily caught sight of his car in the distance. I contrived to intercept him. I told him there is a plot on foot to massacre every individual of my race in the Near East--a veritable pogrom. He was polite. He seems to think politeness is the Christian quality that covers the multitude of sins. He offered me a cigar!

"I offered him a telegram blank, with which to cable for reenforcements! He said that all rumours in Jerusalem become exaggerated very quickly, and offered me a guard of one soldier to follow me about! I insisted on immediate military precautions on a large scale failing which I will cable the Foreign Office in London at my own expense. I offered to convince him with particulars about this contemplated pogrom but he said he had an urgent appointment and referred me to you, just as Nero might have referred a question regarding the amphitheatre to one of his subordinates!"

"Pogroms mean nothing in his young life," Grim answered smiling. "I'm here to do the dirty work. Suppose you spill the news."

"You must have heard the news! Yet you ignore it! The Moslems are saying that we Zionists have offered two million pounds, or some such ridiculous sum, for the site of Solomon's Temple. They are spreading the tale broadcast. Their purpose is to stir up fanaticism against us. The ignorant among them set such value on that rock and the mosque their cut-throat ancestors erected on it that Jews are now openly threatened as they pass through the streets. Yet there is not one word of truth in the story of our having made any such offer."

"There are plenty of troops," said Grim. "Any attempt at violence could be handled instantly."

"Then you will do nothing?"

"What do you suggest ought to be done?"

"Here is a list. Read it. Those are the names of fifty Arabs who are active in spreading anti-Zionist propaganda."

Grim read the list carefully.

"All talkers," he said. "Not a really dangerous man among them."

"Ah! There you are! I might have expected it!" Eisernstein threw up his hands in a gesture of contempt rather than despair. "Nobody cares what happens to Jews. Nobody cares for our sleepless agony of mind. Nobody cares how or what we suffer until afterward, when there will be polite expressions of regret, which the survivors will assess at a true valuation! It is the same wherever we turn. Last night--at half-past one in the morning--a committee of us, every one American, Called at the American consulate to tell our consul of our danger. The consul was unsympathetic in the last degree. Yet our coreligionists in the States are taxed to pay his salary. He said it was not his business. He referred us to the Administrator. The Administrator refers me to you. To whom do you refer me? To the devil, I suppose!"

"The best thing you can do," said. Grim, "is to go ahead and deny that story about the offer to buy the Dome of the Rock. You Zionists have got the most efficient publicity bureau on earth. You can reach the public ear any time you want to. Deny the story, and keep on denying it."

"Ah! Who will believe us? To be a Zionist is to be a person about whom anybody will believe anything; and the more absurd the lie, the more readily it will be believed! Meanwhile, the Moslems are sharpening their swords against us from one end of this land to the other!"

I suppose that what Eisernstein really needed more than anything was sympathy, not good advice. Grim's deliberate coolness only irritated the passion of a man, whose whole genius and energy were bent on realizing the vision of a nation of Jews firmly established in their ancient home. A people that has been tortured in turn by all the governments can hardly be expected to produce un-nervous politicians. He was at the mercy of emotions, obsessed by one paramount idea. A little praise just then of his loyalty to an ideal, to which he had sacrificed time, means, health, energy, everything, would have soothed him and hurt nobody. But the acidity of his scorn had bitten beneath the surface of Grim's good humor.

"There'll be no pogrom," Grim said, getting up and lighting a cigarette. "There'll be nothing resembling one. But that won't be the fault of you Zionists. You accuse without rime or reason, but you yell for help the minute you're accused yourselves. I don't blame the Arabs for not liking you. Nobody expects Arabs to enjoy having their home invaded by an organization of foreigners. Yet if this Administration lifts a finger to make things easier for the Arabs you howl that it's unfair.

"If the Administrator refuses to arrest Arabs for talking a little wildly, you call him a Nero. I'm neither pro- nor anti- Zionist myself. You and the Arabs may play the game out between you for all of me. But I can promise you there'll be no pogrom. It is my business to know just what precautions have been taken."

"Words! Major Grim. Words!" sneered Eisernstein, getting up to go. "What do words amount to, when presently throats are to be cut? If your throat were in danger, I venture to say there would be something doing, instead of mere talk about precautions! I hope you will enjoy your little cigarette," he added bitterly. "Good morning!"

"Talk of fiddling while Rome burns!" Grim laughed as soon as the Zionist had left the room. "Has it ever occurred to you that Nero was possibly smothering his feelings? I wonder how long there'd be one Zionist left out here, if we simply stood aside and looked on. Go and change your clothes, Suliman. It's time I broke a leg."

Grim disappeared upstairs himself, and returned about ten minutes later in the uniform of a Shereefian officer--that is to say, of Emir Feisul's Syrian army. Nothing could be smarter, not anything better calculated to disguise a man. Disguise, as any actor or detective can tell you, is not so much a matter of make- up as suggestion. It is little mannerisms--unstudied habits that identify. The suggestion that you are some one else is the thing to strive for, not the concealment of who you really are.

Grim's skin had been sun-tanned in the Arab campaign under Lawrence against the Turks. The Shereefian helmet is a compromise between the East and West, having a strip of cloth hanging down behind it as far as the shoulders and covering the ears on either side, to take the place of the Arab head-dress. The khaki uniform had just enough of Oriental touch about it to distinguish it from that of a British officer. No man inexperienced in disguise would dream of choosing it; for the simple reason that it would not seem to him disguise enough. Yet Grim now looked so exactly like somebody else that it was hard to believe he was the same man who had been in the room ten minutes before. His mimicry of the Syrian military walk--blended of pride and desire not to seem proud--was perfect.

"I'm now staff-captain Ali Mirza of Feisul's army," he announced. "Ali Mirza a man notorious for his anti-British rancor, but supposed to be down here just now on a diplomatic mission. I've been seen about the streets like this for the last two days. But say: that doctor is a long time on the way."

He went to the telephone, but did not call the hospital; that would have been too direct and possibly too secret.

"Give me Headquarters--yes--who's that?--never mind who's speaking--say: I can't get the military hospital--something wrong with the wire--will you call Major Templeton and say that Major Grim has had an accident--yes, Grim--compound fracture of the thigh--very serious--ask him to go at once to Major Grim's quarters--thanks--that's all." He returned to the fireplace and stood watching me meditatively for several minutes.

"If you deceive Templeton, you'll do," he said at last. "Wait a minute."

He went to the desk and scribbled something in Arabic on a sheet of paper, sealed that in a blank envelope, and handed it to me.

"Hide it. You've two separate and quite distinct tasks, each more important and, in a way, dangerous than the other. The principal danger is to me, not you. If they spot you, my number's as good as hoisted from that minute. You mustn't kid yourself you're safe for one second until the last card has been played."

"Who are 'they'?"

"I'm coming to that. Your first job is to make it possible for me to get the confidence of one or two of these conspirators. You're a deaf-and-dumb man--stone deaf--with a message for staff- captain Ali Mirza, which you will only deliver to him in person. Suliman does the talking. You say nothing. You simply refuse to hand your message over to any one but me. They'll appreciate why a deaf and dumb man should be chosen for treasonable business. But perhaps you're scared--maybe you'd rather reconsider it? It's not too late."

I snorted.

"All right. These conspirators meet at Djemal's coffee shop on David Street. They talk to one another in French, because the proprietor and the other frequenters of the place only know Arabic. You know French and Arabic enough to understand a sentence here and there, so keep your ears wide open. I shan't show up until a Sikh named Narayan Singh tells me that a certain Noureddin Ali is in there. He's the bird I'm after. He's a dirty little murderer, and I'm going to be right pleasant to him.

"You may have to sit in the place all day waiting for me; but wait until after midnight if you must. Sooner or later Noureddin Ali is bound to show up. I shall be hard after him. If they offer you food, take it. Eat with your fingers. Eat like a pig. Lick the plate, if you like. The nearer mad you seem to be, the safer you are. After I get there, hang around until I give you money. Then beat it."

"Where to? I can't go to my room at the hotel in this disguise."

"I've thought of that. You know Cosmopolitan Oil Davey, of course? He lives at the hotel. I'll get word to him that he may expect a messenger from me after dark tonight. He'll leave word with the porter downstairs, who'll take you to Davey's room. You can tell Davey absolutely anything. He's white."

"Well, I think I can execute that maneuver. What's task number two?"

"To sit on the TNT! But one thing at a time is enough. Let's attend to this one first. Ah! Here comes Templeton!"

"Damn you, Grim!" said a calm voice in the doorway. A tall, lean man in major's uniform with the blue tabs of the medical staff strode in. He had the dried-out look of the Sudan, added to the self-reliance that comes of deciding life and death issues at a moment's notice.

"The hospital is crowded with patients, and here you immobilize me for half a morning. I can't pretend to set a compound fracture in ten minutes, you know! Why couldn't you break your neck and have me sign a death certificate?"

"Didn't occur to me," said Grim. "But never mind, doc. You need a rest. Here's tobacco, lots to read, and an armchair. Lock yourself in and be happy."

"Who's this?" asked Templeton, looking down at me.

"Deaf and dumb poor devil, earning a few piastres by working for the Intelligence."

"Spy, eh? He looks fit for honest work if he had all his faculties. Is he dumb as well as deaf, or because he's deaf?"

"Dunno," said Grim. "He never speaks."

"Perhaps I can do something for him. Suppose you leave him here with me. I can give him a thorough examination instead of wasting my time here."

"He's got a job of work to do right now," said Grim.

"Does he know the sign language? Have you any way of telling him to come and see me at the hospital?"

"I give him written instructions in Arabic."

"That so? I'll look at his ears--tell you in a minute whether it's worth while to come to me."

He took my head between strong, authoritative hands and tilted it sidewise.

"Hello! What's this?"

The Arab head-dress I was wearing shifted and showed non-Arab symptoms.

"Open that bag of mine, will you, Grim, and pass me that big pair of forceps you'll find wrapped in oiled paper on top of everything. There's something I can attend to here at once."

It was an uncomfortable moment. Grim never cracked a smile. He dug out the instrument of torture and gave it to Templeton. But there were two points that occurred to me, in addition to the knowledge that nothing whatever was the matter with my ear. Doctors in good standing, who are usually gentlemen, don't operate without permission; and the forceps were much too big for any such purpose. So I sat still.

"Um-m-m! What he really needs is a red-hot needle run down close to the ear-drum. It wouldn't take five minutes, or hurt him-- much. After that I think he'd be able to hear perfectly. Suppose we try."

"I can wait ten minutes yet," Grim answered.

"Very well. I've a platinum needle in the bag. I'll get out the spirit-lamp and we'll soon see. To be candid with you, I don't believe the man's any more deaf than you or I."

"If you run a hot needle through the lobe of his ear well find out whether he can really talk or not," said Grim in his pleasantest voice. "If he's shamming I don't mind. What we need in this service is a man who can endure without betraying himself."

"Well, we'll soon see."

I began to hate Grim pretty cordially. I hated him more when Suliman came in, dressed for the street in a rather dirty cotton smock, with a turban in place of his fez. He told the boy to hold the wooden handle of a paper-knife behind my ear to prevent the hot needle from going too far on its sizzling journey. It didn't seem to me the way to reciprocate volunteer secret service. Suliman's grin at the prospect of seeing a man tortured was enough to provoke murder. I brushed the boy aside, fly-fashion, got up, crossed the room, and sat down again in the corner.

"Good enough!" laughed Grim. "You'll do."

"Yes, I think he'll do," agreed Templeton.

But I took no notice. I had seen too many games lost and won with the last card. Templeton looked down at Suliman:

"Tell him the game's over. He may talk now."

"Mafish mukhkh!" [No brains!] the boy answered, grinning and tapping his own forehead. "Magnoon!" [Mad!]

"I think I can trust them both," said Grim, smiling in my direction. "All right, old man; time out! If you'd spoken once there'd have been nothing more between you and a life of safety and respectability!"

"Whereas," said Templeton, "you may now be unsafe and an outlaw and enjoy yourself! Are you sure they haven't marked him?" he asked Grim.

"Sure! Why should they suspect a tourist? But I've taken precautions. Word is on the way to the hotel to forward all his mail to Jaffa until further notice." He laughed at me again. "I hope you're not expecting important letters!"

Suliman had evidently been well schooled in advance, for at a nod from Grim he came over and took my hand, as if I were blind in addition to the other supposed infirmities. He led me out by a back-door, across a yard into an alley, which we followed as far as a main road and then turned toward the Jaffa Gate. Looking back once I saw Grim in his Shereefian uniform striding along behind us; but where the road forked he took the other turning.

There is contentment in walking disguised through crowded streets, even when you are in tow of eight-year-old iniquity that regards you as a lump of baggage to be pushed this and that way. Suliman plainly considered me a rank outsider, only admitted into the game on sufferance. Having said I was "magnoon" he lived up to the assertion, and warned people to make way for me if they did not want to be bitten and go mad, too; so as a general rule I received a pretty wide berth. But it was fun, in spite of Suliman. It was like seeing the world through a peep-hole. Men and women you knew went by without suspecting they were recognized, and in a puzzling sort of way the world, that had been your world yesterday, seemed now to belong wholly to other people, while you lived in a new sphere of your own.

We had to go slowly as we approached the Jaffa Gate, for the crowd was dense there, and a line of Sikhs was drawn across the gap where the street passes through the city wall. It was the gap the Turks once made by tearing down the wall to let the Kaiser through, when he made that famous meek and humble pilgrimage of his. The Sikhs were searching all comers for weapons, and we had to wait our turn.

Outside the gate, on the left-hand as you faced it, was the usual line of boot-blacks--the only cheap thing left in Jerusalem--a motley two dozen of ex-Turkish soldiers, recently fighting the British gamely in the last ditch, and now blacking their boots with equal gusto, for rather higher pay. Some of them still wore Turkish uniforms. Two or three were redheaded and blue-eyed, and almost certainly descended from Scotch crusaders. (The whole wide world bears witness that when the Scots went soldiering they were efficient in more ways than one.)

The rest of the crowd were mainly peasantry with basket-loads of stuff for market; but there was a liberal sprinkling among them of all the odds and ends of the Levant, with a Jew here and there, the inevitable Russian priest, and a dozen odd lots, of as many nationalities, whom it would have been difficult to classify.

And there was Police Constable Bedreddin Shah. You could not have missed noticing him, although I did not learn his name until afterwards. He came swaggering down the Jaffa Road with all the bullying arrogance of the newly enlisted Arab policeman. He shoved me aside, calling me a name that a drunken donkey-driver would hesitate to apply to a dog in the gutter. He was on his way to the lock-up that stands just inside the gate, and I wished him a year in it.

As he plunged into the crowd that checked and surged immediately in front of the line of Sikhs, a small man in Arab costume with the lower part of his face well covered by the kaffiyi,* rushed out from the corner behind the bootblacks and drove a long knife home to the hilt between the policeman's shoulder-blades. I wasn't shocked. I wasn't even sorry. [*Head-dress that hangs down over the shoulders.]

Bedreddin Shah shrieked and fell forward. Blood gushed from the wound. The crowd surged in curiously, and then fell back before the advancing Sikhs. A British officer who had heard the victim's cry came spurring his horse into the crowd from inside the gate. In his effort to get near the victim he only added to the confusion.

The murderer, who seemed in no particular hurry, dodged quietly in and out among the swarm of bewildered peasants, and in thirty seconds had utterly disappeared. A minute later I saw Grim offering his services as interpreter and stooping over the dying man to try to catch the one word he was struggling to repeat.

Chapter Fourteen

"Windy bellies without hearts in them."

Djemal's coffee shop is run by a Turkish gentleman whose real name is Yussuf. One name, and the shorter the better, had been plenty in the days when Djemal Pasha ran Jerusalem with iron ruthlessness, and consequent success of a certain sort. When Djemal was the Turkish Governor, every proprietor of every kind of shop had to stand in the doorway at attention whenever Djemal passed, and woe betide the laggard!

It would not have paid any one, in those days, to name any sort of shop after Djemal Pasha. Even the provider of the rope that throttled the offender would have made no profit, because the rope would simply have been looted from the nearest store. The hangman would have been the nearest soldier, whose pay was already two years in arrears. So Yussuf's own name done in Turkish characters used to stand over the door before the British came.

It was Djemal Pasha's considered judgment that Yussuf cooked the best coffee in Jerusalem. So whenever the despot was in the city he conferred on Yussuf the inestimable privilege of supplying him with coffee at odd moments, under threat of the bastinado if the stuff were not suitably sweet and hot. The only money that ever changed hands in that connection was when the tax-gatherer came down on Yussuf for an extra levy, because of the added trade that conceivably might be expected to accrue through the advertisement obtained by serving such an exalted customer. The tax-gatherer also threatened the bastinado; and as the man who likes that punishment, or who could soften the heart of a Turkish tax assessor, has yet to be discovered, Yussuf invariably paid.

But when Allenby conquered Palestine between bouts of trying to tame his Australians, and Djemal Pasha scooted hot-foot into exile with a two-hundred-woman harem packed in lorries at his rear, Yussuf remembered that old adage about better late than never. He put Djemal's name on the stone arch of the narrow door near the foot of David Street. He did it partly out of the disrespect that a small dog feels for a big one that is now on chain; but he was not overlooking the business value of it.

The first result was that he did quite a lot of trade with British officers, who came primarily because they were sick of eating sand and bully-beef, and drinking sand and tepid water in the desert. Later they flocked there by way of paying indirect homage to a governor who, whatever his obvious demerits, had at any rate never been answered back or thwarted with impunity. (There was a time, after the capture of Jerusalem, when if the British army could have voted on it, Djemal Pasha would have been brought back and given a free hand.)

But the officers began to discover that Yussuf was charging them four or five times the proper price. The seniors objected promptly, and deserted, to the inexpressible delight of the subalterns; but even the under-paid extravagant youths grew tired of extortion after a month or two, and Yussuf had to look elsewhere for customers.

Yussuf did some thinking behind that genial Turkish mask of his. Competition was keen. There are more coffee shops in Jerusalem than hairs on a hog's back, and the situation, down near the bottom of that narrow thoroughfare in the shadow of an ancient arch, did not lend itself to drawing crowds.

But there were others in Jerusalem besides the British officers who yearned for Djemal's rule again; and, unlike the irreverent men in khaki, they did not dare to voice their feelings in public. All the old political grafters, and all the would-be new ones savagely resented a regime under which bribery was not permitted; and, as always happens sooner or later, they began to show a tendency to meet in certain places, where they might talk violence without risk of incurring it.

So Yussuf permitted a rumour to gain ground that he, too, was a malcontent and that the British had deserted his coffee shop for that reason. He gave out that Djemal Pasha's name over the door stood for reaction and political intrigue. So his place began to be frequented by effendis in tarboosh and semi-European clothes, who could chew the cud of bitterness aloud between walls that the crusaders had built four feet thick. The only entrance was through the narrow front door, where Yussuf inspected every visitor before admitting him.

So Yussuf's "Cafe Djemal Pasha" was the place to go to for politics, of the red-hot, death-and-dynamite order that would make Lenin and Trotsky sound like small-town sports. But first you had to get by Yussuf at the door.

Suliman led me by the hand down David Street, through the smelly- yelly moil of flies and barter, past the meat and vegetable stalls, beneath the crusader arches from which Jewish women peered through trellised windows, across three transversing lanes of the ancient suku,* and halted at Yussuf's door. [*Bazaar]

He rapped on it three times. When Yussuf's wrinkled face appeared at last Suliman demanded to see Staff-Captain Ali Mirza. Yussuf's blood-shot eyes peered at me for a long time before he asked a question.

"Atrash!--akras!--majnoon!!" [Deaf!--Dumb!--Mad!!] said Suliman. Describing me as mad seemed to give him particular delight. He never overlooked a chance of doing it.

"Staff-Captain Ali Mirza is not here. What should a Madman want with him?"

"He is not very mad--only stupid. He carries a message for the captain."

"But the captain is not here. He has not been here."

"He will come."

"How should a deaf-and-dumb man deliver a message?"

"It is in writing."

"Very well. He may leave the writing with me. If the captain comes I will deliver it."

"No. The message is from Esh-Sham (Damascus). He will give it only into the captain's own hand."

"What is your name?"

"Suliman."

"What is his?"

"God knows! He came with another man by train; and the other man, who is much more mad than this one, gave me five piastres to bring this one to your kahwi!" [Coffe-pot]

Yussuf shut the door, and discussed the proposition with his customers. At the end of two or three minutes his head appeared again.

"You say Staff-Captain Ali Mirza is expected here?"

"So said the man at the station."

"What do you know of Staff-Captain Ali Mirza?"

"Nothing."

Once more the door closed and I could hear the murmur of voices inside--but only a confused murmur, for the door was thick. When it opened again two other heads were peering from behind Yussuf's.

"Has he money?" he asked.

"Kif? Ma indi khabar!" [How should I know?]

Yussuf opened the door wide and made a sign for me to enter. He seemed in two minds whether to let Suliman come in with me or not, but finally admitted him with a gruff admonition to keep still in one place and not talk.