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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Affair in Araby, by Talbot Mundy
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Affair in Araby
+
+Author: Talbot Mundy
+
+Release Date: December 31, 2003 [EBook #10551]
+[Last updated: December 17, 2012]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AFFAIR IN ARABY ***
+
+
+
+
+
+AFFAIR IN ARABY
+
+by Talbot Mundy
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+"I'll make one to give this Feisul boy a hoist"
+
+
+Whoever invented chess understood the world's works as some men know
+clocks and watches.  He recognized a fact and based a game on it, with
+the result that his game endures.  And what he clearly recognized was
+this:  That no king matters much as long as your side is playing a
+winning game.  You can leave your king in his corner then to amuse
+himself in dignified unimportance. But the minute you begin to lose,
+your king becomes a source of anxiety.
+
+In what is called real life (which is only a great game, although a
+mighty good one) it makes no difference what you call your king.  Call
+him Pope if you want to, or President, or Chairman. He grows in
+importance in proportion as the other side develops the attack.  You've
+got to keep your symbol of authority protected or you lose.
+
+Nevertheless, your game is not lost as long as your king can move.
+That's why the men who want to hurry up and start a new political era
+imprison kings and cut their heads off.  With no head on his shoulders
+your king can only move in the direction of the cemetery, which is over
+the line and doesn't count.
+
+I love a good fight, and have been told I ought to be ashamed of it.
+I've noticed, though, that the folk who propose to elevate my morals
+fight just as hard, and less cleanly, with their tongue than some of us
+do with our fists and sinews.  I'm told, too, quite frequently that as
+an American I ought to be ashamed of fighting for a king.  Dear old
+ladies of both sexes have assured me that it isn't moral to give aid and
+comfort to a gallant gentleman--a godless Mohammedan, too;  which makes
+it much worse--who is striving gamely and without malice to keep his
+given word and save his country.
+
+But if you've got all you want, do you know of any better fun than
+lending a hand while some man you happen to like gets his? I don't.  Of
+course, some fellows want too much, and it's bad manners as well as
+waste of time to inflict your opinion on them. But given a reasonable
+purpose and a friend who needs your assistance, is there any better
+sport on earth than risking your own neck to help him put it over?
+
+Walk wide of the man and particularly of the woman, who makes a noise
+about lining your pocket or improving your condition.  An altruist is my
+friend James Schuyler Grim, but he makes less noise than a panther on a
+dark night;  and I never knew a man less given to persuading you.  He
+has one purpose, but almost never talks about it.  It's a sure bet that
+if we hadn't struck up a close friendship, sounding each other out
+carefully as opportunity occurred, I would have been in the dark about
+it until this minute.
+
+All the news of Asia from Alexandretta to the Persian Gulf and from
+Northern Turkestan to South Arabia reaches Grim's ears sooner or later.
+He earns his bread and butter knitting all that mess of cross-grained
+information into one intelligible pattern; after which he interprets it
+and acts suddenly without advance notices.
+
+Time and again, lone-handed, he has done better than an army corps, by
+playing chief against chief in a land where the only law is individual
+interpretation of the Koran.
+
+But it wasn't until our rescue of Jeremy Ross from near Abu Kem, that I
+ever heard Grim come out openly and admit that he was working to
+establish Feisul, third son of the King of Mecca, as king of just as
+many Arabs as might care to have him over them. That was the cat he had
+been keeping in a bag for seven years.
+
+Right down to the minute when Grim, Jeremy and I sat down with Ben Saoud
+the Avenger on a stricken field at Abu Kem, and Grim and Jeremy played
+their hands so cleverly that the Avenger was made, unwitting guardian of
+Jeremy's secret gold-mine, and Feisul's open and sworn supporter in the
+bargain, the heart of Grim's purpose continued to be a mystery even to
+me;  and I have been as intimate with him as any man.
+
+He doles out what he has in mind as grudgingly as any Scot spends the
+shillings in his purse.  But the Scots are generous when they have to
+be, and so is Grim.  There being nothing else for it on that occasion,
+he spilled the beans, the whole beans, and nothing but the beans.
+Having admitted us two to his secret, he dilated on it all the way back
+to Jerusalem, telling us all he knew of Feisul (which would fill a
+book), and growing almost lyrical at times as he related incidents in
+proof of his contention that Feisul, lineal descendant of the Prophet
+Mohammed, is the "whitest" Arab and most gallant leader of his race
+since Saladin.
+
+Knowing Grim and how carefully suppressed his enthusiasm usually is, I
+couldn't help being fired by all he said on that occasion.
+
+And as for Jeremy, well--it was like meat and drink to him.  You meet
+men more or less like Jeremy Ross in any of earth's wild places,
+although you rarely meet his equal for audacity, irreverence and riotous
+good-fellowship.  He isn't the only Australian by a long shot who
+upholds Australia by fist and boast and astounding gallantry, yet stays
+away from home.  You couldn't fix Jeremy with concrete;  he'd find some
+means of bursting any mould.
+
+He had been too long lost in the heart of Arabia for anything except the
+thought of Sydney Bluffs and the homesteads that lie beyond to tempt him
+for the first few days.
+
+"You fellers come with me," he insisted.  "You chuck the Army, Grim, and
+I'll show you a country where the cows have to bend their backs to let
+the sun go down.  Ha-ha!  Show you women too--red-lipped girls in
+sunbonnets, that'll look good after the splay-footed crows you see out
+here.  Tell you what:  We'll pick up the Orient boat at Port Said--no P.
+and O. for me;  I'm a passenger aboard ship, not a horrible example!--
+and make a wake for the Bull's Kid.  Murder!  Won't the scoff taste
+good!
+
+"We'll hit the Bull's Kid hard for about a week--mix it with the fellers
+in from way back--you know--dry-blowers, pearlers, spending it easy--
+handing their money to Bessie behind the bar and restless because she
+makes it last too long;  watch them a while and get in touch with all
+that's happening;  then flit out of Sydney like bats out of--and hump
+blue--eh?"
+
+"Something'll turn up;  it always does.  I've got money in the bank--
+about, two thousand here in gold dust with me,--and if what you say's
+true, Grim, about me still being a trooper, then the Army owes me three
+years' back pay, and I'll have it or go to Buckingham Palace and tear
+off a piece of the King!  We're capitalists, by Jupiter!  Besides, you
+fellers agreed that if I shut down the mine at Abu Kem you'd join me and
+we'd be Grim, Ramsden and Ross."
+
+"I'll keep the bargain if you hold me to it when the time comes," Grim
+answered.
+
+"You bet I'll hold you to it!  Rammy here, and you and I could trade the
+chosen people off the map between us.  We're a combination.  What's time
+got to do with it?"
+
+"We've got to use your mine," Grim answered.
+
+"I'm game.  But let's see Australia first."
+
+"Suppose we fix up your discharge, and you go home," Grim suggested.
+"Come back when you've had a vacation, and by that time Ramsden and I
+will have done what's possible for Feisul. He's in Damascus now, but the
+French have got him backed into a corner.  No money--not much
+ammunition--French propaganda undermining the allegiance of his men--
+time working against him, and nothing to do but wait."
+
+"What in hell have the French got to do with it?"
+
+"They want Syria.  They've got the coast towns now.  They mean to have
+Damascus;  and if they can catch Feisul and jail him to keep him out of
+mischief they will."
+
+"But damn it!  Didn't they promise the Arabs that Feisul should be King
+of Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, and all that?"
+
+"They did.  The Allies all promised, France included.  But since the
+Armistice the British have made a present of Palestine to the Jews, and
+the French have demanded Syria for themselves.  The British are
+pro-Feisul, but the French don't want him anywhere except dead or in
+jail. They know they've given him and the Arabs a raw deal;  and they
+seem to think the simplest way out is to blacken Feisul's character and
+ditch him.  If the French once catch him in Damascus he's done for and
+the Arab cause is lost."
+
+"Why lost?" demanded Jeremy.  "There are plenty more Arabs."
+
+"But only one Feisul.  He's the only man who can unite them all."
+
+"I know a chance for him," said Jeremy.  "Let him come with us three to
+Australia.  There are thousands of fellers there who fought alongside
+him and don't care a damn for the French. They'll raise all the hell
+there is before they'll see him ditched."
+
+"Uh-huh!  London's the place for him," Grim answered.  "The British like
+him, and they're ashamed of the way he's been treated.  They'll give him
+Mesopotamia.  Baghdad's the old Arab capital, and that'll do for a
+beginning;  after that it's up to the Arabs themselves."
+
+"Well?  Where does my gold mine come in?" Jeremy asked.
+
+"Feisul has no money.  If it was made clear to him that he could serve
+the Arabs best by going to London, he'd consider it.  The objection
+would be, though, that he'd have to make terms in advance with
+hog-financiers, who'd work through the Foreign Office to tie up all the
+oil and mine and irrigation concessions. If we tell him privately about
+your gold mine at Abu Kem he can laugh at financiers."
+
+"All right," said Jeremy, "I'll give him the gold mine.  Let him erect a
+modern plant and he'll have millions!"
+
+"Uh-huh!  Keep the mine secret.  Let him go to London and arrange about
+Mespot.  Just at present High Finance could find a hundred ways of
+disputing his title to the mine, but once he's king with the Arabs all
+rooting for him things'll be different.  He'll treat you right when that
+time comes, don't worry."
+
+"Worry?  Me?" said Jeremy.  "All that worries me is having to see this
+business through before we can make a wake for Sydney.  I'm homesick.
+But never mind.  All right, you fellers, I'll make one to give this
+Feisul boy a hoist!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+"Atcha, Jimgrim sahib!  Atcha!"
+
+
+That conversation and Jeremy's conversion to the big idea took place on
+the way across the desert to Jerusalem--a journey that took us a week on
+camel-back--a rowdy, hot journey with the stifling simoom blowing grit
+into our followers' throats, who sang and argued alternately
+nevertheless.  For, besides our old Ali Baba and his sixteen sons and
+grandsons, there were Jeremy's ten pickups from Arabia's byways, whom he
+couldn't leave behind because they knew the secret of his gold-mine.
+
+Grim's authority is always at its height on the outbound trail, for then
+everybody knows that success, and even safety, depends on his swift
+thinking;  on the way home afterward reaction sets in sometimes, because
+Arabs are made light-headed by success, and it isn't a simple matter to
+discipline free men when you have no obvious hold over them.
+
+But that was where Jeremy came in.  Jeremy could do tricks, and the
+Arabs were like children when he performed for them.  They would be good
+if he would make one live chicken into two live ones by pulling it
+apart.  They would pitch the tents without fighting if he would swallow
+a dozen eggs and produce them presently from under a camel's tail.  If
+he would turn on his ventriloquism and make a camel say its prayers,
+they were willing to forgive--for the moment anyhow--even their nearest
+enemies.
+
+So we became a sort of travelling sideshow, with Jeremy ballyhooing for
+himself in an amazing flow of colloquial Arabic, and hardly ever
+repeating the same trick.
+
+All of which was very good for our crowd and convenient at the moment,
+but hardly so good for Jeremy's equilibrium.  He is one of those
+handsome, perpetually youthful fellows, whose heads have been a wee mite
+turned by the sunshine of the world's warm smile. I don't mean by that
+that he isn't a tophole man, or a thorough-going friend with guts and
+gumption, who would chance his neck for anyone he likes without a
+second's hesitation, for he's every bit of that.  He has horse sense,
+too, and isn't fooled by the sort of flattery that women lavish on men
+who have laughing eyes and a little dark moustache.
+
+But he hasn't been yet in a predicament that he couldn't laugh or fight
+his way out of;  he has never yet found a job that he cared to stick at
+for more than a year or two, and seldom one that could hold him for six
+months.
+
+He jumps from one thing to another, finding all the world so interesting
+and amusing, and most folk so ready to make friends with him, that he
+always feels sure of landing softly somewhere over the horizon.
+
+So by the time we reached Jerusalem friend Jeremy was ripe for almost
+anything except the plan we had agreed on.  Having talked that over
+pretty steadily most of the way from Abu Kem, it seemed already about as
+stale and unattractive to him as some of his oldest tricks.  And
+Jerusalem provided plenty of distraction.  We hadn't been in Grim's
+quarters half an hour when Jeremy was up to his ears in a dispute that
+looked like separating us.
+
+Grim, who wears his Arab clothes from preference and never gets into
+uniform if he can help it, went straight to the telephone to report
+briefly to headquarters.  I took Jeremy upstairs to discard my Indian
+disguise and hunt out clothes for Jeremy that would fit him, but found
+none, I being nearly as heavy as Grim and Jeremy together.  He had
+finished clowning in the kit I offered him, and had got back into his
+Arab things while I was shaving off the black whiskers with which Nature
+adorns my face whenever I neglect the razor for a few days, when an auto
+came tooting and roaring down the narrow street, and a moment later
+three staff officers took the stairs at a run.  So far, good; that was
+unofficial, good-natured, human and entirely decent. The three of them
+burst through the bed  room door, all grins, and took turns pumping with
+Jeremy's right arm--glad to see him--proud to know him--pleased to see
+him looking fit and well, and all that kind of thing.  Even men who had
+fought all through the war had forgotten some of its red tape by that
+time, and Jeremy not being in uniform they treated him like a fellow
+human being. And he reciprocated, Australian fashion, free and easy,
+throwing up his long legs on my bed and yelling for somebody to bring
+drinks for the crowd, while they showered questions on him.
+
+It wasn't until Jeremy turned the tables and began to question them that
+the first cloud showed itself.
+
+"Say, old top," he demanded of a man who wore the crossed swords of a
+brigadier.  "Grim tells me I'm a trooper.  When can I get my discharge?"
+
+
+The effect was instantaneous.  You would have thought they had touched a
+leper by the way they drew themselves up and changed face.
+
+"Never thought of that.  Oh, I say--this is a complication.  You
+mean...?"
+
+"I mean this," Jeremy answered dryly, because nobody could have helped
+notice their change of attitude:  "I was made prisoner by Arabs and
+carried off.  That's more than three years ago.  The war's over.  Grim
+tells me all Australians have been sent home and discharged.  What about
+me?"
+
+"Um-m-m!  Ah!  This will have to be considered.  Let's see;  to whom did
+you surrender?"
+
+"Damn you, I didn't surrender!  I met Grim in the desert, and reported
+to him for duty."
+
+"Met Major Grim, eh?"
+
+"Yes," said Grim, appearing in the door.  "I came across him in the
+desert;  he reported for duty;  I gave him an order, and he obeyed it.
+Everything's regular."
+
+"Um-m-m!  How'd you make that out--regular?  Have you any proof he
+wasn't a deserter?  He'll have to be charged with desertion and tried by
+court martial, I'm afraid.  Possibly a mere formality, but it'll have to
+be done, you know, before he can be given a clear discharge.  If he
+can't be proved guilty of desertion he'll be cleared."
+
+"How long will that take?" Jeremy demanded.
+
+His voice rang sharp with the challenge note that means debate has
+ceased and quarrel started.  It isn't the right note for dissolving
+difficulties.
+
+"Couldn't tell you," said the brigadier.  "My advice to you is to keep
+yourself as inconspicuous as possible until the administrator gets
+back."
+
+It was good advice, but Grim, standing behind the brigadier, made
+signals to Jeremy in vain.  Few Australians talk peace when there is no
+peace, and when there's a fight in prospect they like to get it over.
+
+"I remember you," said Jeremy, speaking rather, slowly, and throwing in
+a little catchy laugh that was like a war-cry heard through a
+microphone.  "You were the Fusileer major they lent to the Jordan
+Highlanders--fine force that--no advance without security--lost two men,
+if I remember--snakebite one;  the other shot for looting.  Am I right?
+So they've made you a brigadier! Aren't you the staff officer they sent
+to strafe a regiment of Anzacs for going into action without orders?  We
+chased you to cover!  I can see you now running for fear we'd shoot you!
+Hah!"
+
+Grim took the only course possible in the circumstances.  The
+brigadier's neck was crimson, and Jeremy had to be saved somehow.
+
+"Touch of sun, sir--that and hardship have unhinged him a bit. Suffers
+from delusions.  Suppose I keep him here until the doctor sees him?"
+
+"Um-m-m!  Ah!  Yes, you'd better.  See he gets no whisky, will you?  Too
+bad!  Too bad!  What a pity!"
+
+Our three visitors left in a hurry, contriving to look devilish
+important.  Grim followed them out.
+
+"Rammy, old cock," said Jeremy, sprawling on the bed again and laughing,
+"don't look all that serious.  Bring back your brigadier and I'll kiss
+him on both cheeks while you hold him! But say;  suppose that doctor's
+one of these swabs who serve out number nine pills for shell-shock,
+broken leg, dyspepsia, housemaid's knee and the creeping itch?  Suppose
+he swears I'm luny?  What then?"
+
+"Grim will find somebody to swear to anything once," I answered. "But
+you look altogether too dashed healthy--got to give the doctor-man a
+chance--here, get between the sheets and kid that something hurts you."
+
+"Get out!  The doc 'ud put a cast-iron splint on it, and order me into a
+hospital.  How about toothache?  That do?  Do they give you bread and
+water for it?"
+
+So toothache was selected as an alibi, and Jeremy wrapped his jaw in a
+towel, after jabbing his cheek with a pin so as to remember on which
+side the pain should be.  But it was artifice wasted, for Grim had
+turned a better trick.  He had found an Australian doctor in the
+hospital for Sikhs--the only other Australian in Jerusalem just then--
+and brought him cooee-ing upstairs in a way that proved he knew the
+whole story already.
+
+
+The autopsy, as he called it, was a riot.  We didn't talk of anything
+but fights at Gaza--the surprise at Nazareth, when the German General
+Staff fled up the road on foot in its pyjamas--the three-day scrap at
+Nebi Samwil, when Australians and Turks took and retook the same hill
+half a dozen times, and parched enemies took turns drinking from one
+flask while the shells of both sides burst above them.  It seems to have
+been almost like old-fashioned war in Palestine from their account of
+it, either side conceding that the other played the game.
+
+When they had thrashed the whole campaign over from start to finish,
+making maps on my bed with hair brushes, razors and things, they got to
+talking of Australia;  and that was all about fighting too:  dog fights,
+fist fights between bullockies on the long road from Northern
+Queensland, riots in Perth when the pearlers came in off the Barrier
+Reef to spend their pay, rows in the big shearing sheds when the Union
+men objected to unskilled labour--you'd have thought Australia was one
+big battlefield, with nothing else but fights worth talking of from dawn
+till dark.
+
+The doctor was one of those tightly-knit, dark-complexioned little men
+with large freckles and brown eyes, who surprise you with a mixture of
+intense domestic virtue and a capacity, that shouldn't mix with it at
+all, for turning up in all the unexpected places.  You meet his sort
+everywhere, and they always have a wife along, who worships them and
+makes a home out of tin cans and packing-cases that would put the
+stay-at-home housekeepers to shame.  They always have a picture on the
+wall of cows standing knee-deep in the water, and no matter what their
+circumstances are, there's always something in reserve, for guests,
+offered frankly without apology.  Never hesitate with those folk, but
+don't let them go too far, for they'll beggar themselves to help you in
+a tight place, if you'll let them. Ticknor his name was.  He's a good
+man.
+
+"Say, Grim, there's a case in the Sikh hospital that ought to interest
+you," he said at last.  "Fellow from Damascus--Arab--one of Feisul's
+crowd.  He wouldn't let them take him to the Zionist hospital--swore a
+Jew knifed him and that the others would finish the job if they got half
+a chance.  They'd have been arguing yet, and he dead and buried, if I
+hadn't gone shopping with Mabel. She saw the crowd first (I was in
+Noureddin's store) and jabbed her way in with her umbrella--she yelled
+to me and I bucked the line.
+
+"The Jews wanted to tell me I had no right to take that chap to the Sikh
+hospital, and no more had I;  so I plugged him up a bit, and put him in
+a cab, and let him take himself there, Mabel and me beside him.  Seeing
+I was paying for the cab, I didn't see why Mabel should walk.  Of
+course, once we had him in there he was too sick to be moved;  but the
+Army won't pay for him, so I sent a bill to the Zionists, and they
+returned it with a rude remark on the margin.  Maybe I can get the money
+out of Feisul some day; otherwise I'm stuck."
+
+"I'll settle that," said Grim.  "What's the tune he plays?"
+
+"Utter mystery.  Swears a Jew stabbed him, but that Damascus outfit
+blame the Jews for everything.  He's only just down from Damascus.  I
+think he's one of Feisul's officers, although he's not in uniform--
+prob'ly on a secret mission.  Suppose you go and see him?  But say,
+watch out for the doc on duty--he's a meddler. Tell him nothing!"
+
+"Sure.  How about Jeremy?  What's the verdict?"
+
+"What do you want done with him?"
+
+"I want him out of reach of trouble here pending his discharge. No need
+to certify him mad, is there?"
+
+"Mad?  All Australians are mad.  None of us need a certificate for that.
+Have you arrested him?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"Then you're too late!  He's suffering from bad food and exposure.  The
+air of Jerusalem's bad for him, and he's liable to get pugnacious if
+argued with.  That runs in the blood.  I order him off duty, and shall
+recommend him within twenty minutes to the P.M.O. for leave of absence
+at his own expense.  If you know of any general who dares override the
+P.M.O. I'll show you a brass hat in the wind.  Come on;  d'you want to
+bet on it?"
+
+"Will the P.M.O. fall?" asked Grim.
+
+"Like a new chum off a brumby.  Signs anything I shove under his nose.
+Comes round to our house to eat Mabel's damper and syrup three nights a
+week.  You bet he'll sign it:  Besides, he's white;  pulled out of the
+firing-line by an Australian at Gaza, and hasn't forgotten it.  He'd
+sign anything but checks to help an Anzac.  I'll be going.
+
+"You trot up to the slaughter-shop, Grim, and interview that Arab--Sidi
+bin Something-or-Other--forget his name--he lies in number nineteen cot
+on the left-hand side of the long ward, next to a Pathan who's shy both
+legs.  You can't mistake him.  I'll write out a medical certificate for
+Jeremy and follow.  And say; wait a minute!  What price the lot of you
+eating Mabel's chow tonight at our house?  We don't keep a cook, so you
+won't get poisoned.  That's settled;  I'll tell Mabel you're coming.
+Tootleloo!"
+
+But there was a chance that the brigadier might carry resentment to the
+point of sending up a provost-marshal's guard to arrest Jeremy on the
+well-known principle that a bird in the hand can be strafed more easily
+than one with a medical certificate.  The bush was the place for our
+bird until such time as the P.M.O.'s signature should adorn the
+necessary piece of paper;  so we three rode up in a cab together to the
+Sikh hospital, and had a rare time trying to get in.
+
+You see, there was a Sikh on guard outside, who respected nothing under
+heaven but his orders.  He wouldn't have known Grim in any event, being
+only recently from India;  Grim's uniform would have passed him in, but
+he and Jeremy were still arrayed as Arabs, and my civilian clothes
+entitled me in the sentry's opinion to protection lest I commit the
+heinous sin of impertinence.  An Arab in his eyes was as an insect, and
+a white man, who consorted with such creatures, not a person to be taken
+seriously.
+
+But our friend Narayan Singh was in the hospital, enjoying the wise
+veteran's prerogative of resting on full pay after his strenuous
+adventures along with us at Abu Kem.  There was nothing whatever the
+matter with him.  He recognized Grim's voice and emerged through the
+front door with a milk-white smile flashing in the midst of newly-curled
+black hair--dignified, immense, and full of instant understanding.
+
+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.
+
+Of course, the obvious question is, why didn't Narayan Singh shoot?  I
+had a pistol too;  why didn't I use it?  Well, I'll tell you.  None but
+the irresponsible criminal shoots a man except in obedience to orders or
+in self-defence.
+
+You may argue that those three night-prowlers might have shot Ticknor
+and his wife and Grim through the window while we aired our superior
+virtue.  The answer to that is, that they didn't, although that was
+their intention.  Narayan Singh, already once that night in danger of
+his life, and a "godless, heathen Sikh," as I have heard a missionary
+call him, pocketed the pistol I had given him before proceeding to
+engage, he being also a white man by the proper way of estimating such
+things.
+
+Jeremy was first on the scene of action, with Narayan Singh close behind
+him, and I was quite a bit behind, for I tripped against the top step in
+my hurry.  The noise I made gave the alarm, and the three Arabs twisted
+round like cornered scorpions.  I guess they couldn't see us well at
+first, having been staring through the torn shade into the lighted room.
+
+Their pistols were cocked, but Jeremy's fist landed in the nearest man's
+face before he could shoot, and he went crashing backwards into his
+friend behind, whose head disappeared for a moment through the
+window-pane, and the only blood shed on that occasion came from the
+first man's nose and the back of the second man's neck where the smashed
+glass slit a gash in it.
+
+The third man fired wildly at me, and missed, a fraction of a second
+before Narayan Singh landed on him with hands and feet; whereat the man
+in the street emptied his pistol at me and ran away.  I was in two minds
+whether to give chase to him, but made the wrong decision, being heavy
+on my feet and none too fond of running, so the big fish got away.
+
+But even with my help added, the three less important fish still gave a
+lot of trouble, for they fought like wild cats, using teeth and finger-
+nails;  and the doctor and his wife and Grim were all out lending a hand
+before we had them finally convinced that the game was up.  Mabel
+trussed up the worst man with a clothes line, while I sat on him.
+
+I expected to see a crowd around the house by that time, but Jerusalem
+works otherwise than some cities.  The sound of a pistol-shot sends
+everybody hurrying for cover, lest some enemy accuse them afterwards of
+having had a hand in the disturbance. And the nearest police post was a
+mile away.  So we had our little outrage all to ourselves, although
+strange tales went the rounds of the Holy City that night, and two weeks
+later several European newspapers printed a beautiful account of a
+midnight massacre of Jews.
+
+We dragged our prisoners into the sitting-room, and stood them up in
+front of Grim after the doctor and Mabel had attended to their hurts,
+which weren't especially serious;  although nobody need expect to get in
+the way of Jeremy's fist and feel comfortable for several hours
+afterwards.  The cut made in the second man's neck by broken glass
+needed several stitches, but the third man was only winded from having
+been sat on, and of course he was much more sorry for himself than
+either of the other two--a fact that Grim noted.
+
+There was another noticeable circumstance that shed light on human
+nature and Grim's knowledge of it.  They were all three eager to tell
+their story, although not necessarily the same story;  whereas Narayan
+Singh, who knew that every word he might say would be believed
+implicitly, was in no hurry to tell his at all.
+
+Now when you're dealing with Eastern and near-Eastern people of the sort
+who lie instinctively (and it may be that this applies to the West as
+well) it's a good plan to establish, if you can, a basis of truth for
+them to build their tale on;  because the truth acts like acid on
+untruth.  They're going to lie in any case;  but lies told without any
+reference to truth knit better than when invented at a moment's notice
+to explain away another's straightforward statement.  There's a
+plausible theory that culprits taken in the act are best examined in
+secret, one by one, in ignorance of all the evidence against them.
+
+The wise method is to let them hear the evidence against themselves.
+Nine times out of ten they will accept that as unanswerable, and strive
+to twist its meaning or smother it under a mass of lies.  But the truth
+they have accepted, as I have said, works just like acid and destroys
+their argument almost as fast as they build it up.  In the few cases
+when that doesn't happen, they break down altogether and confess.
+
+Anyhow, Grim, who taught me what I have just written, refused to listen
+to their bleating until Narayan Singh first told in their hearing all
+that he knew about the night's events.  They were forced to sit down on
+the floor and listen to him like three coffee-shop loungers being told a
+story;  and I don't doubt that the effect was strengthened by the Sikh's
+standing facing them, for the contrast was as between jackals and a
+lion.
+
+Not that they were small men, for they weren't, or mere ten-dollar
+assassins picked up in the suk.  They looked well fed, and wore fine
+linen, whereas Narayan Singh was in rags and had lost weight in our
+recent desert marching, so that his cheek-bones stood out and he looked
+superficially much more like a man at bay than they did.
+
+But their well-cared-for faces were lean in the wrong place, and puffy
+under the eyes.  In place of courage they flaunted an insolent leer, and
+the smile intended to convey self-confidence betrayed to a close
+observer anxiety bordering on panic.
+
+The most offensive part about them really was their feet, which are
+indices of character too often overlooked.  They had come to their task
+in slippers, which they had kicked off before reaching the veranda, and
+instead of the firm, tough feet that a real man stands on, what they
+displayed as they squatted were subtle, soft things, not exactly flabby,
+but even more suggestive of treachery than their thin beaks and shifty
+eyes.
+
+To sum them up, they were dandies, of the kind who join the Young Turk
+Party and believe the New Era can be distilled of talk and tricks;  and
+they looked like mean animals compared to that staunch conservative
+Narayan Singh, who, nevertheless, is not without his own degree of
+subtlety.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+"I call this awful!"
+
+
+Sahib, in accordance with instructions I proceeded to Christian Street
+to the place you spoke of, where I found Yussuf Dakmar drinking coffee
+and smoking in company with these men and others. They did not see me in
+the beginning, because I entered by the door of a house threescore and
+five paces farther down the street;  and having by that means gained the
+roof I descended to a gallery built of stone above one end of the
+coffee-shop, and there lay concealed among evil-smelling bags.
+
+"They conversed in Arabic;  and presently when other men had entered,
+some of whose names I overheard and wrote down on this slip of paper,
+Yussuf Dakmar locked the outer door, turning the great key twice and
+setting a chain in place as well.  Then he stood on a red stool having
+four short legs, with his back to the door that he had locked, and spoke
+in the manner of one who stirs a multitude, gesticulating greatly.
+
+"The argument he made was thus:  He said that Jerusalem is a holy city,
+and Palestine a holy land;  and that promises are all the more sacred if
+given in connection with religious matters; whereat they all applauded
+greatly.  Nevertheless, a little later on he mocked at all religion, and
+they applauded that too.  He said that the Allies, persuaded thereto by
+the British, had made a promise to the Emir Feisul on the strength of
+which the Arabs made common war with the Allies against the Turks and
+Germans, losing of their own a hundred thousand men and untold money.
+
+"So, sahib.  Next he asked them how much of that promise made by the
+Allies to Emir Feisul as the leader of the Arabs had been kept, or was
+likely to be kept;  and they answered in one voice, 'None of it!'
+Whereat he nodded, as a teacher nods gravely when the pupils have their
+lesson well by heart, and said presently in a voice like that of a Guru
+denouncing sin:  'A woman's promise is a little matter;  who believes
+it?  When it is broken all men laugh.  A promise extorted under threat
+or torture is not binding, since he who made the promise was not free to
+govern his own conduct;  that is law.  A promise made in business,' said
+he, 'is a contract contingent on circumstances and subject to
+litigation.  But a promise made in wartime by a nation is a pledge set
+down in letters of blood.  Whoever breaks it is guilty of blood;  and
+whoever fails to smite dead the breaker of that oath, commits treason
+against Allah!'
+
+"They applauded that speech greatly, sahib, and when they grew silent he
+bade them look about and judge for themselves at whose door the breaking
+of that sacred promise really lay.  'Show me,' said he, 'one trace of
+Arab government in all Palestine.  Who owns the land?' he asked them.
+'Arabs!' said they.  'Yet to whom has the country been given?' he
+shouted.  'To the Jews!' they answered;  and he grew silent for a while,
+like a teacher whose class has only given half the answer to a question
+until presently one man growled out, 'To the sword with the Jews in the
+name of Allah!' and the others echoed that which satisfied him, for he
+smiled, nevertheless not using those words himself.  And presently he
+continued:
+
+"'We in this room are men of enlightenment.  We are satisfied to leave
+past and future to speculations of idle dreamers.  For us the present.
+So we attach no value to the fact that Feisul is descended in a straight
+line from the founder of the Moslem faith;  for that is a superstition
+as foolish in its way as Christianity or any other creed.  But who is
+there like Feisul who can unite all Arabs under one banner?'
+
+"They answered, sahib, that Feisul is the only living man who can
+accomplish that, making many assertions in his praise, Yussuf Dakmar
+nodding approval as each spoke. 'Yet,' said he when they had finished,
+'Feisul is also fallible.  In certain ways he is a fool, and principally
+in this:  That he insists on keeping his own promises to men who have
+broken their own promises to him.' And like pupils in a class who recite
+their lesson, they all murmured that such a course as that is madness.
+
+"'So,' said he, 'we are clear on that point.  We are not altruists, nor
+religious fanatics, nor slaves, but men of common sense who have a
+business in view.  We are not Feisul's servants, but he ours.  We make
+use of him, not he of us.  If he persists in a wrong course, we must
+force him into the right one, for the day of autocratic government is
+past and the hour has come when those who truly represent the people
+have the first right to direct all policy.  If the right is still
+withheld from them, they must take it.  And it is we in this room who
+truly represent the Arab cause, on whom lies the responsibility of
+forcing Feisul's hand!'
+
+"Well, sahib, these three prisoners who sit here offered, at once to go
+to Damascus and kill the men who are advising Feisul wrongly.  They said
+that if they were given money they could easily hire Damascenes to do
+the dagger work, there being, as the sahib doubtless knows, a common
+saying in these parts about Damascus folk and sharp steel.  Whereat
+Yussuf Dakmar suddenly assumed a sneering tone of voice, saying that he
+preferred men for his part with spunk enough to do such work themselves,
+and there was an argument, they protesting and he mocking them, until at
+last this man, whose neck the glass cut, demanded of him whether he,
+Yussuf Dakmar, was not in truth an empty boaster who would flinch at
+bloodshed.
+
+"He seemed to have been waiting for just that, sahib, for he smirked and
+threw a chest.  'I am a man,' said he, 'of example as well as precept.
+I have done what I saw fit to do!  I make no boasts,' said he, 'for a
+man who talks about himself sets others talking, and there are deeds
+creditable to the doer that are best not spoken of.  But I will tell you
+other things, and you   may draw your own conclusions.
+
+"'Because Feisul refuses to attack the French, having promised those
+promise-breakers that he will not;  and because Feisul has promised to
+protect the Jews and is likely to try to keep that promise to the
+promise-breaking English, certain of his intimates in Damascus, in whose
+confidence I am, have determined to force both issues, taking steps in
+his name that will commit him finally.  Feisul's army of fifty thousand
+men is as ready as it will ever be.  There is no money in the Damascus
+treasury, and therefore every moment of delay is now a moment lost.  The
+time has come for action!'"
+
+Our three prisoners were listening to the recitation spellbound, and so
+were we all for that matter.  The mere memory feat was amazing enough.
+Few men could listen in hiding to a stranger's words, and report them
+exactly after an interval of more than an hour;  but Narayan Singh did
+better than that, for he reproduced the speaker's gesture and inflexion,
+so that we had a mental picture of the scene that he described.  Mabel
+offered him stewed tannic acid in the name of tea, and Ticknor suggested
+a chair, but he waved both offers aside and continued as if the picture
+before his mind and the words he was remembering might escape him if he
+took things easy.
+
+"Sahib, they were very much excited when he spoke of action. First one
+man and then another stood up and boasted of having made all things
+ready;  how this one had supervised the hiding of sharp swords;  how
+another had kept men at work collecting cartridges on battlefields;  how
+this and that one had continued spreading talk against the Jews, so that
+they swore that at least ten thousand Moslems in Jerusalem are fretting
+to begin a massacre.  'Let Feisul only strike the first blow from
+Damascus,' said they, 'and Palestine will run blood instantly!'"
+
+"And we sit here drinking tea," exclaimed Mabel, "while up at
+headquarters they're dancing and playing bridge!  I call this awful!  We
+all ought to be..."
+
+Grim smiled and shook his head for silence.
+
+"We've known all this for some time," he said. "Don't worry. There'll be
+no massacre;  the troops are sleeping by their arms, and every possible
+contingency has been provided for.  Go on, Narayan Singh."
+
+"Well, sahib;  when they had done babbling and boasting this Yussuf
+Dakmar got back on his stool and spoke sternly, as one who gives final
+judgment and intends to be obeyed.  'It is we who must make the first
+move,' said he;  'and we shall force Feisul to move after us by moving
+in his name.'  Whereat this man here, whose nose was broken on the fist
+of Jeremy sahib, said that a letter bearing Feisul's seal would make the
+matter easier.  'For the men,' said he, 'who are to slit Jews' throats
+will ask first for proof of our authority to bid them begin the
+business.'
+
+"And at that speech Yussuf Dakmar laughed with great delight. 'Better
+late than never!' said he.  'Better to think of a wise precaution now
+than not at all!  But oh, ye are an empty-headed crew!' he told them.
+'I pity the conspiracy that had no better planning than ye would make
+for it without my fore thought!  I thought of this long ago!  I sent a
+message to Damascus, begging that a date be set and just such a letter
+sent to us.  Feisul, I knew, would sign no such letter;  but the paper
+he uses lies on an open desk, and there are men about him who have
+access to his seal.  And because my appeal was well-timed it met with
+approval. A letter such as I asked for was written on Feisul's paper,
+sealed with his seal, and sent!'
+
+"'But does it bear his signature?' a man asked.
+
+"'How could it, since he never saw the letter?' Yussuf Dakmar answered.
+
+"'Then few will pay heed to it,' said the other.
+
+"'Perhaps if we were all such fools as you that might be so,' Yussuf
+Dakmar retorted.  'However, fortunately the rest of us have readier
+wits!  This letter is signed with a number, and the number is that of
+Feisul's generation in descent from the Prophet Mohammed.  Let men be
+told that this is his secret signature, and when they see his seal
+beside it, will they not believe?  Every hour in Jerusalem, and in all
+the world, men believe things less credible than that!'
+
+"But at that, sahib, another man asked him how they might know that the
+letter really came from Damascus.  'It well might be,' said that one, 'a
+forgery contrived by Yussuf Dakmar himself, in which case though they
+might stir many Moslems into action by showing it, the men in Damascus
+would fail to follow up the massacre by striking at the French.  And if
+they do not strike at the French,' said he, 'the French will not appeal
+to the British for aid;  and so the British troops will be free to
+protect the Jews and butcher us, by which means we shall be worse off
+than before.'
+
+"Whereat Yussuf Dakmar laughed again.  'If ye will go to the Sikh
+hospital,' said he, 'ye will find there the man who brought the letter.
+He lies in a cot in the upper storey with a knife-wound between his
+shoulder-blades.  It was a mistaken accident unfortunate for him;  the
+letter was intended for me, but I did not know that.  What does the life
+of one fool matter?  He gave out that Jews stabbed him, and it may be he
+believes that;  yet I have the letter in my pocket here!'  And he
+touched with one hand the portion of his coat beneath which was the
+pocket that contained the letter.  I was watching, sahib, from where I
+lay hidden.
+
+"He was about, I think, to show them the letter, when another thought
+occurred to him.  He wrinkled his brow, as if seeking words in which to
+make his meaning clear, and they seemed willing enough to wait for him,
+but not so I, for I now knew where the letter was.  So I sprang into
+their midst, falling less dangerously than I might have done by reason
+of a man's shoulders that served for a cushion.  It may be that his
+bones broke under my weight.  I can give no accurate report as to that,
+for I was in great haste.  But as he gave way under me, I pitched
+forward, and, kicking Yussuf Dakmar in the belly with my boot, I fell on
+him, they falling on me in turn and we all writhing together in one mass
+on the floor.  So I secured the letter."
+
+"Good man!" Grim nodded.
+
+"Wish I'd been there!" mourned Jeremy.
+
+"And, having what I came for, I broke free;  and taking the red stool I
+hurled it at the lamp, so that we were in total darkness, which made it
+a simple matter to unlock the door, and proceed about my business.
+Nevertheless, I heard them strike matches behind me, and it seemed
+unwise to take to my heels at once, it being easy to pursue a man who
+runs.
+
+"As the sahib doubtless remembers, between that coffee shop and the next
+house is a stone buttress jutting out into the street, forming on its
+side farthest from the coffee-shop a dark corner, for whose filth and
+stink the street cleaners ought to be punished.  Therein I lurked, while
+those who pursued ran past me up the street, I counting them;  and among
+them I did not count Yussuf Dakmar and three more.  It happened that a
+man was running up the street and the pursuers supposed him to be me.
+So I was left with only four to deal with;  and it entered my head that
+no doubt Jimgrim sahib would be pleased to interview Yussuf Dakmar.
+
+"And after a few moments Yussuf Dakmar came forth, and I heard him speak
+to these three fellows.
+
+"'Those fools,' said he, 'hunt like street dogs at the sound of rubbish
+tossed out of a window.  But I think that Indian soldier is less foolish
+than they.  If I were he,' said Yussuf Dakmar, 'I think I wouldn't run
+far, with all these shadows to right and left and all the hours from now
+until dawn in which to act the fox.  I suspect he is not far away at
+this minute.  Nevertheless,' said he, 'those Indians are dangerous
+fellows.  It is highly important that we get that letter from him;  but
+it is almost equally important that we stop his mouth, which would be
+impossible if he should escape alive.  If we wait here,' said he, 'we
+shall see him emerge from a shadow, if I am not much mistaken.'
+
+"So they waited, sahib.  And after a few minutes, when my breath had
+returned to me, I let him have credit as a wise one by emerging as he
+had said.  And those four stalked me through the streets, not daring to
+come close until I should lead them to a lonely place;  and I led them
+with discretion to this house, where happened what the sahib knows.
+
+"That is all I know about this matter, except that being absent from
+duty on sick-leave there may be difficulty in the matter of my tunic,
+which is badly torn."
+
+Having finished his story Narayan Singh stood at attention like one of
+those wooden images they used to keep on the sidewalk outside tobacco
+stores.
+
+Grim smiled at the prisoners and asked whether they had any remarks to
+make--a totally lawless proceeding, for he did not caution them, and had
+no jurisdiction as a magistrate.  They were three men caught red-handed
+attempting murder and burglary, and entitled accordingly to protection
+that the law doesn't always accord to honest men.  But, as I have said,
+a true tale in the ears of criminals acts like a chemical reagent.  It
+sets them to work lying, and the lie burns off, disclosing naked truth
+again. But, mother of me, they were daring liars!  The fellow who had
+come out of the scrap more or less unscathed piped up for the three, the
+other two nodding and prompting him in whispers.
+
+"What that Indian says in the main is true.  He did jump down from the
+gallery and surprise a meeting summoned by Yussuf Dakmar.  And it is
+true that Yussuf Dakmar's purpose is to bring about a massacre of Jews,
+which is to be simultaneous with an attack by Feisul's forces on the
+French in Syria.  But we three men are not in favour of it.  We have had
+no part in the preparations, although we know all details.  We are
+honest men, who have the public interest at heart, and accordingly we
+have spied on Yussuf Dakmar, purposing to expose all his plans to the
+authorities."
+
+Jeremy began humming to himself.  Mabel tittered, and little Doctor
+Ticknor swore under his breath.  But Grim looked as if he believed them
+--looked pleasantly surprised--and nodded gravely.
+
+"But that hardly explains your following this Indian through the streets
+and attacking him on the veranda," he suggested, as if sure they could
+explain that too--as sure enough they did.
+
+"We did not attack him.  He attacked us.  It was obvious to us from the
+first that he must be an agent of the Government.  So when Yussuf Dakmar
+told us to follow and murder him we decided it was time to expose Yussuf
+Dakmar, and that this was our opportunity.  We knew surely that this
+Indian would take that letter straight to some official of the
+Government;  it was only necessary to pretend to hunt him and in that
+manner inveigle Yussuf Dakmar into the toils.
+
+"But when we reached this house Yussuf Dakmar was afraid and refused to
+approach nearer than the street.  He insisted on keeping watch outside
+the garden gate while we should draw near and shoot everyone who might
+be in the house and recover the letter.  He is a coward, and we could
+not persuade him.
+
+"So we decided to pretend to do his bidding, and to whisper through the
+window to the people within to pass out to the street by some back way
+and capture him, after which we would give all our evidence to the
+authorities.
+
+"It was while we were looking through the window, seeking to call the
+attention of those within for that purpose and no other, that we were
+attacked and submitted to much unnecessary violence. That is the whole
+truth, as Allah is our witness!  We are honest men, who seek to uphold
+the law, and we claim the protection of the Government.  We are ready to
+tell all we know, including the names of those connected with this
+plot."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+"Nobody will know, no bouquets"
+
+
+There followed a tedious hour or two, during which Grim cross-examined
+the three "honest men," and took down lists of names from their
+dictation, getting Doctor Ticknor meanwhile to go for the police because
+Yussuf Dakmar might still be lurking in the neighbourhood for a chance
+to murder Narayan Singh.  It was only after the police had carried off
+the prisoners to jail (where they repudiated their entire confession
+next morning) that Grim showed us the letter which, like a spark, had
+fired a powder magazine--although a smaller one than its writer
+intended.
+
+"It isn't in Feisul's handwriting," he said, holding the feathery Arab
+script up to the lamplight; "and it's no more like his phraseology than
+a camel resembles a locomotive.  Listen to this:
+
+To the Pan-Arab Committee in Jerusalem, by favour of Yussuf Dakmar Bey
+its District President, Greeting in the name of God:
+
+Ye know that on former occasions the foes of our land and race were
+overwhelmed when, relying on the aid of the Most High, and raising the
+green banner of the Prophet--on whom be peace--we launched our squadrons
+in a cause held sacred by us all.
+
+Ye know that in that fashion, and not otherwise, the accursed conquerors
+were driven forth and our sacred banner was set on high over the
+Damascus roofs, where by Allah's blessing may it wave for ever!
+
+Ye know how those who claimed to be our friends have since proven
+themselves foes, so that the independent state for which we fought is
+held today in ignominious subjection by aliens, who deny the true Faith
+and hold their promises as nothing.
+
+Ye know how Damascus is beset by the French, and Palestine is held by
+the British who, notwithstanding the oath they swore to us, are daily
+betraying us Arabs to the Jews.
+
+Know now, then, that the hour has struck when, again in the name of
+Allah, we must finish what we formerly began and with our true swords
+force these infidels to yield our country to us.  Nor on this occasion
+shall we sheathe our swords until from end to end our land is free and
+united under one government of our own choosing.
+
+Know that this time there shall be no half-measures nor any compromise.
+It is written, Ye shall show no quarter to the infidel.  Let no Jew live
+to boast that he has footing in the land of our ancestors.  Leave ye no
+root of them in the earth nor seedling that can spring into a tree!
+Smite, and smite swiftly in the name of Him who never sleeps, who keeps
+all promises, whose almighty hand is ready to preserve the Faithful.
+
+Whereunto ye are bidden to take courage.  Whereunto our army of Syria
+stands ready.  Whereunto the day has been appointed.
+
+Know ye that the tenth day from the sending of this letter, and at dawn,
+is the appointed time.  Therefore let all make common cause for the
+favour of the Most High which awaits the Faithful.
+
+In the name of God and Mohammed the Prophet of God, on whom be
+blessings."
+
+
+There followed the Moslem date and the numerical signature over Feisul's
+indubitable seal.  Grim figured a moment and worked out the
+corresponding date according to our western calendar.
+
+"Leaves six days," he said pleasantly.  "It means the French intend to
+attack Damascus seven days from now."
+
+"Let 'em!" Jeremy exploded.  "Feisul'll give 'em ----!  All they've got
+are Algerians."
+
+"The French have poison gas," Grim answered dourly.  "Feisul's men have
+no masks."
+
+"Get 'em some!"
+
+That was Jeremy again.  Grim didn't answer, but went on talking:
+
+"They're going to get Damascus.  All they've waited for was poison gas,
+and now there's no stopping 'em.  They forged this letter after the gas
+arrived.  Now if they catch Feisul in Damascus they'll put him on trial
+for his life, and they probably hope to get this letter back somehow to
+use as evidence against him."
+
+"Go slow, Jim!" Mabel objected.  "Where's your proof that the French are
+jockeying this?  Isn't that Feisul's seal?"
+
+"Yes, and it's his paper.  But not his handwriting."
+
+"He might have dictated it, mightn't he?"
+
+"Never in those words.  Feisul don't talk or write that way.  The
+letter's a manifest forgery, as I'll prove by confronting Feisul with
+it.  But there's a little oversight that should convince you it's a
+forgery.  Have you a magnifying glass, doc?"
+
+Ticknor produced one in a minute, and Grim held the letter under the
+lamp.  On the rather wide margin, carefully rubbed out, but not so
+carefully that the indentation did not show, was the French word
+magnifique that had been written with a rather heavy hand and one of
+those hard pencils supplied to colonial governments by exporters from
+stocks that can't be sold at home.
+
+"That proves nothing," Mabel insisted. "All educated Arabs talk French.
+Somebody on Feisul's staff was asked for an opinion on the letter before
+it went.  My husband's Arab orderly told me only yesterday that a sling
+I made for a man in the hospital was magnifique."
+
+The objection was well enough taken, because it was the sort the forger
+of the letter would be likely to raise if brought to book. But Grim's
+argument was not exhausted.
+
+"There are other points, Mabel.  For one thing, it's blue metallic ink.
+Feisul's private letters are all written with indelible black stuff made
+from pellets that I gave him;  they're imported from the States."
+
+"But if Feisul wanted to prove an alibi, he naturally wouldn't use his
+special private ink," objected Mabel.
+
+"Then why his seal, and his special private notepaper?  However, there's
+another point.  Feisul writes the purest kind of Arabic, and this isn't
+that sort of Arabic.  It was written by a foreigner--perhaps a
+Frenchman--possibly an Armenian--most likely a Turk--certainly one of
+the outer ring of politicians who have access to Feisul and seek to
+control him, but are not really in his confidence.  Damascus is simply a
+network of spies of that kind--men who attached themselves to the Arab
+cause when it looked like winning and are now busy transferring their
+allegiance.
+
+"I think I could name the man who wrote this;  I think I know the man
+who wrote that magnifique.  If I'm right, Yussuf Dakmar will notify the
+French tonight through their agents in Jerusalem.  The man who wrote
+that magnifique will know before morning that the letter's missing;  and
+it doesn't matter how careful I may be, it'll be known as soon as I
+start for Damascus.
+
+"They'll dope out that our obvious course would be to confront Feisul
+with this letter.  The only way to travel is by train; the roads are
+rotten--in fact, no auto could get through;  they'd tip off the
+Bedouins, who'd murder everybody.
+
+"So they'll watch the trains and especially Haifa, where everyone going
+north has to spend the night;  and they'll stop at nothing to get the
+letter back, for two reasons;  as long as it's in our hands it can be
+used to establish proof of the plot against Feisul;  once it's back in
+theirs, they can keep it in their secret dossier to use against Feisul
+if they ever catch him and bring him to trial.  You remember the Dreyfus
+case?
+
+"I shall start for Damascus by the early train--probably take an auto as
+far as Ludd.  If I want to live until I reach Damascus I shall have to
+prove conclusively that I haven't that letter with me.  Anyone known to
+be in British service is going to be suspected and, if not murdered,
+robbed.  Ramsden has been seen about too much with me.  Jeremy might
+juggle by but he's already notorious, and these people are shrewd.
+Better hold Jeremy in reserve, and the same with Narayan Singh.  A
+woman's best.  How about you, Mabel?"
+
+"What d'you mean, Jim?"
+
+"Do you know a woman in Haifa?"
+
+"Of course I do."
+
+"Well enough to expect a bed for the night at a moment's notice?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+Mabel's eyes were growing very bright indeed.  It was her husband who
+looked alarmed.
+
+"Well, now, here's the point."
+
+Grim leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette, not looking at
+anybody, stating his case impersonally, as it were, which is much the
+shrewdest way of being personal.
+
+"Feisul's up against it, and he's the best man in all this land, bar
+none.  They've dealt to him from a cold deck, and he's bound to lose
+this hand whichever way he plays it.  To put it differently, he's in
+check, but not checkmated.  He'll be checkmated, though, if the French
+ever lay hands on him, and then good-bye to the Arab's chance for twenty
+years.
+
+"I propose to save him for another effort, and the only way to do that
+is to convince him.  The best way to convince him is to show him that
+letter, which can't be done if Feisul's enemies discover who carries it.
+If Ramsden, Jeremy, Narayan Singh and I start for Damascus, pretending
+that one or other of us has the letter concealed on his person, and if a
+woman really carries it, we'll manage.  Is Mabel Ticknor going to be the
+woman?  That's the point."
+
+"Too dangerous, Jim!  Too dangerous!"  Ticknor put in nervously.
+
+"Pardon me, old man.  The danger is for us four, who pretend we've got
+the thing."
+
+"There are lots of other women and I've only got one wife!" objected
+Ticknor.
+
+"We're pressed for time," Grim answered.  "You see, Ticknor, old man,
+you're a Cornstalk and therefore an outsider--just a medico, who saws
+bones for a living, satisfied to keep your body out of the poorhouse,
+your soul out of hell, and your name out of the newspapers.  Your wife
+is presumably more so.  There are several officials' wives who would
+jump at the chance to be useful;  but a sudden trip toward Damascus just
+now would cause any one of them to be suspected, whereas Mabel wouldn't
+be."
+
+"I don't know why not!" Ticknor retorted.  "Wasn't she in here when
+those three murderers came to finish the lot of us?  If Yussuf Dakmar
+makes any report at all he'll surely say he traced the letter to this
+house."
+
+"Yussuf Dakmar came no nearer than the street," Grim answered. "He has
+no notion who is in here.  His three friends are in jail under lock and
+key, where he can't get at them.  How long have you had this house?
+Since yesterday, isn't it?  D'you kid yourself that Yussuf Dakmar knows
+who lives here?"
+
+"I can get leave of absence.  Suppose I go in Mabel's place?" suggested
+Ticknor, visibly worried.
+
+"The mere fact that she goes, while you stay here, will be presumptive
+evidence that she isn't on a dangerous mission," Grim answered.  "No. It
+has got to be a woman.  If Mabel won't go I'll find someone else."
+
+You could tell by Mabel's eyes and attitude that she was what the
+salesmen call "sold" already;  but you didn't need a magnifying glass to
+detect that Ticknor wasn't.  Men of his wandering habit know too well
+what a brave, good-tempered wife means to encourage her to take long
+chances;  for although there are lots of women who would like to wander
+and accept the world's pot luck, there are precious few capable of doing
+it without doubling a fellow's trouble;  when they know how to halve the
+trouble and double the fun they're priceless.
+
+Grim played his usual game, which is to spank down his ace of trumps
+face upward on the table.  Most of us forget what are trumps in a
+crisis.
+
+"I guess it's up to you, doc," he said, turning toward Ticknor. "There's
+nothing in it for you.  Feisul isn't on the make;  I don't believe he
+cares ten cents who is to be the nominal ruler of the Arabs, provided
+they get their promised independence. He'd rather retire and live
+privately.  But he only considers himself in so far as he can serve the
+Arab cause.  Now, you've risked Mabel's life a score of times in order
+to help sick men in mining camps, and malaria victims and Lord knows
+what else. Here's a chance to do the biggest thing of all--"
+
+"Of course, if you put it that way..." said Ticknor, hesitating.
+
+"Just your style too.  Nobody will know.  No bouquets.  You won't have
+to stammer a speech at any dinner given in your honor."
+
+
+"D'you want to do it, Mabel?" asked Ticknor, looking at her keenly
+across the table.
+
+"Of course I do!"
+
+"All right, girl.  Only, hurry back."
+
+He looked hard at Grim again, then into my eyes and then Jeremy's.
+
+"She's in your hands.  I don't want to see any of you three chaps alive
+again unless she comes back safe.  Is that clear?"
+
+"Clear and clean!" exploded Jeremy.  "It's a bet, doc.  Half a mo', you
+chaps;  that's my mine at Abu Kem, isn't it?  I've agreed to give the
+thing to Feisul and make what terms I can with him.  Jim and Rammy divvy
+up with me on my end, if any.  That right?  I say;  let the doc and
+Mabel have a half-share each of anything our end amounts to."
+
+Well, it took about as long to settle that business as you'd expect.
+The doctor and Mabel protested, but it's easier to give away a fortune
+that is still in prospect than a small sum that is really tangible--I
+mean between folk who stand on their own feet. It doesn't seem to
+deprive the giver of much, or to strain the pride of the recipient
+unduly.
+
+I've been given shares in unproven El Doradoes times out of number, and
+could paper the wall of, say, a good-sized bathroom with the stock
+certificates--may do it some day if I ever settle down.  But the only
+gift of that sort that I ever knew to pay dividends, except to the
+printer of the gilt-edged scrip, is Jeremy's gold mine;  and you'll look
+in vain for any mention of that in the stock exchange lists.  The time
+to get in on that good thing was that night by Mabel Ticknor's teapot in
+Jerusalem.
+
+It was nearly midnight before we had everything settled, and there was
+still a lot to do before we could catch the morning train.  One thing
+that Grim did was to take gum and paper and contrive an envelope that
+looked in the dark sufficiently like the alleged Feisul letter;  and he
+carried that in his hand as he took to the street, with Narayan Singh
+following among the shadows within hail.  Jeremy and I kept Narayan
+Singh in sight, for it was possible that Yussuf Dakmar had gathered a
+gang to waylay whoever might emerge from the house.
+
+But he seemed to have had enough of bungling accomplices that night.
+Grim hadn't gone fifty paces, keeping well in the middle of the road,
+when a solitary shadow began stalking him, and doing it so cautiously
+that though he had to cross the circles of street lamplight now and then
+neither Jeremy nor I could have identified him afterward.
+
+Narayan Singh had orders not to do anything but guard Grim against
+assault, for Grim judged it wise to leave Yussuf Dakmar at large than to
+precipitate a climax by arresting him.  He had the names of most of the
+local conspirators, and if the leader were seized too soon the equally
+dangerous rank and file might scatter and escape.
+
+Down inside the Jaffa Gate, in a dark alley beside the Grand Hotel,
+there are usually two or three cabs standing at any hour of the night
+ready to care for belated Christian gentlemen who have looked on the
+wine when it was any colour that it chanced to be.  There were three
+there, and Grim took the first one, flourishing his envelope carelessly
+under the corner lamp.
+
+Yussuf Dakmar took the next in line, and ordered the driver to follow
+Grim.  So we naturally took the last one, all three of us crowding on to
+the rear seat in order to watch the cabs in front. But as soon as we had
+driven back outside the city gate Yussuf Dakmar looked behind him and,
+growing suspicious of us, ordered his driver to let us pass.
+
+It would have been too obvious if we had stopped too, so we hid our
+faces as we passed, and then put Jeremy on the front seat, he looking
+like an Arab and being most unrecognizable.  Yussuf Dakmar followed us
+at long range, and as the lean horses toiled slowly up the Mount of
+Olives to headquarters the interval between the cabs grew greater.  By
+the time we reached the guard-house and answered the Sikh sentry's
+challenge there was no sign of Grim in front, and we could only hear in
+the distance behind us the occasional click of a loose shoe to tell that
+Yussuf Dakmar was still following.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+"Better the evil that we know..."
+
+
+Yussuf Dakmar had his nerve with him that night, or possibly desperation
+robbed him of discretion.  He may have been a more than usually daring
+man with his wits about him, but you'd have to hunt down the valley of
+death before you could bring the psychoanalytic guns to bear on him for
+what they're worth.  I can only tell you what he did, not why he did it.
+
+The great hospice that the German nation built on the crown of the Mount
+of Olives to glorify their Kaiser stood like a shadow among shadows in
+its compound, surrounded by a fairly high wall. There was a pretty
+strong guard under an Indian officer in the guard-house at the arched
+main gate where the sentry challenged us.
+
+A sentry stood at the foot of the steps under the portico at the main
+entrance, and there was another armed man on duty patrolling the
+grounds.  But there were one or two other entrances, locked, though
+quite easy to negotiate, which the sentry could only observe while he
+marched toward them;  for five minutes at a time, while his back was
+turned, at least two gates leading to official residences offered
+opportunity to an active man.
+
+One lone light at a window on the top floor suggested that the officer
+of the night might be awake, but what with the screeching of owls and a
+wind that sighed among the shrubs,  headquarters looked and sounded more
+like a deserted ancient castle than the cranium and brain-cells of
+Administration.
+
+We heard Yussuf Dakmar stop his cab two hundred yards away.  The cabman
+turned his horses and drove back toward Jerusalem without calling on
+Allah to witness that his fare should have been twice what he received;
+he didn't even lash the horses savagely;  so we supposed that he hadn't
+been paid, and went on to deduce from that that Yussuf Dakmar had driven
+away again, after satisfying himself that the Feisul letter had reached
+headquarters.  It was lazy, bad reasoning--the sort of superficial,
+smart stuff that has cost the lives of thousands of good men times out
+of number--four o'clock o' the morning intelligence that, like the
+courage of that hour, needs priming by the foreman, or the
+sergeant-major, or the bosun as the case may be.
+
+The sentry turned out the guard, who let us through the gate after a
+word with Narayan Singh;  and the man who leaned on his bayonet under
+the portico at the end of the drive admitted us without any argument at
+all.
+
+I suppose he thought that having come that far we must be people in
+authority.  Ever since then I have believed all the stories told me
+about spies who walked where they chose unchallenged during wartime;
+for we three--a Sikh enlisted man, an Australian disguised as an Arab,
+and an American in civilian clothes--entered unannounced and unwatched
+the building where every secret of the Near East was pigeonholed.
+
+We walked about the corridors and up and downstairs for ten minutes,
+looking in vain for Grim.  Here and there a servant snored on a mat in a
+corner, and once a big dog came and sniffed at us without making any
+further comment.  Jeremy kicked one man awake, who, mistaking him for an
+Arab, cursed him in three languages, in the name of three separate gods,
+and promptly went to sleep again.  The sensation was like being turned
+loose in the strong-room of a national treasury with nobody watching if
+you should choose to help yourself.  There are acres of floor in that
+building.  We walked twice the whole circuit of the upper and lower
+corridors, knocking on dozens of doors but getting no answer and finally
+brought up in the entrance hall.
+
+Then it occurred to me that Grim might have gone into the building by
+some private entrance, perhaps round on the eastern side, so we set out
+to look for one.
+
+We had just reached the northwest angle of the building, when Narayan
+Singh, who was walking a pace in front, stopped suddenly and held up
+both hands for silence.  Whoever he could see among the shadows must
+have heard us, but it was no rare thing for officers to come roistering
+down those front steps and along the drive hours after midnight, and our
+sudden silence was more likely to give alarm than the noise had been.  I
+began talking again in a normal voice, saying anything at all, peering
+about into the shadows meanwhile.  But it was several seconds before I
+made out what the Sikh's keener eyes had detected instantly, and Jeremy
+saw it before I did.
+
+There was a magnolia shrub about ten paces away from us, casting a
+shadow so deep that the ground it covered looked like a bottomless
+abyss.  But nevertheless, something bright moved in it--perhaps the
+sheen of that lone light in an upper window reflected on a knife-hilt or
+a button--something that moved in time to a man's breathing.
+
+If there was a certainty in the world it was that somebody who had no
+right to be there was lurking in that shadow, and he was presumably up
+to mischief.  On the other hand, I had absolutely no right in that place
+either.  Jeremy and Narayan Singh, being both in the British Army, were
+liable to be disciplined, and I might be requested to leave the country,
+if we should happen to blunder and tree the wrong 'possum, revenge being
+more than usually sweet to the official disturbed in the pursuit of
+unauthorized "diplomacy."  It might even be some clandestine love
+affair.
+
+So I took each of my companions by the arm, gripping Jeremy's
+particularly tightly, and started forward, whispering an explanation
+after we had turned the corner of the building.  "Let one of us go and
+warn the guard," I suggested.  "If we should draw that cover and start a
+shindy, we're more likely to get shot by the guard than thanked."
+
+So Narayan Singh started off for the guard-house, he being the one most
+capable of explaining matters to the Sikh officer, and Jeremy and I
+crept back through the shadows to within earshot of the dark magnolia
+tree, choosing a point from which we could see if anybody bolted.
+
+You know how some uncatalogued sense informs you in the dark of the
+movement of the man beside you?  I looked suddenly sideways toward
+Jeremy, knowing, although I couldn't see him, that his eyes were seeking
+mine.  It is only the animals who omit in the darkness those instinctive
+daylight movements;  men don't have sufficient control of themselves.
+We had both heard Grim's voice at the same instant, speaking Arabic but
+unmistakable.
+
+There were three men there.  Grim was talking to the other two.
+
+"Keep your hands on each other's shoulders!  Don't move!  I'm going to
+search all your pockets again.  Now, Mr. Charkian.  Ah! That feels like
+quite a pretty little weapon;  mother o' pearl on the butt?  Have you a
+permit?  Never mind;  not having the weapon you won't need a permit,
+will you?  And papers--Mashallah!  What a lot of documents;  they must
+be highly important ones since you hide them under your shirt.  I expect
+you planned to sell them, eh?  Too bad!  Too bad!
+
+"You keep your hands on Mr. Charkian's shoulders, Yussuf Dakmar, or I'll
+have to use violence!  I'm not sure, Mr. Charkian, that it wouldn't be
+kinder to society to send you to jail after all; you need a bath so
+badly.  It seems a pity that a chief clerk to the Administration
+shouldn't have a chance to wash himself, doesn't it?  Well, I'll have to
+read these papers afterward--after we've usurped the prerogative of
+Destiny and mapped out a little of the future.  Now--are you both
+listening?  Do you know who I am?"
+
+There was no answer.  "You, Mr. Charkian?"
+
+"I think you are Major Grim."
+
+"Ah!  You wish to flatter me, don't you?  Never mind;  let us pretend
+I'm Major Grim disguised as an Arab;  only, I'm afraid we must continue
+the conversation in Arabic;  I might disillusion you if I tried to talk
+English.  We'll say then that I'm Major Grim, disguised.  Let's see
+now... What would he do in the circumstances?  Here's Yussuf Dakmar,
+wanted for murder in the city and known to be plotting a massacre, seen
+climbing a wall when the sentry's back was turned, and caught in
+conference with Mr. Charkian, confidential clerk to the Administration.
+I'm sorry I didn't hear all that was said at your conference, for that
+might have made it easier to guess what Major Grim would do."
+
+"Don't play with us like a cat playing with a mouse!" snarled somebody.
+"Tell us what you want.  If you were Major Grim you'd have handed us
+over to those officers who passed just now. You're just as much
+irregular as we are.  Hurry up and make your bargain, or the guard may
+come and arrest us all!"
+
+"Yes, hurry up!" complained the other man.  "I don't want to be caught
+here;  and as for those papers you have taken, if we are caught I shall
+say you stole them from the office--you and Yussuf Dakmar, and that I
+followed you to recover them, and you both attacked me!"
+
+"Very well," said Grim's voice pleasantly.  "I'll let you go.  I think
+you're dangerous.  You'd better be quick, because I think I hear the
+guard coming!"
+
+"Give me back the papers, then!"
+
+"Aha!  Will you wait and discuss them with the guard, or go at once?"
+
+The Armenian clerk didn't answer, but got up and slunk away.
+
+"Why did you let that fool go?" demanded Yussuf Dakmar.  "Now he will
+awaken some officer and start hue and cry with a story that we robbed
+him.  Listen!  There comes the guard!  We had better both run!"
+
+"Not so fast!" Grim answered.
+
+And then he raised his voice perceptibly, as if he wished to be
+overheard:
+
+"I think those men who passed just now were not officers at all. Perhaps
+they were strangers.  It may be that one of them is confused, and is
+leading the guard in the wrong direction!"
+
+"Don't make so much noise then!" retorted Yussuf Dakmar.  Jeremy, who
+thinks habitually about ten times as fast as I do, slipped away at once
+into the shadows to find Narayan Singh and decoy the guard elsewhere.  I
+didn't envy him the job, for Sikhs use cold steel first and argue
+afterward when on the qui vive in the dark. However, he accomplished his
+purpose.  Narayan Singh saved his life, and the guard arrested him on
+general principles.  You could hear both Jeremy and Narayan Singh using
+Grim's name freely.  Yussuf Dakmar wasn't deaf.  He gave tongue:
+
+"There!  Did you hear that?  They are speaking of Major Grim. You are a
+fool if you wait here any longer.  That fellow Grim is a devil, I tell
+you.  If he finds us we are both lost!"
+
+"We have to be found first," Grim answered, and you could almost hear
+him smile.
+
+"Quick then!  What do you want?" snapped Yussuf Dakmar.  Grim's answer
+was the real surprise of the evening.  It bewildered me as much as it
+astonished Yussuf Dakmar.
+
+"I want that letter that came from the Emir Feisul!"
+
+"I haven't got it!  I swear I haven't!"
+
+"I know that already, for I searched you.  Where is it?"
+
+"Ask Allah!  It was stolen by a Sikh, who delivered it to someone in a
+house near the military hospital, who in turn gave it to an Arab, who
+brought it here.  I hoped that fellow Charkian might steal it back
+again, but you have spoiled everything.  Charkian will turn against me
+now to save himself.  What do you want with the letter?"
+
+"I must have it!" Grim answered. "The French agent--"
+
+"What--Sidi Said?  You know him?"
+
+"Surely.  He would pay me a thousand pounds for it."
+
+"May Allah change his face!  He only offered me five hundred!"
+
+"You have seen him already, then?" Grim asked.  "I don't believe you!
+When did you see him?"
+
+"On the way up here.  He stopped my cab to speak to me at the foot of
+the hill."
+
+I began to see the drift of Grim's purpose.  He had established the fact
+that the French secret agent was already on the track of the letter, and
+that in turn explained why he had not seized Yussuf Dakmar and put him
+in jail.  It was better to use the man, as the sequel proved.  And
+Yussuf Dakmar walked straight into Grim's trap.
+
+"What is your name?" he demanded.
+
+"Call me Omar," said Grim.
+
+"A Turk, are you?  Well, Omar, let us help each other to get that
+letter, and divide the reward.  Sidi Said told me that the British are
+sure to confront Feisul with it, and to do it secretly if they can.
+They will try to send it to Damascus.  Let us two find out who takes it,
+and waylay him."
+
+"Why should I divide with you?" demanded Grim, who is much too good an
+actor to pretend to agree without bargaining.
+
+"Because otherwise you will not succeed.  I was afraid of you when you
+first surprised me with Charkian.  But now that I know you for a spy in
+the pay of the French I am not afraid of you, even though you have my
+revolver and dagger.  You dare not kill me, for I would shout for help
+and the guard would come.  You are in danger as much as I am.  So you
+may either agree to work with me, sharing the reward, or you may work
+alone and have nothing for your pains;  for I shall bring accomplices to
+help me take the letter from you after you have stolen it!"
+
+Well, I suppose that anyone with criminal intentions could submit
+gracefully to that much blackmail.  Besides, Grim was rather pressed for
+time and couldn't afford to prolong the argument.
+
+"I see you are a determined man," he answered.  "Your demand is
+unreasonable, but I must agree to it."
+
+"Then give me back my pistol!"
+
+"No.  I need it.  I lent mine this evening to another man, who has not
+yet returned it.  That was a piece of wood with which I held you up just
+now.  You must get yourself another."
+
+"They are hard to come by in Jerusalem.  Give me mine back."
+
+"No.  I shall keep it to protect myself against you."
+
+"Why?  You have no need to fear me if we work together."
+
+"Because I intend to tell you what I know;  and I may find it convenient
+to shoot you if you betray the information."
+
+"Oh!  Well, tell away."
+
+"I have been cleverer than you," Grim announced blandly.  "I knew who
+had given the order to the Sikh to steal that letter from you, and I was
+concealed in his house when the letter was brought to him.  I heard the
+conference that followed, so I know what is going to be done about it."
+
+"Oh!  That was very smart.  Well, tell me."
+
+"Three men are going to take the letter to Damascus, but I don't know
+which of them will have it on his person.  One is an Arab. One is an
+American.  The third is that same Sikh who took the letter from you.
+They will take the train from Ludd, and I have engaged myself as servant
+to the American."
+
+"Now that was extremely clever of, you!" said Yussuf Dakmar.
+
+"Yes," Grim agreed.  "But perhaps it will be as well to have an
+accomplice after all, and you will do as well as any.  If I steal the
+letter they may accuse me;  but if I can pass it to you, then I can
+submit to a search and oblige them to apologize."
+
+"True!  True!  That will be excellent."
+
+"So you had better take the morning train for Damascus," Grim continued.
+"But understand:  If you bring others with you I shall suspect you of
+intending to play a trick on me.  In that event I shall shoot you with
+your own pistol, and take my chance of escaping afterward.  In fact, you
+are a dead man, Yussuf Dakmar, the minute I suspect you of playing me
+false."
+
+"The same to you likewise!" Yussuf Dakmar answered fervently.
+
+"Then we understand each other," said Grim.  "The best thing you can do
+between now and train-time is to see the French agent again."
+
+"What good will that do?  He is irritable--nervous;  he will only ask a
+thousand questions."
+
+"Then your visit will do all the more good.  You can calm him. We don't
+want a horde of fools interfering with us on the journey.  We want to
+work quietly, and to share the reward between us.  Therefore, you should
+tell him that you are confident of getting the letter if he will only
+leave the business to you alone.  Give him every assurance, and explain
+to him that interference may mean failure.  Now, I have done much the
+greater part so far;  let this be your share to balance the account
+between us;  you go to Sidi Said, the French agent, and make sure that
+he doesn't hinder us by trying to help."
+
+"Very well, I will do that.  And I shall meet you at the station in the
+morning?"
+
+"No.  My party will go as far as Ludd by motor.  You will see us join
+the train there.  Go now, while the guard is out of the way."
+
+I could not see, but I heard Yussuf Dakmar get up and go.  He had hardly
+time to get out of earshot when Grim's voice broke the silence again:
+
+"You there, Ramsden?"
+
+Instead of answering I approached.
+
+"Did you hear what was said?" he asked.
+
+"Yes.  Why didn't you arrest both the blackguards and have done with
+it?"
+
+"Better the evil that we know..." he answered, with the familiar smile
+in his voice.  "The important thing is to sidetrack the French agent,
+who could put fifty ruffians on our trail instead of one."
+
+"Why not send a provost-marshal's guard to the French agent, then?"
+
+"Can't do that.  France and Great Britain are allies.  Besides, they
+might retaliate by spiflicating our agent in Damascus.  Wise folk who
+live in glass-houses don't throw stones.  What I think has been
+accomplished is to reduce our probable risk down to Yussuf Dakmar, who's
+a mean squib at best;  and I think we've drawn suspicion clear away from
+Mabel Ticknor.  All that remains is for me to go to that room where you
+see the light burning and discuss matters with the chief."
+
+"If he's awake he's lonely!" said I;  and I told Grim of our experience
+inside the building.
+
+"Yes," he said.  "Governments are all like that.  They talk glibly of
+the ship of state;  but a ship run in the same way would pile up or sink
+the first night out.  You'd better go home and get an hour's sleep;
+I'll call you at seven."
+
+"We'll take turns sleeping on the train," I answered.  "Come first and
+rescue Jeremy.  I think the guard pinched him.  Say, did you intend one
+of us to go and decoy the guard away that time you raised your voice?"
+
+"Sure.  Recognized your voices--yours especially--when you passed, and
+heard you breathe as you crept back.  You nearly spoilt the game by
+turning out the guard, but you saved it again handsomely."
+
+"It's a marvel those Sikhs didn't shoot Jeremy in the dark," I answered.
+
+"You bet it is," said Grim.  "I guess he's too useful to be allowed to
+die just now."
+
+He hung his head, thinking, as we walked side by side.  "That was a
+close shave--too close!  Well, as you say, let's go and rescue him."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+"You talk like a madman!"
+
+
+Grim changed the plan a little at the last minute.  Mabel Ticknor left
+Jerusalem by train, as agreed, but Narayan Singh was sent that way too,
+to keep an eye on her.  He being a Sikh, could sit in the corridor
+without exciting comment, and being dressed for the part of a more or
+less prosperous trader, he could travel first class without having to
+answer questions or allay suspicion.
+
+Grim, Jeremy and I drove to Ludd in a hired auto, Grim and Jeremy both
+in Arab costume, and I trying to look like a tourist. Jeremy was
+supposed to be a travelled Arab intent on guiding me about Damascus for
+the usual consideration.
+
+The platform was crowded, and we secured a compartment in the train
+without calling much attention to ourselves.  There were British
+officers of all ranks, Egyptians, Jews, Greeks, refugee Armenians,
+Maltese, Kurds, a Turk or two, Circassians, men from as far off as
+Bokhara, Turkomans, Indians of all sorts, a sprinkling of Bedouins
+looking not quite so at home as in their native desert, and local Arabs
+by the score.  About half of them were in a panic, encouraged to it by
+their shrill women-folk, fighting in a swarm for tickets at one small
+window, where an insolent Levantine demonstrated his capacity for
+self-determination by making as many people as possible miss the train.
+I caught sight of Mabel Ticknor in the front compartment of our car, and
+Grim pointed out Yussuf Dakmar leaning through a window of the car
+behind.  His face was fat, unwholesome, with small, cold eyes, an
+immoral nose, and a small mouth with pouting lips.  The tarboosh he wore
+tilted at an angle heightened the general effect of arrogant
+self-esteem.  He was an illustration of the ancient mystery--how is it
+that a man with such a face, and such insolence written all over him,
+can become a leader of other men and persuade them to hatch the eggs of
+treachery that he lays like a cuckoo in their nests?
+
+He smirked at Grim suggestively as we went by, and Grim, of course,
+smirked back, with a sidewise inclination of the head in my direction,
+whereat Yussuf Dakmar withdrew himself, apparently satisfied.
+
+"Now he'll waste a lot of time investigating you," said Grim in an
+undertone.  "We'd better keep awake in turns, or he'll knife you."
+
+"The toe of my boot to him!" I retorted.  "One clean kick might solve
+this international affair!"
+
+"Steady!" Grim answered.  "We need him until after leaving Haifa. The
+French agent wired, and they'll have a gang at Haifa ready for us;  but
+Yussuf Dakmar will warn them off if we keep him hoping."
+
+So we settled down into our compartment after a glance to make sure that
+Mabel was all right, and for about two minutes I imagined we were in for
+a lazy journey.  Narayan Singh was on a camp-stool in the corridor,
+snoozing with one eye open like a faithful sheep-dog.  It didn't seem
+possible for a creature like Yussuf Dakmar to make trouble for us, and I
+proposed that we should match coins for the first turn to go to sleep.
+
+We had just pulled our coins out, and the engineer was backing the train
+in order to get her started, when Yussuf Dakmar arrived at our door,
+carrying his belongings, and claimed a seat on the strength of a lie
+about there being no room elsewhere.
+
+There's something about a compartment on a train that makes whoever gets
+in first regard the rest of the world as intruders. Nobody would have
+been welcome, but we would have   preferred a pig to Yussuf Dakmar.
+Jeremy, democrat of democrats, who had slept without complaining between
+the legs of a dead horse on a rain-swept battlefield, with a lousy
+Turkish prisoner hugging him close to share the blanket, was up in arms
+at once.
+
+"Imshi!" he ordered bluntly.
+
+But Yussuf Dakmar was delighted.  The reception convinced him, if
+anything were needed to do that, that one of us really was guarding the
+secret letter;  and he was one of those hogs, anyhow, who glory in
+snouting in where they are plainly not wanted.  He took the corner seat
+opposite Jeremy, tucked his legs up under him, produced a cigarette and
+smiled offensively.  I'll concede this, though:  I think the smile was
+meant to be ingratiating.
+
+He pulled out a package wrapped in newspaper and began to eat before the
+train had run a mile.  And, you know, more men get killed because of how
+they eat than by the stuff they devour.  If you don't believe that, try
+living in camp for a week or two with a man who chews meat with his
+mouth open.  You'll feel the promptings of a murderer.  I know a
+scientist who swears that the real secret of the Cain and Abel story is
+that Abel sucked his gums at mealtime.
+
+"You ought to be buried up to the neck and fed with a shovel!" Jeremy
+informed him in blunt English after listening to the solo for a while.
+
+"Aha!  That is the way they used to treat criminals in Persia," he
+answered pleasantly, with his mouth full of goat's milk cheese.  "Only
+they put plaster of Paris in the hole, and when it rained the wretched
+man was squeezed until the blood came out of his mouth and eyes, and he
+died in agony.  But how comes it that you speak to me in English?  If we
+are both Arabs, why not talk the mother tongue?"
+
+"My rump is my rump and the land is its rulers," Jeremy answered in
+Arabic, quoting the rudest proverb he could think of on the spur of the
+moment.
+
+"Ah!  And who is its ruler?  Who is to be its ruler?"
+
+Yussuf Dakmar made a surreptitious face at Grim, and his little cold
+eyes shone like a hungry pariah dog's.  It began to be interesting to
+watch his opening gambit.
+
+"I have heard tales," he went on, "of a new ruler for this country.
+What do you think of Feisul's chance?"
+
+As he said that he eyed me sideways swiftly and keenly.  Grim sat back
+in his own corner and folded up his legs, watching the game contentedly.
+Jeremy, intercepting Yussuf Dakmar's glance, put his own construction on
+it.  He is a long, lean man, but like the Fat Boy in Pickwick Papers he
+likes to make your flesh creep, and humor, to have full zest for him,
+has to be mischievous.
+
+So he commenced by pulling out his weapons one by one.  The first was a
+razor, which he sharpened, tested with his thumb suggestively, and then
+placed in his sock, studying Yussuf Dakmar's throat for a minute or so
+after that, as if expecting to have to use the razor on it presently.
+
+As the effect of that wore off he pulled out a pistol.  It was one of
+the kind that won't go off unless you pull the Hammer back, but Yussuf
+Dakmar didn't know that, and if he had flesh and blood capable of
+creeping it's a safe assertion that they crept. Jeremy acted as if he
+didn't understand the weapon, and for fifteen minutes did more stunts
+with it than a puppy can do with a ball of twine.  One of them that
+interested Yussuf Dakmar awfully was to point the pistol straight ahead,
+half-cocked, and try to get the hammer down by slapping it with the palm
+of his hand.
+
+Most of our baggage was on the floor, but one fairly heavy valise was in
+the rack over Yussuf Dakmar's head.  Jeremy got up to examine it when
+the pistol had ceased to amuse him, and taking advantage of a jerk as
+the train slowed down, contrived to drop it into the Syrian's lap;  who
+rather naturally swore;  whereat Jeremy took offence, and accused him of
+being a descendant of Hanna, son of Manna, who lived for a thousand and
+one years and never enjoyed himself.
+
+It was our turn to eat sandwiches after that, while Yussuf Dakmar
+recovered from his disgruntlement.  But just before the meal was
+finished Jeremy revived the game by asking suddenly in an awestruck
+whisper where "it" was.  He slapped himself all over in a hurry, feeling
+for hidden pockets, and then came over and pretended to search me.
+There wasn't anything to do but fall in with his mood, so I resisted,
+searched my own pockets reluctantly, and said that we might as well take
+the next train back, since we had lost the important document.
+
+Before we started we had put into a wallet the fake envelope that Grim
+had carried in his hand the previous night, and had entrusted the wallet
+to Jeremy in order to have an alibi ready for Mabel in case of need.
+Grim took up the cudgels now and reminded me respectfully, as a servant
+should when speaking to his master, that I had taken all proper
+precautions and could not be blamed in any event.
+
+"But I think it will be found," he said hopefully.  "Inshallah, it is
+not lost, but in the wallet in the pocket of that hare-brained friend of
+yours."
+
+So Jeremy went back to his corner, searched for the wallet, found it
+after pretty nearly, standing on his head to shake his clothes, examined
+it excitedly, and produced the fake envelope, flourishing it so
+violently that nobody, even with eyes like a hawk's, could have
+identified it with certainty.
+
+Then he dropped it in among the baggage on the floor, and went down on
+his knees to pick it up again.  There is no more finished expert at
+sleight of hand than he, so it vanished, and he swore he couldn't find
+it.  In a well-simulated agony of nervousness he called on Yussuf Dakmar
+to get down and help him search, and the Syrian hadn't enough
+self-command left to pretend to hesitate; his cold eyes were nearly
+popping from his head as he knelt and groped.  The chief subject of
+interest to me just then was how he proposed to retain the letter in the
+unlikely event of his finding it first.
+
+It was a ridiculous search, because there wasn't really anywhere to
+look.  After three bags had been lifted and their bottoms scrutinized
+the whole floor of the compartment lay naked to the eye, except where my
+feet rested.  Jeremy insisted on my raising them, to the accompaniment
+of what he considered suitable comment on their size, turning his
+"behind end" meanwhile toward Yussuf Dakmar.
+
+Grim chuckled and caught my eye.  Yussuf Dakmar had walked straight into
+temptation, and was trying to search Jeremy's pockets from the rear--no
+easy matter, for he had to discover them first in the loose folds of the
+Arab costume.
+
+Suddenly Jeremy's mood changed.  He became suspicious, stood up, resumed
+his seat--and glared at Yussuf Dakmar, who retired into his corner and
+tried to seem unconscious of the game.
+
+"I believe you are a thief--one of those light-fingered devils from
+El-Kalil!" said Jeremy suddenly, after about three minutes' silence.
+"I believe you have stolen my letter!  Like the saint's ass, you are a
+clever devil, aren't you?  Nevertheless, you are like a man without
+fingernails, whose scratching does him no good!  Your labour was in
+vain.  Give me back the letter, or by Allah I will turn you upside
+down!"
+
+Yussuf Dakmar denied the accusation with all the fervour that a
+blackguard generally does use when, for once, he is consciously
+innocent.
+
+"By the Beard of the Prophet and on my honor I swear to you that I
+haven't touched your letter! I don't know where it is."
+
+"Show me the Prophet's beard!" commanded Jeremy.  "Show me your honor!"
+
+"You talk like a madman!  How can I show either?"
+
+"Then how can you swear by them?  Father of easy words and evil deeds,
+give me the letter back!"
+
+Yussuf Dakmar appealed to me as presumably responsible for Jeremy.
+
+"You saw, effendi, didn't you?  I tried to help him.  But he who plays
+with the cat must suffer her claws, so now he accuses me of stealing.  I
+call you to witness that I took nothing."
+
+"You must excuse him," I answered.  "That is a highly important letter.
+If it isn't found the consequences may be disastrous."
+
+"By Allah, it shall be found!" exploded Jeremy, glaring harder than ever
+at Yussuf Dakmar.  "Look at his face!  Look at his evil eyes!  He came
+in here on purpose to spy on us and steal that letter!  It is time to
+use my razor on him!  I swear not by the Prophet's beard or anybody's
+honor, but by the razor in my sock that he has the letter and that I
+will have it back!"  Well, that was a challenge there was no
+side-stepping.  Sure of being able to prove innocence, Yussuf Dakmar
+decided that a bold course was the best.  He proceeded to empty his own
+pocket, laying the contents on the seat before Jeremy's eyes.  And
+Jeremy watched like a puzzled puppy with his brow wrinkled.  The process
+took time, because he was wearing one of those imitation Western suits,
+of prehistoric cut but up-to-date with every imaginable pocket that a
+tailor could invent.  Their contents included a dagger and a clasp-knife
+with a long blade sharpened on both edges, but no pistol.
+
+"Now are you satisfied?" he demanded, after turning inside-out the two
+"secret" pockets in the lining of his vest.
+
+"Less than ever!" Jeremy retorted.  "Until I see you naked I will not
+believe you!"
+
+Yussuf Dakmar turned to me again.  He was a patient spy, if ever there
+was one.
+
+"Do you think I should be put to that indignity?" he asked. "Shall I
+undress myself?"
+
+"By Allah, unless you do it I will cut your clothes off with my razor!"
+Jeremy announced.
+
+We drew up at a station then, and had to wait until the train went on
+again.  By that time Yussuf Dakmar had made up his mind. He slipped off
+his jacket and vest and began to unfasten his collar-button as the train
+gained speed.
+
+Everything went smoothly until he stood up to remove his pants. He had
+the top of them in both hands when Jeremy seized him suddenly by the
+elbows and spun him face about.  And there the letter lay, face downward
+on the seat he had just left, bent and a little crinkled in proof that
+he had been sitting on it for some minutes past.
+
+Now it doesn't make any difference whether a man meant to take off his
+trousers or not.  In a crisis, if they are unfastened, he will hold them
+up.  It's like catching a monkey;  you put corn into a narrow-necked
+basket.  The monkey inserts his arm, fills his hand with corn, and tries
+to pull it out, but can't unless he lets go of the corn, which he won't
+do.  So you catch him. Yussuf Dakmar held up his pants with one hand,
+and tried to free himself from Jeremy with the other.  If he had let go
+his pants he might have seized the envelope and discovered what a fake
+it was;  but he wouldn't do that.  It was I who pounced on it and stowed
+it away carefully in my inner pocket.
+
+Yussuf Dakmar's emotions were poignant and mixed, but he was no quitter.
+He thought he knew definitely where the letter was now, and the wolf
+glance with which he favoured me changed swiftly to a smile of
+ingratiating politeness.
+
+"I am glad you have recovered what you lost," he said, smiling, as he
+fastened up his pants and resumed his coat.  "This friend of yours--or
+is he your servant?--made me nervous with his threats, or I should
+certainly have found it for you sooner."
+
+And now Grim resumed a hand.  The last thing he wished was that Yussuf
+Dakmar should consider his quest too difficult, for then he would
+probably summon assistance at Haifa.  Encouragement was the proper cue,
+now that Jeremy had tantalized him with a glimpse of the bait.  We had
+nothing to fear from him unless he should lose heart.
+
+"The value of a sum lies in the answer," he said, quoting one of those
+copybook proverbs with which all Syrians love to clinch an argument.
+
+"The letter is in its owner's pocket.  The accuser should now apologize,
+and we can spend the rest of the journey pleasantly."
+
+Jeremy proceeded to apologize:
+
+"So you're not such a thief as you looks."
+
+Then he provided entertainment.  He drew out the razor and did stunts
+with it, juggling it with open blade from hand to hand--pretending to
+drop it and always catching it again within a fraction of an inch of
+Yussuf Dakmar's person.  By and by he juggled with coins, match-box,
+cigars, razor and anything he could lay his hands on.
+
+"Mashallah!" exclaimed the Syrian at last, his face all sweaty with
+excitement as he shrank back to avoid the spinning razor. "Where did you
+learn such accomplishments?"
+
+"Learn them?" answered Jeremy, still juggling.  "I am a dervaish. I was
+born, not taught.  I can ride through the air on cannon-balls, and
+whatever I wish for is mine the next minute.  Look, I have one piastre.
+I wish for twenty.  What do I do?  I spin it in the air--catch it--d'you
+hear them?  There you are--twenty! Count 'em if you like."
+
+"A dervaish?  A holy person?  You?  Where do you come from?"
+
+"I was born in the belly of the South Wind," answered Jeremy. "Where I
+come from, every shell-fish has a pearl in it and gold is so common that
+the cattle wear it in their teeth.  I can talk three languages at once
+and swear in six, use sulphur for tobacco, eat sardines without opening
+the can, and flavour my food for choice with gun-powder.
+
+"I've been everywhere, seen everything, heard all the lies, and I found
+that big effendi in Jerusalem.  I saw him first.  He calls himself
+Ramsden, which is derived from the name of a creature bearing wool,
+which in turn is a synonym for money.  He's on his way to supply Feisul
+with money, and I'm going to show him the streets of Damascus.  Anything
+else you want to know?"
+
+"Supply Feisul with money?  That is interesting.  American money
+perhaps?  An American banker by any chance?"
+
+"Nothing to do with chance.  He's a father of certainties. Didn't he
+give me that letter to keep, and didn't I find a safe place for it
+between you and the cushions?  Yes, I put it there. I'm an honest man,
+but I have my reasonable doubts about this other fellow.  Ramsden
+effendi found him somewhere, and engaged him as a servant without asking
+me.  Perhaps he's honest.  Only Allah knows men's hearts.  But he hasn't
+got an honest face like yours, and when pay-day comes I shall hide my
+money."
+
+"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.
+
+But the five' men who had followed us from the station sat in the dark
+at a table in the far corner of the room and watched every move we made.
+When the coffee was brought I sat smoking and surly over it, as if my
+head ached from the day's drink;  Grim and Jeremy, aching for sleep but
+refusing like good artists to neglect a detail of their part, went to
+another table and played backgammon, betting quarrelsomely;  and at last
+one of the five men walked over and touched Yussuf Dakmar's shoulder.
+At once he followed all five of them out of the room, whereat Grim and
+Jeremy promptly went to bed.  It was so obviously my turn to stay awake
+that Grim didn't even trouble to remind me of it.
+
+So I took the whisky upstairs, noticed that Narayan Singh was missing
+from the couch where he had gone to sleep, although the fox-terrier was
+snoring so loud in his blankets that I had to look twice in the dim
+light.  I mentioned that fact to Grim who merely smiled as he got
+between the sheets.  Then I went down to the street to get exercise and
+fresh air.  I didn't go far, but strode up and down in front of the
+hotel a quarter of a mile or so in each direction, keeping in the middle
+of the street.
+
+I had made the fourth or fifth turn when Narayan Singh came out and
+accosted me under the lamplight.
+
+"Pardon," he called aloud in English, "does the sahib know where I can
+find a druggist's open at this hour?  I have a toothache and need
+medicine."
+
+"Come and I'll show you a place," said I with the patronizing air of a
+tourist showing off his knowledge, and we strode along together down the
+street, he holding one hand to his jaw.
+
+"Thus and so it happened, sahib," he began as soon as we had gone a safe
+distance.  "I lay sleeping, having kept my belly empty that I might wake
+easily.  There came Yussuf Dakmar and five men brushing by me, and they
+all went into a room four doors beyond the sahib's.  The room next
+beyond that one is occupied by an officer sahib, who fought at El-Arish
+alongside my battalion. Between him and me is a certain understanding
+based on past happenings in which we both had a hand.  He is not as some
+other sahibs, but a man who opens both ears and his heart, and when I
+knocked on his door he opened it and recognized me.
+
+"'Well?' said he.  'Why not come and see me in the morning?
+
+"'Sahib,' said I, 'for the sake of El-Arish, let me in quickly, and
+close the door!'
+
+"So he did, wondering and not pleased to be disturbed by a Sikh at such
+an hour.  And I said to him:
+
+"'Sahib,' said I, 'am I a badmash?  A scoundrel?'
+
+"'No,' said he, 'not unless you changed your morals when you left the
+service.'
+
+"Said I, 'I am still in the service.'
+
+"'Good,' said he. 'What then?'
+
+"'I go listening again in no-man's land,' said I, and he whistled
+softly.  'Is there not a roof below your window?' I asked him, and he
+nodded.
+
+"'Then let me use it, sahib, and return the same way presently.'
+
+"So he threw back the shutter, asking no more questions, and I climbed
+out.  The window of the room where Yussuf Dakmar and the five were stood
+open, but the lattice shutter was closed tight, so that I could stand up
+on the flat roof of the kitchen and listen without being seen.  And,
+sahib, I could recognize the snarl of Yussuf Dakmar's voice even before
+my ear was laid to the open lattice.  He was like a dog at bay.  The
+other five were angry with him.  They were accusing him of playing
+false.  They swore that a great sum could be had for that letter, which
+they should share between them.  Said a voice I did not recognize: 'If
+the French will pay one price they will pay another;  what does money
+matter to them, if they can make out a case against Feisul?  Will they
+not have Syria?  The thing is simple as twice two,' said he.  'The
+huntsman urges on the hounds, but unless he is cleverer than they, who
+eats the meat?  The French regard us as animals, I tell you!  Very well;
+let us live up to the part and hunt like animals, since he who has the
+name should have the game as well;  and when we have done the work and
+they want booty let them be made aware that animals must eat!  We will
+set our own price on that document.'
+
+"'And as for this Yussuf Dakmar,' said another man, 'let him take a back
+seat unless he is willing to share and share alike with us.  He is not
+difficult to kill!'
+
+"And at that, sahib, Yussuf Dakmar flew into a great rage and called
+them fools of complicated kinds.
+
+"'Like hounds without a huntsman, ye will overrun the scent!' said he;
+and he spoke more like a man than any of them, although not as a man to
+be liked or trusted.  'Who are ye to clap your fat noses on the scent I
+found and tell me the how and whither of it?  It may be that I can get
+that letter tonight.  Surely I can get it between this place and
+Damascus;  and no one can do that, for I, and I only, know where it is.
+Nor will I tell!'  And they answered all together, 'We will make you
+tell!'
+
+"But he said, 'All that ye five fools can do is to interfere. Easy to
+kill me, is it?  Well, perhaps.  It has been tried.  But, if so, then
+though ye are jackals, kites and vultures all in one with the skill of
+chemists added, ye can never extract secret knowledge from a dead man's
+brain.  Then that letter will reach Feisul tomorrow night;  and the
+French, who speak of you now as of animals, will call you what?
+Princes?  Noblemen?'
+
+"I suppose they saw the point of that, sahib, for they changed their
+tone without, however, becoming friendly to Yussuf Dakmar. Thieves of
+that sort know one another, and trust none, and it is all a lie, sahib,
+about there being any honor among them.  Fear is the only tie that binds
+thieves, and they proceeded to make Yussuf Dakmar afraid.
+
+"There seems to be one among them, sahib, who is leader.  He has a thin
+voice like a eunuch's, and unlike the others swears seldom.
+
+"This father of a thin voice accepted the situation.  He said: "'Well
+and good.  Let Yussuf Dakmar do the hunting for us.  It is sufficient
+that we hunt Yussuf Dakmar.  Two of us occupy the room next to
+Ramsden's.  If Yussuf Dakmar needs aid in the night, let him summon us
+by scratching with his nails on the closet door. The rest will be
+simple.  There are four in this besides us five; so if we count Yussuf
+Dakmar that makes ten who share the reward. Shall Yussuf Dakmar grow
+fat, while nine of us starve?  I think not!  Let him get the letter, and
+give it to me.  We will hide it, and I will deal with the French.  If he
+fails tonight, let him try again tomorrow on the train.  But we five
+will also take that train to Damascus, and unless that letter is in my
+hands before the journey's end, then Yussuf Dakmar dies.  Is that
+agreed?'
+
+"All except Yussuf Dakmar agreed to it.  He was very angry and called
+them leeches, whereat they laughed, saying that leeches only suck enough
+and then fall off, whereas they would take all or kill.  They made him
+understand it, taking a great oath together to slay him without mercy
+unless he should get the letter and give it to them before the train
+reaches Damascus tomorrow evening.
+
+"Well, sahib, he agreed presently, not with any effort at good grace,
+but cursing while he yielded.
+
+"In truth, sahib, it is less fear than lack of sleep that Yussuf Dakmar
+feels.  I could hear him yawn through the window lattice. Now a man in
+that condition is likely to act early in the night for fear that sleep
+may otherwise get the better of him, and the sahib will do well to be
+keenly alert from the first.  I shall be asleep on that couch outside
+the door and will come if called, so the sahib would better not lock the
+door but should call loud in case of need, because I also have been long
+awake and may sleep heavily."
+
+"Suppose I walk the streets all night?" said I.  "Wouldn't that foil
+them?"
+
+"Nay, sahib, but the reverse;  for if Yussuf Dakmar should miss you
+after midnight he would go in search of you, with those five in turn
+tracking him.  And as for finding you, that would be a simple matter,
+for every night thief and beggar waiting for the dawn would give
+attention to such a big man as you and would report your movements.  All
+six would come on you in the dark and would kill you surely.  Then, as
+if that were not bad enough, having searched you they would learn that
+the letter in your possession is not the right one;  and the trail of
+the right one would be that much easier to detect."
+
+"Then come with me," said I, "and we'll make a night of it together.
+You and I can defend ourselves against those six."
+
+"Doubtless, sahib.  But my place is within hail of Jimgrim.  No, it is
+best that you see this matter through tonight between four walls.  Only
+remember, sahib, that though a man on duty may feign sleep, it is wiser
+not to, because sleep steals on us unawares!"
+
+So I returned to the bedroom where Grim and Jeremy were snoring a
+halleluja chorus;  but Yussuf Dakmar hadn't returned yet.  I took
+advantage of the Syrian's absence to open Grim's valise, remove the
+bottle of doped whisky and set it on the table close to the window
+beside the two bottles that I had bought downstairs--one of which, for
+the sake of appearances, I opened just as Yussuf Dakmar entered, smiling
+to conceal anxiety.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+"You made a bad break that time"
+
+
+Grim was in Mephistophelian humor.  He can sleep cat-fashion, for sixty
+seconds at a time, with all his wits about him in the intervals, and
+likes to feel in the crook of his own forefinger the hidden hair-trigger
+of events.  I don't think Jeremy was awake when I first entered the
+room, although it suited Grim's humor that he should be presently;  but
+you would have sworn they were both unconscious, judging by the see-saw,
+bass and baritone snoring.
+
+I poured out whisky, drank a little of it grouchily, and watched Yussuf
+Dakmar into bed.  He didn't take many of his clothes off and even by
+candle-light you could see the shape of the knife concealed under his
+shirt.  He sat cross-legged on the bed, presumably praying, and as I
+didn't like the look of him I blew out the candle.
+
+Instantly, pinched and prompted by James Schuyler Grim, Jeremy sat up
+and yammered profanely at the darkness, vowing he couldn't see to sleep
+without a light in the room.  I tinkled a tumbler against a whisky
+bottle, and Jeremy instantly swore that he heard burglars.  Sitting up
+and whirling his pillow he knocked Yussuf Dakmar off the bed on to the
+floor.
+
+So I lit the candle again, after emptying my glass of whisky into a
+spittoon;  whereat Jeremy quoted the Koran about the fate of drunkards
+and, getting out of bed, apologized to Yussuf Dakmar like a courtier
+doing homage to a king.
+
+"Your honor was born under a lucky star," he assured him.  "I usually
+shoot or stab, but the pillow was the first thing handy."
+
+The Syrian had hard work to keep his temper, for he had fallen on the
+haft of the hidden knife and it hurt him between two ribs, where a
+poorly conditioned man is extra sensitive.  However, he mumbled
+something and crawled between the sheets.
+
+Then Grim vowed that he couldn't sleep with a light so I blew out the
+candle, and in about two minutes the steady seesaw snoring resumed.  I
+took the opportunity to empty half the contents of a whisky bottle into
+the spittoon, and after lighting a pipe proceeded to clink a tumbler at
+steady intervals as evidence of debauch well under way.
+
+Except for the clink and bump of the tumbler, and once when I filled and
+relit the pipe, all was quiet for half an hour, when Yussuf Dakmar piped
+up suddenly and asked me whether I didn't intend to come to bed.
+
+"I will not trouble you, effendi.  I will keep over to my side. There is
+plenty of room in the bed for the two of us."
+
+As he spoke I heard a movement of the bedclothes as Grim pinched Jeremy
+awake again.  I answered before Jeremy could horn in.
+
+"Hic!  You 'spect me 'nto bed full o' snakes?  Never sleep 'slong as
+venomous reptiles waiting!  Hic!  You stay 'n bed an keep 'em 'way from
+me!"
+
+Well, Jeremy didn't want any better cue than that.  He got up, lit the
+candle and explained to me with great wealth of Arabic theosophy that
+the snakes I saw were mere delusions because Allah never made them;  and
+I tried to look utterly drunk, staring at him with dropped jaw and
+droopy eyelids, knocking an empty bottle over with my elbow by way of
+calling attention to it.
+
+"Get into bed, effendi," Jeremy advised me, feeding the cue back, since
+I was in the middle of the stage.
+
+"Not into that bed!" I answered, shaking my head solemnly.  "That f'ler
+put snakes in on purpose.  Why's he sober when I'm drunk? I won't sleep
+in bed with sober man.  Let him get drun' too, an' both see snakes.
+Then I'll sleep with him!"
+
+Jeremy's roving eye fell on the small doped bottle that I had taken from
+Grim's valise.  Looking preternaturally wise, he walked over to Yussuf
+Dakmar's bed, sat down on it with his back toward me and proceeded to
+unfold a plan.
+
+"Allah makes all things easy," he began.  "It is lawful to take all
+precautions to confound the infidel.  We shall never get that drunkard
+to bed as long as there's any whisky, so let's encourage him to drink it
+all.  When it's gone he'll sleep on the floor and we'll get some peace.
+It's a good chance for us to drink whisky without committing sin!  We
+needn't take much--just one drink each, and then he'll swallow the rest
+like a hog to prevent our getting any more.  You look as if a glass of
+whisky would do you good.  That fellow Omar is asleep and won't see us,
+so nobody can tell tales afterwards.  It's a good opportunity.  Come
+on!"
+
+I had sat so that Yussuf Dakmar couldn't see what I was doing and poured
+out the liquor in advance, arranging the glasses so that Yussuf Dakmar
+would take the doped stuff--a perfectly un-Christian proceeding, I
+admit.  Christians are scarce when you get right down to cases.  Most of
+us in extremity prefer Shakespeare's adage about hoisting engineers.  It
+gets results so much more quickly than turning the other cheek.  At any
+rate, I own up.
+
+Yussuf Dakmar, smirking in anticipation of an easy victory, took the
+nearest tumbler and tossed off the contents in imitation of Jeremy's
+free and easy air;  and the drug acted as swiftly as the famous "knock-
+out-drops" they used to administer in the New York Tenderloin.
+
+He knew what had happened before he lost consciousness, for he tried to
+give the alarm to his friends.  He lay on the floor opening and shutting
+his mouth, and I think he believed he was shouting for help;  but after
+a minute or two you could hardly detect his breathing, and his face
+changed colour as if he had been poisoned.
+
+Grim didn't even trouble to get out of bed, but listened without comment
+to my version of Narayan Singh's report, and Jeremy went back to sleep
+chuckling;  so I held a silent wake over Yussuf Dakmar, keeping some
+more of the doped whisky ready in case he should look like recovering
+too soon.  I even searched him, finding nothing worthy of note, except
+that he had remarkably little money.  I expect the poor devil was a
+penny ante villain scheming for a thousand-dollar jackpot.  I felt
+really sorry for him and turned him over with my boot to let him breathe
+better.
+
+A little before dawn I awakened Grim and Jeremy and we left the room
+quietly after I had scratched on the closet door with my fingernails.
+Pausing outside to listen, we heard the closet door being opened
+stealthily from the far side.  I caught Grim's eye, thinking he would
+smile back, but he looked as deadly serious as I have ever seen him.
+
+"You made a bad break that time," he said when we had gone downstairs.
+"Never give away information unless you're getting a return for it!  If
+you'd left Yussuf Dakmar to scratch that door after he recovered
+consciousness, he'd have invented a pack of lies to tell his friends,
+and they'd have been no wiser than before.  Now they'll know he never
+scratched it.  They'll deduce, unless they're lunatics, that someone
+overheard their conference last night and knew the signal.  That'll make
+them desperate. They'll waste no more time on finesse.  They'll use
+violence at the first chance after the train leaves Haifa."
+
+"Rammy's like me;  he hates not to have an audience for his tricks," put
+in Jeremy by way of consolation.
+
+"We've got to stage a new play, that's all," said Grim.  "I'd have the
+lot of them arrested, but all the good that would do would be to inform
+the man higher up, who'd tip off another gang by wire to wait for us
+over the border.  Say, suppose we all three bear this in mind:  No play
+to the gallery!  That's where secret service differs from other
+business.  Applause means failure.  The better the work you do, the less
+you can afford to admit you did it.  You mustn't even smile at a man
+you've scored off.  Half the game is to leave him guessing who it was
+that tripped him up.  The safest course is to see that someone else gets
+credit for everything you do."
+
+"Consume your own smoke, eh?" suggested Jeremy.
+
+"That and more," Grim answered.  "You've got to work like Hell for
+what'll do you no good, because the moment it brings you recognition it
+destroys your usefulness.  You mayn't even amuse yourself;  you have to
+let the game amuse you, without turning one trick for the sake of an
+extra smile;  most of the humor comes in anyhow, from knowing more than
+the other fellow thinks you do.  The more a man lies the less you want
+to contradict him, because if you do he'll know that you know he's lying
+and that's giving away information, which is the unforgivable sin."
+
+"Golly!" exclaimed Jeremy.  "Your trade wouldn't suit me, Jim! When
+doing tricks, it's good to watch folks' eyes pop open.  What tickles my
+wish-bone is what I can see for myself on their silly faces, half of 'em
+trying to look as if they know how it's done and the other half all
+grins.  I did tricks for a Scotchman once, who got so angry I thought
+he'd hit me;  he said, what I did was impossible, so I did it again and
+he still said it was impossible, and he ended by calling me a 'puir
+dementit men.' That was my apogee;  I've never reached that height
+since, not even when I first made a camel say prayers at Abu Keen and
+the Arabs hailed me as a prophet!  Bread's good, but it's better with
+the butter on it right side up!"
+
+"Not in this game, it isn't," answered Grim.  "If your bread seems
+smeared with butter that's a sure sign it's dangerous.  For God's sake,
+as long as you stay in the game with me don't play to the gallery,
+either of you!  Let's order breakfast."
+
+It was the longest lecture and expression of opinion I had ever listened
+to from James Schuyler Grim, and though I've turned it over in my mind a
+great deal since, I can't discover anything but wisdom in it.  I believe
+he told Jeremy and me the secret of power that morning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+"They are all right!"
+
+
+There was no competition for seats on the Damascus train that morning.
+Several of the window-panes were smashed, there were bullet-marks and
+splinters on the woodwork everywhere--no need to ask questions.  But I
+found time on the platform to chat with some British officers while
+keeping an eye lifting for Yussuf Dakmar and his friends.
+
+"Damascus, eh?  You'll have a fine journey if you get through alive.
+Nine passengers were shot dead in the last train down."
+
+"No law up there, you know.  Feisul's army's all concentrated for a
+crack at the French (good luck to 'em!  No, I'm not wishing the French
+any particular luck this trip).  Nobody to watch the Bedouins, so they
+take pot shots at every train that passes, just for the fun of it."
+
+"May be war, you know, at any minute.  The French are sure to make a
+drive for the railway line--you'll be hung up indefinitely--commandeered
+for an ambulance train--shot for the sake of argument--anything at all,
+in fact.  They say those Algerian troops are getting out of hand--paid
+in depreciated francs and up against the high cost of debauchery.
+You're taking a chance."
+
+"Wish I could go.  Haven't seen a healthy scrap sinze Zeitun Ridge.
+Hey!  Hullo!  What's this?  Lovely woman!  Well, I'll be!"
+
+It was Mabel Ticknor, followed by the six men I was watching for, Yussuf
+Dakmar looking sulky and discouraged in their midst, almost like a
+prisoner, and the other five wearing palpably innocent expressions.
+
+"Lord!" remarked the officer nearest me.  "That gang's got the wind up!
+Look at the color of their gills!  Booked through, I'll bet you, and
+been listening to tales all night!"
+
+The gang drew abreast just as another officer gave tongue to his
+opinion.  They couldn't help hearing what he said;  he had one of those
+voices that can carry on conversation in a boiler foundry.
+
+"There's more in this than meets the eye!  She's not a nurse. She don't
+walk like a missionary.  I heard her buy a ticket for Aleppo.  Can you
+imagine a lone, good-looking woman going to Aleppo by that train unless
+she had a laissez passe from the French?  She's wearing French heels.
+I'll bet she's carrying secret information.  Look!  D'you see those two
+Arabs in the train?"  He pointed out Grim and Jeremy, who were leaning
+from a window.  "They tipped her off to get into the compartment next
+ahead of them.  D'you see?  There she goes.  She was for getting into
+the coach ahead.  They called her back."
+
+Almost all the other cars were empty except that one, but, whether
+because humans are like sheep and herd together instinctively when
+afraid, or because the train crew ordered it, all six compartments of
+the middle first-class car were now occupied, with Mabel Ticknor alone
+in the front one. Nevertheless, Yussuf Dakmar and four of his companions
+started to climb in by the rear door.  The sixth man lingered within
+earshot of the officers, presumably to pick up further suggestions.
+
+So I got in at the front end and met them halfway down the corridor.
+
+"Plenty of room in the car behind," I said abruptly.
+
+They were five to one, but Yussuf Dakmar was in front, and he merely got
+in the way of the wolves behind him.  The sixth man, who had lingered
+near the officers, now entered by the front end as I had done and called
+out that there was plenty of room in the front compartment.
+
+"There's only a woman in here," he said in Arabic.
+
+And he set the example by taking the seat opposite to Mabel.
+
+It would have been easy enough to get him out again, of course. Not even
+the polyglot train crew would have allowed Arabs to trespass without her
+invitation.
+
+The trouble was that Jeremy, Grim, Narayan Singh and I all rushed to her
+rescue at the same minute, which let the cat out of the bag.  It was
+Doctor Ticknor's statement in Jerusalem about not wanting to see any of
+us alive again if we failed to bring his wife back safe that turned the
+trick and caused even Grim to lose his head for a moment.  When a Sikh,
+two obvious Arabs and an American all rush to a woman's assistance
+before she calls for help, there is evidence of collusion somewhere
+which you could hardly expect a trained spy to overlook or fail to draw
+conclusions from.
+
+It was all over in a minute.  The rascal left the compartment, muttering
+to himself in Arabic sotto voce.  I caught one word; but he looked so
+diabolically pleased with himself that it didn't really need that to
+stir me into action.  I take twelves in boots, with a rather broad toe,
+and he stopped the full heft of the hardest kick I could let loose.  It
+put him out of action for half a day, and remains one of my pleasantest
+memories.
+
+His companions had to gather him up and help him pulley-hauley fashion
+into the car ahead, while an officious ticket-taker demanded my name and
+address.  I found in my wallet the card of a U.S. senator and gave him
+that, whereat he apologized profoundly and addressed me as "Colonel"--a
+title with which he continued to flatter me all the rest of the journey
+except once, when he changed it to "Admiral" by mistake.
+
+Grim went back into our compartment and laughed;  and none of the essays
+I have read on laughter--not even the famous dissertation by Josh
+Billings--throw light on how to describe the tantalizing manner of it.
+He laughs several different ways:  heartily at times, as men of my
+temperament mostly do;  boisterously on occasion, after Jeremy's
+fashion;  now and then cryptically, using laughter as a mask;  then he
+owns a smile that suggests nothing more nor less than kindness based on
+understanding of human nature.
+
+But that other is a devil of a laugh, mostly made of chuckles that seem
+to bubble off a Hell-brew of disillusionment, and you get the impression
+that he is laughing at himself--cynically laying bare the vanity and
+fallibility of his own mental processes--and forecasting
+self-discipline.
+
+There is no mirth in it, although there is amusement;  no anger,
+although immeasurable scorn.  I should say it's a good safe laugh to
+indulge in, for I think it is based on ability to see himself and his
+own mistakes more clearly than anybody else can, and there is no note of
+defeat in it.  But it is full of a cruel irony that brings to mind a
+vision of one of those old medieval flagellant priests reviewing his
+sins before thrashing his own body with a wire whip.
+
+"So that ends that," he said at last, with the gesture of a man who
+sweeps the pieces from a board, to set them up anew and start again.
+"Luckily we're not the only fools in Asia.  Those six rascals know now
+that Mabel and we are one party."
+
+"Pooh!" sneered Jeremy.  "What can the devils do?"
+
+"Not much this side of the border at Deraa," Grim answered. "After Deraa
+pretty well what they're minded.  They could have us pinched on some
+trumped-up charge, in which case we'd be searched, Mabel included.  No.
+We've played too long on the defensive.  Deraa is the danger-point.  The
+telegraph line is cut there, and all messages going north or south have
+to be carried by hand across the border.  The French have an agent there
+who censors everything.  He's the boy we've got to fool.  If they appeal
+to him this train will go on without us.
+
+"Ramsden, you and Narayan Singh go and sit with Mabel in her
+compartment.  Jeremy, you go forward and bring Yussuf Dakmar back here
+to me;  we'll let him have that fake letter just before we reach Deraa,
+taking care somehow to let the other five know he has it.  They won't
+discover it's a fake until after leaving Deraa--"
+
+"Why not?" I interrupted.  "What's to prevent their opening it at once?"
+
+
+"Two good reasons:  for one, we'll have Narayan Singh keep a careful eye
+on them, and they'll keep it hidden as long as he snoops around;  for
+another, they'll be delighted not to have to let the French agent at
+Deraa into the secret, because of the higher price they hope to get by
+holding on.  They'll smuggle it over the border and not open it until
+they feel safe."
+
+"Yes, but when they do look at it ..." said I.
+
+"We'll be over the border, and they can't send telegrams to anywhere."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"An Arab government precaution.  If station agents all along the line
+were allowed to send telegrams every seditious upstart would take
+advantage of it and they'd have more trouble than they've got now.  But
+I warn you fellows, after Deraa--somewhere between the border and
+Damascus--there'll be a fight.  The minute they discover that the letter
+is a fake they'll come for the real one like cats after a canary."
+
+"Let 'em come!" smiled Jeremy, but Grim shook his head.  "I've been
+making that mistake too long," he answered.  "No defensive tactics after
+we leave Deraa!  We'll start the trouble ourselves. You watch, after
+Deraa the train crew will play cards in the caboose and leave Allah to
+care for the passengers."
+
+"There's only one thing troubles me," said Jeremy.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Narayan Singh got Yussuf Dakmar's shirt night before last.  I've had it
+in for Yussuf ever since we Anzacs went hungry on account of him.
+Anyone who scuppers him has got me to beat to him.  He's my meat, and I
+give you all notice!"
+
+It isn't good to stand between an Anzac and the punishment he thinks an
+enemy deserves.
+
+"All the same," Grim answered, smiling, "I'll bet you don't get him,
+Jeremy."
+
+"I'll bet you.  How much?"
+
+"Mind you, when the game begins, you have a free hand," Grim went on.
+
+"All right," answered Jeremy, who loves freak bets, ''if I get him you
+quit the Army soon as this job's done, and join up with Rammy and me:
+if I don't I'll stay and help you on the next job."
+
+"That's a bet," said Grim promptly.
+
+So Jeremy went forward to play at being traitor, while Narayan Singh and
+I kept Mabel company.  She fired questions at us right and left for
+twenty minutes, which we had to answer in detail instead of straining
+our cars to catch what Grim and Jeremy might be saying to Yussuf Dakmar
+in the next compartment.
+
+Whatever they did say, they managed to prolong the interview until
+within ten minutes of Deraa, when the Syrian returned to his companions
+smiling smugly and Narayan Singh strode after him, to stand in the
+corridor and by ostentatiously watching them prevent their examining the
+letter.
+
+Grim and Jeremy, all grins, joined us at once in Mabel's compartment.
+
+"Did you see the devil smirk as he went off with it?" asked Jeremy.
+"Golly, he thinks we're fools!  The theory is that we two had betrayed
+you, Rammy, and swapped the letter against his bare promise to pay us in
+Damascus.  He chucked in a little blackmail about sicking his mates on
+to murder us if we didn't come across, and I tell you we fairly love
+him!  Lordy, here's Deraa!  If they open the thing before the train
+leaves, Grim says the lot of us are to bolt back across the border, send
+Mabel home to her husband, and continue the journey by camel.  That
+right, Grim?"
+
+Grim nodded.  It was Mabel who objected.
+
+"I'm going to see this through," she answered.  "Guess again, boys!  My
+hair's gone gray.  You owe me a real adventure now, and I won't give up
+the letter till you've paid!"
+
+We had one first-class scare when the train drew up in the squalid
+station, where the branch line to Haifa meets the main Hedjaz railway
+and the two together touch a mean town at a tangent;  for a French
+officer in uniform boarded the train and stalked down the corridors
+staring hard at everyone.  He asked me for a passport, which was sheer
+bluff, so I asked him in turn for his own authority.  He smiled and
+produced a rubber stamp, saying that if I wished to visit Beirut or
+Aleppo I must get a vise from him.
+
+"Je m'em bien garderai!" I answered.  "I'm going to see my aunt at
+Damascus."
+
+"And this lady?  Is she your wife?"
+
+I laughed aloud--couldn't help it.  All the Old Testament stories keep
+forcing themselves on your memory in that land, and the legend of
+Abraham trying to pass his wife off as his sister and the three-cornered
+drama that came of it cropped up as fresh as yesterday.  There was no
+need that I could see to repeat the patriarch's mistake, any more than
+there was reasonable basis for the Frenchman's impertinence.
+
+"Is that your business?" I asked him.
+
+"Because," he went on, smiling meanly, "you speak with an American
+accent.  It is against the law to carry gold across the border, and
+Americans have to submit to personal search, because they always carry
+it."
+
+"Show me your authority!" I retorted angrily.
+
+"Oh, as for that, there is a customs official here who has full
+authority.  He is a Syrian.  It occurred to me that you might prefer to
+be searched by a European."
+
+"Call his bluff!" Grim whispered behind his sleeve, but I intended to do
+that, anyway.
+
+"Bring along your Syrian," said I, and off he went to do it, treating me
+to a backward glance over his shoulder that conveyed more than words
+could have done.
+
+"He'll bluff sky-high," said Grim, "but keep on calling him."
+
+"I've been searched at six frontiers," said Mabel.  "If it's a Syrian I
+don't much mind;  you boys all come along, and he'll behave himself.
+They're much worse in France and Italy.  Hadn't one of you better take
+the letter, though?  No!  I was forgetting already!  I won't part with
+it.  I'll take my chance with the Syrian;  he'll only ask me to empty my
+pockets and prove that I haven't a bag full of gold under my skirt.  Sit
+tight, all, here he comes!"
+
+The Frenchman returned with a smiling, olive-complexioned Syrian in tow
+--a round-faced fellow with blue jaws as dark as his serge uniform.  The
+Frenchman stood aside and the Syrian announced rather awkwardly that
+regulations compelled him to submit Mabel and me to the inconvenience of
+search.
+
+"For what?" said I.
+
+"For gold," he answered.  "It is against the law to smuggle it across
+the border."
+
+"I've only one gold coin," I said, showing him a U.S. twenty-dollar
+piece, and his yellow eyes shone at sight of it.  "If it will save
+trouble you may have it."
+
+I put it into his open palm with the Frenchman looking on, and it was
+immediately clear that that particular Syrian official was no longer
+amenable to international intrigue.  He was bought and sold--oozy with
+gratitude--incapable of anything but wild enthusiasm for the U.S.A. for
+several hours to come.
+
+"I have searched them!" said he to the French officer.  "They have no
+gold, and they are all right."
+
+The French have faults like the rest of us, but they are quicker than
+most men to recognize logic.  The man with crimson pants and sabre
+grinned cynically, shrugged his shoulders, and passed on to annoy
+somebody easier.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+"Start something before they're ready for it!"
+
+
+Just before the train started, a handsome fellow with short black beard
+trimmed into a point and wearing a well-cut European blue serge suit,
+but none the less obviously an Arab, came to the door of our compartment
+and stared steadily at Grim.  He stood like a fighting man, as if every
+muscle of his body was under command, and the suggestion was
+strengthened by what might be a bullet scar over one eye.
+
+If that fellow had asked me for a loan on the spot, or for help against
+his enemies, he would have received both or either. Moreover, if he had
+never paid me back I would still believe in him, and would bet on him
+again.
+
+However, after one swift glance at him, Grim took no notice until the
+train was under way--not even then in fact, until the man in blue serge
+spoke first.
+
+"Oh, Jimgrim!" he said suddenly in a voice like a tenor bell.
+
+"Come in, Hadad," Grim answered, hardly glancing at him.  "Make yourself
+at home."
+
+He tossed a valise into the rack, and I gave up the corner seat so that
+he might sit facing Grim, he acknowledging the courtesy with a smile
+like the whicker of a sword-blade, wasting no time on foolish protest.
+He knew what he wanted--knew enough to take it when invited--understood
+me, and expected me to understand him--a first-class fellow.  He sat
+leaning a little forward, his back not touching the cushion, with the
+palms of both hands resting on his knees and strong fingers motionless.
+He eyed Mabel Ticknor, not exactly nervously but with caution.
+
+"Any news?" asked Grim.
+
+"Jimgrim, the world is full of it!" he answered in English with a laugh.
+"But who are these?"
+
+"My friends."
+
+"Your intimate friends?" Grim nodded.
+
+"The lady as well?" Grim nodded again.
+
+"That is very strong recommendation, Jimgrim!"
+
+Grim introduced us, giving Jeremy's name as Jmil Ras.
+
+"Hah!  I have heard of you," said Hadad, staring at him.  "The
+Australian who wandered all over Arabia?  I am probably the only Arab
+who knew what you really were.  Do you recall that time at Wady Hafiz
+when a local priest denounced you and a Sheik in a yellow kuffiyi told
+the crowd that he knew you for a prophet?  I am the same Sheik.  I liked
+your pluck.  I often wondered what became of you."
+
+"Put it here!" said Jeremy, and they shook hands.
+
+For twenty minutes after that Hadad and Jeremy swapped reminiscences in
+quick staccato time.  It was like two Gatling guns playing a duet, and
+the score was about equally intelligible to anyone unfamiliar with
+Arabia's hinterland--which is to say to all except about one person in
+ten million.  It was most of it Greek to me, but Grim listened like an
+operator to the ticking of the Morse code.  It was Hadad who cut it
+short;  Jeremy would have talked all the way to Damascus.
+
+"And so, Jimgrim, do the kites foregather?  Or are we a forlorn hope?
+Do we go to bury Feisul or to crown him king?"
+
+"How much do you know?" Grim answered.
+
+"Hah!  More than you, my friend!  I come from Europe--London--Paris--
+Rome.  I stopped off in Deraa to listen a while, where the tide of
+rumour flows back and forth across the border.  The English are in
+favour of Feisul, and would help him if they could.  The French are
+against him and would rather have him a dead saint than a living
+nuisance.  The most disturbing rumour I have heard was here in Deraa, to
+the effect that Feisul sent a letter to Jerusalem calling on all Moslems
+to rise and massacre the Jews.  That does not sound like Feisul, but the
+French agent in Deraa assured me that he will have the original letter
+in his hands within a day or two."
+
+Grim smiled over at Mabel.
+
+"You might show him the letter?" he suggested.
+
+So Mabel dug down into the mysteries beneath her shirtwaist and produced
+the document wrapped in a medical bandage of oiled silk. Hadad unwrapped
+it, read it carefully, and handed it to Grim.
+
+"Are you deceived by that?" he asked.  "Does Feisul speak like that, or
+write like that?  Since when has he turned coward that he should sign
+his name with a number?"
+
+"What do you make of it?" asked Grim.
+
+"Hah!  It is as plain as the ink on the paper.  It is intended for use
+against Feisul, first by making the British suspicious of him, second by
+providing the French with an excuse to attack him, third by convicting
+him of treachery, for which he can be jailed or executed after he is
+caught.  What do you propose to do with it, Jimgrim?"
+
+"I'm going to show it to Feisul."
+
+"Good!  I, too, am on my way to see Feisul.  Perhaps the two of us
+together can convince him what is best."
+
+"If we two first agree," Grim answered with a dry smile.
+
+"Do you agree that two and two make four?  This is just as simple,
+Jimgrim.  Feisul cannot contend with the French.  The financiers have
+spread their net for Syria, Feisul has no artillery worth speaking of--
+no gas--no masks against gas, and the French have plenty of everything
+except money.  Syria has been undermined by propaganda and corruption.
+Let Feisul go to British territory and thence to Europe, where his
+friends may have a chance to work for him.  The British will give him
+Mesopotamia, and after that it will be up to us Arabs to prove we are a
+nation.  That is my argument.  Are we agreed?"
+
+"If that's your plan, Hadad, I'm with you!" Grim answered.
+
+"Then I also am with you!  Let us shake hands."
+
+"Shwai shwai!" (Go slow!) said Grim.  "Better join up with me in
+Damascus.  There are six men in the car ahead who'll try to murder us
+all presently.  They've got a letter that they think is that one.  The
+minute they find out we've fooled them there'll be ructions."
+
+"I am good at ructions!" Hadad answered.
+
+"My friend Narayan Singh is forward watching them," said Grim. "What
+they'll probably try when they make the discovery will be to have the
+lot of us arrested at some wayside station.  I propose to forestall
+them."
+
+"I am good at forestalling!" said Hadad.
+
+"Then don't you forestall me!" laughed Jeremy.  "The fellow with a face
+like a pig's stern is Yussuf Dakmar, and he's my special preserve."
+
+"I am a good Moslem.  I refuse to lay hand on pig," said Hadad, smiling.
+
+We discussed Feisul and the Arab cause.
+
+"Oh, if we had Lawrence with us!" exclaimed Hadad excitedly at last.  "A
+little, little man--hardly any larger than Mrs. Ticknor--but a David
+against Goliath!  And would you believe it?--there is an idiotic rumour
+that Lawrence has returned and is hiding in Damascus!  The French are
+really disturbed about it. They have cabled their Foreign Office and
+received an official denial of the rumour;  but official denials carry
+no weight nowadays.  Out of ten Frenchmen in Syria, five believe that
+Lawrence is with Feisul and if they can catch him he will get short
+shrift.  But, oh, Jimgrim--oh, if it were true!  Wallahi!"
+
+Grim didn't answer, but I saw him look long at Jeremy, and then for
+about thirty seconds steadily at Mabel Ticknor.  After that he stared
+out of the window for a long time, not even moving his head when a crowd
+of Bedouins galloped to within fifty yards of the train and volleyed at
+it from horseback "merely out of devilment," as Hadad hastened to assure
+us.
+
+We were winding up the Lebanon Valley by that time.  Carpets of flowers;
+green grass;  waterfalls;  a thatched hut to the twenty square miles,
+with a scattering of mean black tents between; every stone building in
+ruins;  goats where fat kine ought to be; and a more or less modern
+railway screeching across the landscape, short of fuel and oil.  That's
+Lebanon.
+
+We grew depressed.  Then silent.  Our meditations were interrupted by
+the sudden arrival of Narayan Singh in the door of the compartment,
+grinning full of news.
+
+"They have opened the letter, sahib!  They accuse Yussuf Dakmar of
+deceiving them.  They threaten him with death.  Shall I interfere?"
+
+"Any sign of the train crew?" Grim asked.
+
+"Nay, they are gambling in the brake-van."
+
+Grim looked sharply at Hadad.
+
+"What authority have you got?"
+
+"None.  I am a personal friend of Feisul, that is all."
+
+"Well, we'll pretend you've power to arrest them.  Ramsden, you've
+suddenly missed your letter.  You've accused Jeremy of stealing it.  He
+has confessed to selling it to Yussuf Dakmar. Go forward in a rage and
+demand the letter back.  Start something before they're ready for it!
+We'll be just behind you."
+
+"Leave Yussuf Dakmar to me!" insisted Jeremy.  "I pay the debt of an
+Anzac division!"
+
+I hope I've never hurt a man who didn't deserve it, or who wasn't fit to
+fight;  but I have to admit that Grim didn't need to repeat the
+invitation.  I started forward in a hurry, and Jeremy elbowed Narayan
+Singh aside in order to follow next, Australians being notoriously
+unlady-like performers when anybody's hat is in the ring.
+
+By the time I reached the car ahead the train had entered a wild gorge
+circle by one of those astonishing hairpin curves with which engineers
+defeat Nature.  The panting engine slowed almost to a snail's pace,
+having only a scant fuel ration with which to negotiate curve and grade
+combined.  To our right there was a nearly sheer drop of four hundred
+feet, with a stream at the bottom boiling among limestone boulders.
+
+But there was no time to study scenery.  From the middle compartment of
+the car there came yells for help and the peculiar noise of thump and
+scuffle that can't be mistaken.  Men fight in various ways, Lord knows,
+and the worst are the said-to-be civilized;  but from Nome to Cape Town
+and all the way from China to Peru the veriest tenderfoot can tell in
+the dark the difference between fight and horseplay.
+
+I reached the door of the compartment in time to see three of them (two
+bleeding from knife-wounds in the face) force Yussuf Dakmar backward
+toward the window, the whole lot stabbing frantically as they milled and
+swayed.  The fifth man was holding on to the scrimmage with his left
+hand and reaching round with his right, trying to stick a knife into
+Yussuf Dakmar's ribs without endangering his own hide.
+
+But the sixth man was the rascal I had kicked.  He had no room--perhaps
+no inclination--to get into the scrimmage;  so he saw me first, and he
+needed no spur to his enmity.  With a movement as quick as a cat's and
+presence of mind that accounted for his being leader of the gang, he
+seized the fifth man by the neck and spun him round to call his
+attention;  and the two came for me together like devils out of a
+spring-trap.
+
+Now the narrow door of a compartment on a train isn't any kind of easy
+place to fight in, but I vow and declare that Jeremy and I both did our
+best for Yussuf Dakmar.  That's a remarkable thing if you come to think
+of it.  As a dirty murderer--thief--liar--traitor--spy, he hadn't much
+claim on our affections and Jeremy cherished a war-grudge against him on
+top of it all.  What is it that makes us side with the bottom dog
+regardless of pros and cons?
+
+It was a nasty mix-up, because they used knives and we relied on hands
+and fists.  I've used a pick-handle on occasion and a gun when I've had
+to, but speaking generally it seems to me to demean a white man to use
+weapons in a row like that, and I find that most fellows who have walked
+the earth much agree with me.
+
+We tried to go in like a typhoon, shock-troop style, but it didn't work.
+Another man let go of Yussuf Dakmar, who was growing weak and too short
+of wind to yell, and in a moment there were five of us struggling on the
+floor between the seats, one man under me with my forearm across his
+throat and another alongside me, stabbing savagely at a leather valise
+under the impression that he was carving up my ribs.  On top of that
+mess Narayan Singh pounced like a tiger, wrenching at arms and legs
+until I struggled to my feet again--only to be thrust aside by Jeremy as
+he rose and rushed at Yussuf Dakmar's two assailants.
+
+But with all his speed Jeremy was a tenth of a tick too late. The wretch
+was already helpless, and I dare say they broke his back as they leaned
+their combined weight on him and forced him backward and head-first
+through the window.  Jeremy made a grab for his foot, but missed it, and
+a knife-blade already wet with Yussuf Dakmar's blood whipped out and
+stung him in the thigh. That, of course, was sheer ignorance.  You
+should never sting an Australian.  Kill him or let him alone.  Better
+yet, make friends with him or surrender;  but, above all, do nothing by
+halves. They're a race of whole-hoggers, equally ready to force their
+only shirt on you or fight you to a finish.
+
+So Jeremy finished the business at the window.  He took a neck in each
+hand and cracked their skulls together until the whack-whack-whack of it
+was like the exhaust of a Ford with loose piston rings;  and when they
+fell from his grip, unconscious, he came to my rescue.  Believe me, I
+needed it.
+
+They were as strong and lithe as wildcats, those Syrians, and fully
+awake to the advantage that the narrow door gave them.  One man
+struggled with Narayan Singh and kept him busy with his bulk so wedged
+across the opening that Grim and Hadad were as good as demobilized out
+in the corridor;  and the other two tackled me like a pair of butchers
+hacking at a maddened bull.  I landed with my fists, but each time at
+the cost of a flesh-wound;  and though I got one knife-hand by the wrist
+and hung on, wrenching and screwing to throw the fellow off his feet,
+the other man's right was free and the eighteen-inch Erzeram dagger that
+he held danced this and that way for an opening underneath my guard.
+
+Jeremy's left fist landed under the peak of his jaw exactly at the
+moment when he stiffened to launch his thrust.  He fell as if pole-axed
+and the blade missed my stomach by six inches, but the combined force of
+thrust and blow was great enough to drive the weapon into the wooden
+partition, where it stayed until I pulled it out to keep as a souvenir.
+
+There wasn't much trouble after that.  Grim and Hadad came in and we
+tore strips from the Syrians' clothing to tie their hands and feet with.
+Hadad went to the rear of the train, climbing along the footboard of the
+third-class cars to the caboose to throw some sort of bluff to the
+conductor, who came forward--called me "Colonel" and Hadad "Excellency"
+--looked our prisoners over--recognized no friends--and said that
+everything was "quite all right."  He said he knew exactly what to do;
+but we left Narayan Singh on watch, lest that knowledge should prove too
+original which, however, it turned out not to be.  It was bromidian--as
+old as history.  Narayan Singh came back and told us.
+
+"Lo, sahib;  he went through their clothes as an ape for fleas, I
+watching.  And when he had all their valuables he laid them on the
+footboard, and then, as we passed some Bedouin tents, he kicked them
+off.  But he seems an honest fellow, for he gave them back some small
+change to buy food with, should any be obtainable."
+
+After that he stood flashing his white teeth for half an hour watching
+Mabel bandage Jeremy and me, for it always amuses a Sikh to watch a
+white man eat punishment.  Sikhs are a fine race--but curious--
+distinctly curious and given to unusual amusement.  When Mabel had
+finished with me at last I stuck a needle into him, and he laughed,
+accepting the stab as a compliment.
+
+A strange thing is how men settle down after excitement.  Birds do the
+same thing.  A hawk swoops down on a hedgerow;  there is a great
+flutter, followed by sudden silence.  A minute later the chattering
+begins again, without any reference to one of their number being torn in
+the plunderer's beak.  And so we;  even Grim loosened up and gossiped
+about Feisul and the already ancient days when Feisul was the up-to-date
+Saladin leading Arab hosts to victory.
+
+But there was an even stranger circumstance than that.  We weren't the
+only people in the train;  our car, for instance, was fairly well
+occupied by Armenians, Arabs, and folk whose vague nationality came
+under the general heading of Levantine.  The car ahead where the fight
+took place, though not crowded, wasn't vacant, and there were others in
+the car behind.  Yet not one of them made a move to interfere.  They
+minded their own business, which proves, I think, that manners are based
+mainly on discretion.
+
+As the train gasped slowly up the grade and rolled bumpily at last along
+the fertile, neglected Syrian highland, all the Armenians on the train
+removed their hats and substituted the red tarboosh, preferring the
+headgear of a convert rather than be the target of every Bedouin with a
+rifle in his hand.
+
+The whole journey was a mix-up of things to wonder at--not least of them
+the matter-of-fact confidence with which the train proceeded along a
+single track, whose condition left you wondering at each bump whether
+the next wouldn't be the journey's violent end.  There were lamps, but
+no oil for light when evening came.  Once, when we bumped over a shaky
+culvert and a bushel or two of coal-dust fell from the rusty tender, the
+engineer stopped the train and his assistant went back with a shovel and
+piece of sacking to gather up the precious stuff.
+
+There was nothing but squalid villages and ruins, goats and an
+occasional rare camel to be seen through the window--not a tree
+anywhere, the German General Staff having attended to that job
+thoroughly.  There is honey in the country and it's plentiful as well as
+good, because bees are not easy property to raid and make away with;
+but the milk is from goats, and as for overflowing, I would hate to have
+to punish the dugs of a score of the brutes to get a jugful for dinner.
+Syria's wealth is of the past and the future.
+
+Long before it grew too dark to watch the landscape we were wholly
+converted to Grim's argument that Syria was no place for a man of
+Feisul's calibre.  The Arab owners of the land are plundered to the
+bone;  the men with money are foreigners, whose only care is for a
+government that will favour this religion and that breed.  To set up a
+kingdom there would be like preaching a new religion in Hester Street;
+you could hand out text, soup and blankets, but you'd need a whale's
+supply of faith to carry on, and the offertories wouldn't begin to meet
+expenses.
+
+Until that journey finally convinced me, I had been wondering all the
+while in the back of my head whether Grim wasn't intending an
+impertinence.  It hasn't been my province hitherto to give advice to
+kings;  for one thing, they haven't asked me for it.  If I were asked, I
+think I'd take the problem pretty seriously and hesitate before
+suggesting to a man on whom the hope of fifty million people rests that
+he'd better pull up stakes and eat crow in exile for the present.  I'd
+naturally hate to be a king, but if I were one I don't think quitting
+would look good, and I think I'd feel like kicking the fellow who
+suggested it.
+
+But the view from the train, and Grim's talk with Hadad put me in a mood
+in which Syria didn't seem good enough for a soap-box politician, let
+alone a man of Feisul's fame and character.  And when at last a few
+lights in a cluster down the track proclaimed that we were drawing near
+Damascus, I was ready to advise everybody, Feisul included, to get out
+in a hurry while a chance remained.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+"Bismillah!  What a mercy that I met you!"
+
+
+While the fireman scraped the iron floor for his last two shovelfuls of
+coal-dust and the train wheezed wearily into the dark station, Grim
+began to busy himself in mysterious ways.  Part of his own costume
+consisted of a short, curved scimitar attached to an embroidered belt--
+the sort of thing that Arabs wear for ornament rather than use.  He took
+it off and, groping in the dark, helped Mabel put it on, without a word
+of explanation.
+
+Then, instead of putting on his own Moslem over-cloak he threw that over
+her shoulders and, digging down into his bag for a spare head-dress,
+snatched her hat off and bound on the white kerchief in its place with
+the usual double, gold-covered cord of camel-hair.
+
+Then came my friend the train conductor and addressed me as Colonel,
+offering to carry out the bags.  The moment he had grabbed his load and
+gone Grim broke silence:
+
+"Call her Colonel and me Grim.  Don't forget how!"
+
+We became aware of faces under helmets peering through the window-
+officers of Feisul's army on the watch for unwelcome visitors.  From
+behind them came the conductor's voice again, airing his English:
+
+"Any more bags inside there, Colonel?"
+
+"Get out quick, Jeremy, and make a fuss about the Colonel coming!"
+ordered Grim.
+
+Jeremy suddenly became the arch-efficient servitor, establishing
+importance for his chief, and never a newly made millionaire or modern
+demagog had such skillful advertisement.  The Shereefian officers stood
+back at a respectful distance, ready to salute when the personage should
+deign to alight.
+
+"What shall be done with the memsahib's hat?" demanded Narayan Singh.
+
+You could only see the whites of his eyes, but he shook something in his
+right hand.
+
+"Eat it!" Grim answered.
+
+"Heavens! That's my best hat!" objected Mabel.  "Give it here. I'll
+carry it under the cloak."
+
+"Get rid of it!" Grim ordered;  and Narayan Singh strode off to
+contribute yellow Leghorn straw and poppies to the engine furnace.
+
+I gave him ten piastres to fee the engineer, and five for the fireman,
+so you might say that was high-priced fuel.
+
+"What kind of bunk are you throwing this time?" I asked Grim.
+
+He didn't answer, but gave orders to Mabel in short, crisp syllables.
+
+"You're Colonel Lawrence.  Answer no questions.  If anyone salutes, just
+move your hand and bow your head a bit.  You're just his height.  Look
+straight in front of you and take long strides.  Bend your head forward
+a little;  there, that's it."
+
+"I'm scared!" announced Mabel, by way of asking for more particulars.
+
+She wasn't scared in the least.
+
+"Piffle!" Grim answered.  "Remember you're Lawrence, that's all. They'd
+give you Damascus if you asked for it.  Follow Jeremy, and leave the
+rest to us."
+
+I don't doubt that Grim had been turning over the whole plan in his mind
+for hours past, but when I taxed him with it afterward his reply was
+characteristic:
+
+"If we'd rehearsed it, Mabel and Hadad would both have been
+self-conscious.  The game is to study your man--or woman, as the case
+may be--and sometimes drill 'em, sometimes spring it on 'em, according
+to circumstances.  The only rule is to study people; there are no two
+quite alike."
+
+Hadad was surprised into silence, too thoughtful a man to do anything
+except hold his tongue until the next move should throw more light on
+the situation.  He followed us out of the car, saying nothing;  and
+being recognized by the light of one dim lantern as an intimate friend
+of Feisul, he accomplished all that Grim could have asked of him.
+
+He was known to have been in Europe until recently.  Rumours about
+Lawrence had been tossed from mouth to mouth for days past, and here was
+somebody who looked like Lawrence in the dark, followed by Grim and
+Hadad and addressed as "Colonel."  Why shouldn't those three Shereefian
+officers jump to conclusions, salute like automatons and grin like loyal
+men who have surprised a secret and won't tell anyone but their bosom
+friends?  It was all over Damascus within the hour that Lawrence had
+come from England to stand by Feisul in the last ditch.  The secret was
+kept perfectly!
+
+We let Mabel walk ahead of us, and there was no trouble at the customs
+barrier, where normally every piastre that could be wrung from
+protesting passengers were mulcted to support a starving treasury;  for
+the officers strode behind us, and trade signs to the customs clerk, who
+immediately swore at everyone in sight and sent all his minions to yell
+for the best cabs in Damascus.
+
+Narayan Singh distributed largesse to about a hundred touts and
+hangers-on and we splashed off toward the hotel in two open landaus,
+through streets six inches deep in water except at the cross-gutters,
+where the horses jumped for fear of losing soundings.  Abana and
+Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, were in flood as usual at that time of
+year, and the scavenging street curs had to swim from one garbage heap
+to the next. There was a gorgeous battle going on opposite the hotel
+door, where half a dozen white-ivoried mongrels with their backs to a
+heap of kitchen leavings held a ford against a dozen others, each beast
+that made good his passage joining with the defenders to fight off the
+rest.  I stood on the hotel steps and watched the war for several
+minutes, while Grim went in with the others and registered as "Rupert
+Ramsden of Chicago, U.S.A., and party."
+
+The flood, and darkness owing to the lack of fuel, were all in our
+favour, for such folk as were abroad were hardly of the sort whose
+gossip would carry weight;  nevertheless, we hadn't been in the hotel
+twenty minutes before an agent of the bank put in his appearance,
+speaking French volubly.  Seeing my name on the register, he made the
+mistake of confining his attention to me, which enabled Grim to get
+Mabel safely away into a big room on the second floor.
+
+The Frenchman (if he was one--he had a Hebrew nose) made bold to corner
+me on a seat near the dining-room door.  He was nervous rather than
+affable--a little pompous, as behooved the representative of money
+power--and evidently used to having his impertinences answered humbly.
+
+"You are from the South?  Did you have a good journey?  Was the train
+attacked?  Did you hear any interesting rumors on the way?"
+
+Those were all preliminary questions, thrown out at random to break ice.
+As he sat down beside me you could feel the next one coming just as
+easily as see that he wasn't interested in the answers to the first.
+
+"You are here on business?  What business?"
+
+"Private business," said I, with an eye on Jeremy just coming down the
+stairs.  "You talk Arabic?"
+
+He nodded, eyeing me keenly.
+
+"That man is my servant and knows my affairs.  I'm too tired to talk
+after the journey.  Suppose you ask him."
+
+So Jeremy came and sat beside us, and threw the cow's husband around as
+blithely as he juggles billiard balls.  I wasn't supposed to understand
+what he was saying.
+
+"The big effendi is a prizefighter, who has heard there is money to be
+made at Feisul's court.  At least, that is what he says. Between you and
+me, I think he is a spy for the French Government, because when he
+engaged me in Jerusalem he gave me a fist-full of paper francs with
+which to send a telegram to Paris. What was in the telegram?  I don't
+know;  it was a mass of figures, and I mixed them up on purpose, being
+an honest fellow averse to spy's work.  Oh, I've kept an eye on him,
+believe me! Ever since he killed a Syrian in the train I've had my
+doubts of him.  Mashallah, what a murderous disposition the fellow has!
+Kill a man as soon as look at him--indeed he would.  Are you a prince in
+these parts?"
+
+"A banker."
+
+"Bismillah!  What a mercy that I met you!  I overheard him say that he
+will visit the bank tomorrow morning to cash a draft for fifty thousand
+francs.  I'd examine the draft carefully if I were you.  It wouldn't
+surprise me to learn it was stolen or forged. Is there any other bank
+that he could go to?"
+
+"No, only mine;  the others have suspended business on account of the
+crisis."
+
+"Then, in the name of Allah don't forget me!  You ought to give me a
+thousand francs for the information.  I am a poor man, but honest.  At
+what time shall I come for the money in the morning? Perhaps you could
+give me a little on account at once, for my wages are due tonight and
+I'm not at all certain of getting them."
+
+"Well, see me in the morning," said the banker.
+
+He got up and left us at once, hardly troubling to excuse himself;  and
+Grim heard him tell the hotel proprietor that our whole party would be
+locked up in jail before midnight.  That rumour went the rounds like
+wild-fire, so that we were given a wide berth and had a table all to
+ourselves in the darkest corner of the big dim dining-room.
+
+There were more than a hundred people eating dinner, and Narayan Singh,
+Hadad and I were the only ones in western clothes.  Every seat at the
+other tables was occupied by some Syrian dignitary in flowing robes--
+rows and rows of stately looking notables, scant of speech and noisy at
+their food.  Many of them seemed hardly to know the use of knife and
+fork, but they could all look as dignified as owls, even when crowding
+in spaghetti with their fingers.
+
+We provided them with a sensation before the second course was finished.
+A fine-looking Syrian officer in khaki, with the usual cloth flap behind
+his helmet that forms a compromise between western smartness and eastern
+comfort, strode into the room and bore down on us.  He invited us out
+into the corridor with an air that suggested we would better not refuse,
+and we filed out after him in an atmosphere of frigid disapproval.
+
+Mabel was honestly scared half out of her wits now.  Not even the smiles
+of the hotel proprietor in the doorway reassured her, nor his deep bow
+as she passed.  She was even more scared, if that were possible, when
+two officers, obviously of high rank, came forward in the hall to greet
+her, and one addressed her in Arabic as Colonel Lawrence.  Luckily one
+oil lamp per wall was doing duty in place of electric light, or there
+might have been an awkward incident.  She had presence of mind enough to
+disguise her alarm by a fit of coughing, bending nearly double and
+covering the lower part of her face with the ends of the headdress
+folded over.
+
+The officers had no time to waste and gave their message to Grim
+instead.
+
+"The Emir Feisul is astonished, Jimgrim, that Colonel Lawrence and you
+should visit Damascus without claiming his hospitality. We have two
+autos waiting to take you to the palace."
+
+Well, the luggage didn't amount to much;  Narayan Singh brought that
+down in a jiffy;  and when I went to settle with the hotel-keeper one of
+the Syrian officers interfered.
+
+"These are guests of the Emir Feisul," he announced.  "Send the bill to
+me."
+
+We were piled into the waiting autos.  Mabel, Grim and I rode in the
+first one, with the Syrian officers up beside the driver; Jeremy,
+Narayan Singh and Hadad followed;  and we went through the dark streets
+like sea-monsters splashing over shoals, unseen I think--certainly
+unrecognized.
+
+The streets were almost deserted and I didn't catch sight of one armed
+man, which was a thing to marvel at when you consider that fifty
+thousand or so were supposed to be concentrated in the neighbourhood,
+with conscription working full-blast and the foreign consuls solely
+occupied in procuring exemption for their nationals.
+
+It wasn't my first visit to a reigning prince, for if you travel much in
+India you're bound to come in contact with numbers of them;  so I
+naturally formed a mental picture of what was in store for us, made up
+from a mixture of memories of Gwalior, Baroda, Bikanir, Hyderabad, Poona
+and Baghdad of the Arabian-Nights.  It just as naturally vanished in
+presence of the quiet, latter-day dignity of the real thing.
+
+The palace turned out to be a villa on the outskirts of the city, no
+bigger and hardly more pretentious than a well-to-do commuter's place at
+Bronxville or Mount Vernon.  There was a short semi-circular drive in
+front, with one sentry and one small lantern burning at each gate;  but
+their khaki uniforms and puttees didn't disguise the fact that the
+sentries were dark, dyed-in-wool Arabs from the desert country, and
+though they presented arms, they did it as men who make concessions
+without pretending to admire such foolishness.  I wouldn't have given
+ten cents for an unescorted stranger's chance of getting by them,
+whatever his nationality.
+
+Surely there was never less formality in a king's house since the world
+began.  We were ushered straight into a narrow, rather ordinary hall,
+and through that into a sitting-room about twenty feet square.  The
+light was from oil lamps hanging by brass chains from the curved beams;
+but the only other Oriental suggestions were the cushioned seats in each
+corner, small octagonal tables inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and a mighty
+good Persian carpet.
+
+Narayan Singh and Jeremy, supposedly being servants, offered to stay in
+the hall, but were told that Feisul wouldn't approve of that.
+
+"Whatever they shouldn't hear can be said in another room," was the
+explanation.
+
+So we all sat down together on one of the corner seats, and were kept
+waiting about sixty seconds until Feisul entered by a door in the far
+corner.  And when he came he took your breath away.
+
+It always prejudices me against a man to be told that he is dignified
+and stately.  Those adjectives smack of too much self-esteem and of a
+claim to be made of different clay from most of us.  He was both, yet he
+wasn't either.  And he didn't look like a priest, although if ever
+integrity and righteousness shone from a man, with their effect
+heightened by the severely simple Arab robes, I swear that man was he.
+
+Just about Jeremy's height and build--rather tall and thin that is--with
+a slight stoop forward from the shoulders due to thoughtfulness and
+camel-riding and a genuine intention not to hold his head too high, he
+looked like a shepherd in a Bible picture, only with good humour added,
+that brought him forward out of a world of dreams on to the same plane
+with you, face to face--understanding meeting understanding--man to man.
+
+I wish I could describe his smile as he entered, believing he was coming
+to meet Lawrence, but it can't be done.  Maybe you can imagine it if you
+bear in mind that this man was captain of a cause as good as lost,
+hedged about by treason and well aware of it;  and that Colonel Lawrence
+was the one man in the world who had proved himself capable of bridging
+the division between East and West and making possible the Arab dream of
+independence.
+
+But unhappily it's easier to record unpleasant things.  He knew at the
+first glance--even before she drew back the kuffiyi--that Mabel wasn't
+Lawrence, and I've never seen a man more disappointed in all my
+wanderings.  The smile didn't vanish;  he had too much pluck and
+self-control for that; but you might say that iron entered into it, as
+if for a second he was mocking destiny, willing to face all odds alone
+since he couldn't have his friend.
+
+And he threw off disappointment like a man--dismissed it as a rock sheds
+water, coming forward briskly to shake hands with Grim and bowing as
+Grim introduced us.
+
+"At least here are two good friends," he said in Arabic, sitting down
+between Grim and Hadad.  "Tell me what this means, and why you deceived
+us about Lawrence."
+
+"We've something to show you," Grim answered.  "Mrs. Ticknor brought it;
+otherwise it might have been seen by the wrong people."
+
+Feisul took the hint and dismissed the Syrian officers, calling them by
+their first names as he gave them "leave to go."  Then Mabel produced
+the letter and Feisul read it, crossing one thin leg over the other and
+leaning back easily.  But he sat forward again and laughed bitterly when
+he had read it twice over.
+
+"I didn't write this.  I never saw it before, or heard of it," he said
+simply.
+
+"I know that," said Grim.  "But we thought you'd better look at it."
+
+Feisul laid the letter across his knee and paused to light a cigarette.
+I thought he was going to do what nine men out of ten in a tight place
+would certainly have done;  but he blew out the match, and went on
+smoking.
+
+"You mean your government has seen the thing, and sent you to confront
+me with it?"
+
+It was Grim's turn to laugh, and he was jubilant without a trace of
+bitterness.
+
+"No.  The chief and I have risked our jobs by not reporting it. This
+visit is strictly unofficial."
+
+Feisul handed the letter back to him, and it was Grim who struck a match
+and burned it, after tearing off the seal for a memento.
+
+"You know what it means, of course?" Grim trod the ash into the carpet.
+"If the French could have come by that letter in Jerusalem, they'd have
+Dreyfussed you--put you on trial for your life on trumped-up evidence.
+They'd send a sworn copy of it to the British to keep them from taking
+your part."
+
+"I am grateful to you for burning it," Feisul answered.
+
+He didn't look helpless, hopeless, or bewildered, but dumb and clinging
+on;  like a man who holds an insecure footing against a hurricane.
+
+"It means that the men all about you are traitors--" Grim went on.
+
+"Not all of them," Feisul interrupted.
+
+"But many of them," answered Grim.  "Your Arabs are loyal hot-heads;
+some of your Syrians are dogs whom anyone can hire."
+
+It was straight speaking.  From a major in foreign service, uninvited,
+to a king, it sounded near the knuckle.  Feisul took it quite
+pleasantly.
+
+"I know one from the other, Jimgrim."
+
+Grim got up and took a chair opposite Feisul.  He was all worked up and
+sweating at self-mastery, hotter under the collar than I had ever seen
+him.
+
+"It means," he went on, with a hand on each knee and his strange eyes
+fixed steadily on Feisul's, "that the French are ready to attack you.
+It means they're sure of capturing your person--and bent on seeing your
+finish.  They'll give you a drumhead court martial and make excuses
+afterward."
+
+"Inshallah," Feisul answered, meaning  "If Allah permits it."
+
+"That is exactly the right word!" Grim exploded;  and Lord, he was hard
+put to it to keep excitement within bounds.
+
+I could see his neck trembling, and there were little beads of sweat on
+his temple.  It was Grim at last without the mask on. "Allah marks the
+destiny of all of us.  Do you suppose we're here for nothing--at this
+time?"
+
+Feisul smiled.
+
+"I am glad to see you," he said simply.
+
+"Are you planning to fight the French?" Grim asked him suddenly, in the
+sort of way that a man at close quarters lets rip an upper-cut.
+
+"I must fight or yield.  They have sent an ultimatum, but delayed it so
+as not to permit me time to answer.  It has expired already.  They are
+probably advancing."
+
+"And you intend to sit here and wait for them?"
+
+"I shall be at the front."
+
+"You know you haven't a chance!"
+
+"My advisers think that my presence at the front will encourage our men
+sufficiently to win the day."
+
+"Have you a charm against mustard gas?"
+
+"That is our weakness.  No, we have no masks."
+
+"And the wind setting up from the sea at this time of year!  Your army
+is going straight into a trap, and you along with it.  Half of the men
+who advise you to go to the front will fight like lions against a net,
+and the other half will sell you to the French!  Your fifty thousand men
+will melt like butter in the sun and your Arab cause will be left
+without a leader!"
+
+Feisul pondered that for about a minute, leaning back and watching
+Grim's face.
+
+"We held a council of war, Jimgrim," he said at last.  "It was the
+unanimous opinion of the staff that we ought to fight and the cabinet
+upheld them.  I couldn't cancel the order if I wished. What would you
+think of a king who left his army in the lurch?"
+
+"Nobody will ever accuse you of cowardice," Grim answered. "You're a
+proven brave man if ever there was one.  The point is, do you want all
+your bravery and hard work for the Arab cause to go for nothing?  Do you
+want the prospect of Arab independence to go up in smoke on a gas-swept
+battlefield?"
+
+"It would break my heart," said Feisul, "although one heart hardly
+matters."
+
+"It would break more hearts than yours," Grim retorted.  "There are
+millions looking to you for leadership.  Leave me out of it. Leave
+Lawrence out of it, and all the other non-Moslems who have done their
+bit for you.  Leave most of these Syrians out of it; for they're simply
+politicians making use of you--a mess of breeds and creeds so mixed and
+corrupted that they don't know which end up they stand!  If the Syrians
+had guts they'd have rallied so hard to you long ago that no outsider
+would have had a chance."
+
+"What do you mean?  What are you proposing?" Feisul asked quietly.
+
+"Baghdad is your place, not Damascus!"
+
+"But here I am in Damascus," Feisul retorted;  and for the first time
+there was a note of impatience in his voice.  "I came here at the
+request of the Allies, on the strength of their promises.  I did not ask
+to be king.  I would rather not be.  Let any man be ruler whom the Arabs
+choose, and I will work for him loyally.  But the Arabs chose me and the
+Allies consented.  It was only after they had won their war with our
+help that the French began raising objections and, the British deserted
+me.  It is too late to talk of Baghdad now."
+
+"It isn't!  It's too soon!" Grim answered, bringing down a clenched fist
+on his knee, and Feisul laughed in spite of himself.
+
+"You talk like a prophet, Jimgrim, but let me tell you something. It is
+mainly a question of money after all.  The British paid us a subsidy
+until they withdrew from Syria.  They did their best for us even then,
+for they left behind guns, ammunition, wagons and supplies.  When the
+French seized the ports they promised to continue the subsidy, because
+they are collecting the customs dues and we have no other revenue worth
+mentioning.  But rather than send us money the French have told our
+people not to pay taxes;  so our treasury is empty.  Nevertheless, we
+contrived by one means and another.  We arranged a bank credit, and
+ordered supplies from abroad.  The supplies have reached Beirut, but the
+French have ordered the bank to cancel the credit, and until we pay for
+the supplies they are withheld."
+
+"Any gas masks among the supplies you ordered?" Grim asked him; and
+Feisul nodded.
+
+"That banker has played fast and loose with us until the last minute.
+Relying on our undertaking not to molest foreigners he has resided in
+Damascus, making promises one day and breaking them the next, keeping
+his funds in Beirut and his agency here, draining money out of the
+country all the while."
+
+"Why didn't you arrest him?"
+
+"We gave our word to the French that he should have complete protection
+and immunity.  It seemed a good thing to us to have such an influential
+banker here;  he has international connections.  As recently as
+yesterday, twenty minutes before that ultimatum came, he was in this
+room assuring me that he would be able to solve the credit difficulty
+within a day or two."
+
+"Would you like to send for him now?" suggested Grim.
+
+"I doubt if he would come."
+
+"Well, have him fetched!"
+
+Feisul shook his head.
+
+"If other people break their promises, that is no reason why we should
+break ours.  If we can defeat the French and force them to make other
+terms, then we will expel him from Syria.  I leave at midnight,
+Jimgrim."
+
+"To defeat the French?  You go to your Waterloo!  You're in check with
+only one move possible, and I'm here to make you realize it. You're a
+man after my own heart, Feisul, but you and your Arabs are children at
+dealing with these foreign exploiters!
+
+"They can beat you at every game but honesty.  And listen:  If you did
+defeat the French--if you drove them into the sea tomorrow, they'd get
+away with all the money in Beirut and you'd still be at the mercy of
+foreign capitalists!  Instead of an independent Arab kingdom here you'd
+have a mixture of peoples and religions all plotting against one another
+and you, with capitulations and foreign consuls getting in the way, and
+bond-holding bankers sitting on top of it all like the Old Man of the
+Sea in the story of Sindbad the Sailor!
+
+"Leave that to the French!  Let them have all Syria to stew in! Go to
+England where your friends are.  Let the politicians alone. Meet real
+folk and talk with them.  Tell them the truth;  for they don't know it!
+Talk with the men and women who haven't got political jobs to lose--with
+the fellows who did the fighting--with the men and women who have votes.
+They'll believe you. They've given up believing politicians, and they're
+learning how to twist the politicians' tails.  You'll find yourself in
+Baghdad within a year or two, with all Mesopotamia to make a garden of
+and none but Arabs to deal with.  That's your field!"
+
+Feisul smiled with the air of a man who recognizes but is unconvinced.
+
+"There are always things that might have been," he answered.  "As it is,
+I cannot desert the army."
+
+"We'll save what we can of the army," Grim answered.  "Your Syrians will
+save their own skins;  it's only the Arabs we've got to look out for--a
+line of retreat for the Arab regiments, and another for you.  It's not
+too late, and you know I'm right! Come on;  let's get busy and do it!"
+
+Feisul's smile was all affection and approval, but he shook his head.
+
+"If what you say is true, I should only have the same problem in
+Mesopotamia--foreign financiers," he answered.
+
+"That's exactly where you're wrong!" Grim retorted triumphantly.
+
+He stood up, and pointed at Jeremy.
+
+"Here's a man who owns a gold-mine.  It lies between Mesopotamia and
+your father's kingdom of the Hedjaz, and its exact whereabouts is a
+secret.  He's here tonight to make you a present of the mine!  And
+here's another man,"--he pointed at me--"a mining expert, who'll tell
+you what the thing's worth.  It's yours, if you'll agree to abandon
+Syria and lay a course for Baghdad!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+"You'll be a virgin Victim!"
+
+
+Feisul was interested;  he couldn't help being.  And he was utterly
+convinced of Grim's sincerity.  But he wasn't moved from his purpose,
+and not even Jeremy's account of the gold-mine, or my professional
+opinion of its value, had the least effect toward cancelling the plans
+he had in mind.  He was deeply affected by the offer, but that was all.
+
+"Good heavens, man!" Grim exploded suddenly.  "Surely you won't throw
+the whole world into war again!  You know what it will mean if the
+French kill or imprison you.  There isn't a Moslem of all the millions
+in Asia who won't swear vengeance against the West--you know that!  A
+direct descendant of Mohammed, and the first outstanding, conquering
+Moslem since Saladin--"
+
+"The Allies should have thought of that before they broke promises,"
+said Feisul.
+
+"Never mind them.  Damn them!" answered Grim.  "It's up to you! The
+future of civilization is in your lap this minute!  Can't you see that
+if you lose you'll be a martyr, and Islam will rise to avenge you?"
+
+"Inshallah," said Feisul, nodding.
+
+"But that if you let pride go by the board, and seem to run away,
+there'll be a breathing spell?  Asia would wonder for a few months, and
+do nothing, until it began to dawn on them that you had acted wisely and
+had a better plan in view."
+
+"I am not proud, except of my nation," Feisul answered.  "I would not
+let pride interfere with policy.  But it is too late to talk of this."
+
+"Which is better?" Grin demanded.  "A martyr, the very mention of whose
+name means war, or a living power for peace under a temporary cloud?"
+
+"I am afraid I am a poor host.  Forgive me," Feisul answered. "Dinner
+has been waiting all this while, and you have a lady with you.  This is
+disgraceful."
+
+He rose and led the way into another room, closing the discussion.  We
+ate an ordinary meal in an ordinary dining room, Feisul presiding and
+talking trivialities with Mabel and Hadad. There was an occasional
+boisterous interlude by Jeremy, but even he with his tales of unknown
+Arabia couldn't lift the load of depression.  Grim and I sat silent
+through the meal.  I experienced the sensation that you get when an
+expedition proves a failure and you've got to go home again with nothing
+done--all dreary emptiness;  but Grim was hatching something, as you
+could tell by the far-away expression and the glowering light in his
+eyes.  He looked about ready for murder.
+
+Narayan Singh's face all through the meal was a picture--delight and
+pride at dining with a king, amazement at his karma that had brought a
+sepoy of the line to hear such confidences first hand, chagrin over
+Grim's apparent failure and desire to be inconspicuous controlled his
+expression in turn.  Once or twice he tried to make conversation with
+me, but I was in no mood for it, being a grouchy old bear on occasion
+without decent manners.
+
+Feisul excused himself the minute the meal was over, saying he had a
+conference to attend, and we all went back into the sitting-room, where
+Grim took the chair he occupied before and marshalled us into a row on
+the seat in front of him.  He was back again in form--electric--and
+self-controlled.
+
+"Have you folk got the hang of this?" he asked.  "Do you realize what it
+means if Feisul goes out and gets scuppered?"
+
+We thought we did, even if we didn't.  I don't suppose anyone except the
+few who, like Grim, have made a life-study of the problem of Islam in
+all its bearings could quite have grasped it. Mabel had a viewpoint that
+served Grim's purpose as well as any at the moment.
+
+"That man's too good, and much too good-looking to be wasted!" she said
+emphatically.  "D'you suppose that if Colonel Lawrence were really here--"
+
+"Half a minute," said Grim, "and I'll come to that.  How about you,
+Hadad?  How far would you go to save Feisul from this Waterloo?"
+
+"I would go a long way," he answered cautiously.  "What do you intend?"
+
+"To appear near the firing-line, for one thing, with somebody who looks
+like Colonel Lawrence, and somebody else who looks enough like Feisul in
+one of Feisul's cars, and give the French a run for it in one direction
+while Feisul escapes in the other."
+
+"Wallahi!  But what if Feisul won't go?"
+
+"He'll get helped!  Did you ever hear what they did to Napoleon at
+Waterloo?  Seized his bridle and galloped away with him."
+
+"You mean I'm to act Lawrence again?" asked Mabel, looking deathly
+white.
+
+Grim nodded.
+
+"Who's cast for Feisul?" Jeremy inquired.
+
+"You are.  You're the only trained stage-actor in the bunch. You're his
+height--not unlike his figure--"
+
+"I resemble him as much as a kangaroo looks like an ostrich!" laughed
+Jeremy.  "You're talking wild, Jim.  What have you had to drink?"
+
+"How about you, Ramsden?  Will you see this through?"
+
+Jeremy shook his head at me.  I believe he thought for the moment that
+Grim had gone mad.  He hadn't the experience of Grim that I had, and
+consequently not the same confidence in Grim's ability to dream, catch
+the essence of the dream, pin it down and make a fact of it.
+
+"I'll go the limit," said I.
+
+"Well, I'll be damned" laughed Jeremy.  "All right;  same here. I stake
+a gold-mine and Rammy raises me.  Fetch your crown and sceptre and I'll
+play king to Jim's ace in a royal straight flush.  Mabel's queen.
+Hadad's a knave.  He looks it!  Keep smiling, Hadad, old top, and I'll
+let you forgive me.  Rammy's the ten-spot--tentative--tenacious--ten
+aces up his sleeve--and packs a ten-ton wallop when you get him going.
+What's Narayan Singh?  The deuce?"
+
+"The joker," answered Grim.  "Are you in on this?"
+
+"Sahib, there was no need to ask.  What your honor finds good enough--
+your honor's order--"
+
+"Orders have nothing to do with it.  We're not in British territory.
+This in unofficial.  I've no right to give you orders," said Grim.
+"You're free to refuse.  I'm likely to lose my job over this and so are
+you if you take part in it."
+
+Narayan Singh grinned hugely.
+
+"Hah!  A sepoy's position is a smaller stake than a major's commission
+or a gold-mine, but I likewise have a life to lose, and I play too!"
+
+Grim nodded curtly.  It was no time for returning compliments.
+
+"How about you, Mabel?  We can manage this without you, and you've a
+husband to think of--"
+
+"If he were here he'd hate it, but he'd give permission."
+
+"All right.  Now, Hadad.  What about it?"
+
+"Am I to obey you absolutely, not knowing what the--"
+
+Grim interrupted him:
+
+"The proposal's fair.  Either you withdraw now and hold your tongue, or
+come in with us.  If you're in I'll tell the details; if not, there's no
+need."
+
+"Wallahi!  What a sword-blade you are, Jimgrim!  If I say 'yes,' I risk
+my future on your backgammon board;  if I say 'no,' my life is worth a
+millieme, for you will tell that Sikh you call the 'joker' to attend to
+me!"
+
+"Not so," Grim answered.  "If you don't like the plan, I'll trust you to
+fall out and keep the secret."
+
+"Oh, in that case," answered Hadad, hesitating.  "Since you put it that
+way... well, it is lose all or perhaps win something--half-measures are
+no good--the alternative is ruin of the Arab cause--it is a forlorn
+hope--well, one throw of the dice, eh?--and all our fortunes on the
+table!--one little mistake and helas--finish!  Never mind.  Yes, I will
+play too.  I will play this to the end with you."
+
+"So we're all set," remarked Grim with a sigh of relief. Instantly he
+threw his shoulders back and began to set his pieces for the game.  And
+you know, there's a world of difference between the captain of a side
+who doesn't worry until the game begins and Grim's sort, who do their
+worrying beforehand and then play, and make the whole side play for
+every ounce that's in them.
+
+"Mabel, you're Lawrence.  Keep silent, be shy, avoid encounters--act
+like a man who's not supposed to be here, but who came to help Feisul
+contrary to express commands laid on him by the Foreign Office.  Get
+that?  Lawrence is a shy man, anyway--hates publicity, rank, anything
+that calls attention to himself.  The more shy you are, the easier
+you'll get away with it.  Feisul must help pretend you're Lawrence.  The
+presence of Lawrence would add to his prestige incalculably, and I think
+he'll see that, but if not, never mind, we'll manage.  Any questions?
+Quick!"
+
+You can't ask questions when you're given that sort of opportunity.  The
+right ones don't occur to you and the others seem absurd.  Grim knew
+that, of course, but when you're dealing with a woman there's just one
+chance in a hundred that she may think of something vital that hasn't
+occurred to anybody else. Most women aren't practical;  but it's the
+impractical things that happen.
+
+"Suppose we're captured by the French?" she suggested.  "That's what's
+going to happen," he answered.  "When they've got you, then you're Mrs.
+Mabel Ticknor, who never saw Lawrence and wouldn't recognize him if you
+did."
+
+"They'll ask why I'm wearing man's clothes, and masquerading as an
+Arab."
+
+"Well, you're a woman, aren't you?  You answer with another question--
+ask them just how safe a woman would be!  They may claim that their
+Algerians are baby-lambs, but they can't blame you for not believing it!
+Anything else?"
+
+She shook her head, and he turned on Hadad.
+
+"Hadad, lose no opportunity of whispering that Lawrence is with Feisul.
+Add that Lawrence doesn't want his presence known.  Hunt out two or
+three loyal Arabs on the staff and tell them the plan is to kidnap
+Feisul and carry him to safety across the border; but don't do it too
+soon;  wait until the debacle begins, and then persuade a few of them--
+old Ali, for instance, and Osman--choose the old guard--you and they
+bolt with him to Haifa.  The Syrians have been thoroughly undermined by
+propaganda;  gas will do the rest, and as soon as the Arabs see the
+Syrians run they'll listen to reason.  They know you, and know you're on
+the level. Do you understand?  Will you do that?"
+
+"I will try.  I see many a chance of spilling before this cup comes to
+the drinking, Jimgrim!"
+
+"Then carry it carefully!" Grim answered.   "Ramsden, take that car you
+came in.  Find that banker.  He's the boy who has bought Feisul's staff,
+or I'm much mistaken.  Bring him here."  "Suppose he won't come?"
+
+"Bring him.  Take Jeremy with you.  Try diplomacy first.  Tell him that
+a plot to kidnap Feisul has been discovered at the last minute, but give
+him to understand that no suspicion rests on him.  Get him, if you can,
+to send a message to the French General Staff, warning them to watch for
+Feisul and two civilians and Lawrence in an auto.  After that bring him
+if you have to put him in a sack."
+
+"What's his name, and where does he live?"
+
+"Adolphe Rene.  Everybody knows his house.  Jeremy, look as unlike
+Feisul as you can until the time comes, but study the part and be ready
+to jump into his clothes.  Narayan Singh, stay with me.  You and I will
+do the dirty work.  Get busy, Ramsden."
+
+
+Circumstances work clock-fashion, wheel fitting into wheel, when those
+tides that Shakespeare spoke of are at flood.  Disregarding all the
+theory and argument about human will as opposed to cosmic law I say
+this, without any care at all who contradicts me:
+
+That whoever is near the hub of happenings is the agent of Universal
+Law, and can no more help himself than can the watch that tells the
+hour.  The men who believe that they make history should really make a
+thoughtful fellow laugh.  "The moving finger writes, and having writ
+moves on";  the old tentmaker Omar knew the truth of it.  You could
+almost hear the balance-wheel of Progress click as the door opened
+before Grim had finished speaking, and a staff officer appeared to
+invite him to be present at Feisul's conference.
+
+Grim asked at once for the auto for me (I couldn't have had it
+otherwise), and a moment later Jeremy and I were scooting into darkness
+through narrow streets and driving rain, with the hubs of the wheels
+awash in places and "shipping it green" over the floor when we dipped
+and pitched over a cross-street gutter.  The Arab driver knew the way,
+from which I take it he had a compass in his head as well as a charm
+against accidents and a spirit of recklessness that put faith in
+worn-out springs.  There wasn't room for more than one set of wheels at
+a time in most of the streets we tore through, but a camel tried to
+share one fairway with us and had the worst of it;  he cannoned off into
+an alley 'himd end first, and we could hear him bellowing with rage a
+block away.
+
+And our manner of stopping was like our progress, prompt.  The brake-
+bands went on with a shriek and Jeremy and I pitched forward as the car
+brought up against the kerb in front of an enormous door, whose brass
+knocker shone like gold in the rays of our headlights.  We told the Arab
+to wait for us and stepped knee-deep into a pool invisible, stumbled and
+nearly fell over a great stone set to bridge the flood between street
+and door, then proceeded to use the knocker importunately, thunderously,
+angrily, as men with wet feet and bruised toes likely will, whatever the
+custom of the country.
+
+We went on knocking, taking turns, until the door opened at last and the
+banker's servant peered at us with a candle in his hand, demanding to
+know in the name of the thousand and one devils whom Solomon boiled in
+oil what impudent scavengers were making all that noise.  But the banker
+himself was in the background, thinking perhaps that the French had come
+already, on the lookout over the servant's shoulder for a glimpse of a
+kepi.  So we put our shoulders to the door, thrust by the servant, and
+walked in.
+
+"Take care!  I have a pistol in my hand!" said the banker's voice.
+
+"Three shots for a shilling at me then!" retorted Jeremy.
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"Tell that shivering fool to bring the candle, and you'll see!"
+
+"Oh, you, is it!  I told you to come in the morning.  I can't see you
+now."
+
+"Can't see me, eh?  Come in here and peel your eyes, cocky!  Sit down
+and look at us.  There, take a pew.  Wonder where I learned such good
+English?  Well, I used to shine the toenails of the Prince o' Wales, and
+you have to pass a Civil Service examination before they give you that
+good job.  I talk any language except French and Jewish, but this master
+of mine turns out to be a Jew who talks French, and not a prizefighter
+after all.
+
+"What did I tell you this evening?  Said he was a spy for the French,
+didn't I?  I tell you, I'm a dependable man.  What I say you can bet on
+till you've lost all your money.  Here he is, spying to beat the
+promised-landers--just had tea with Feisul and learned all the inside
+facts--offered me a pound to come and find you, but I charged him two
+and got the money in advance.
+
+"You ought to pay me a commission, too, and then I'll get married if
+there's an honest woman left in Damascus.  If either of you want my
+advice, you won't believe a word the other says, but I expect you're
+both too wilful to be guided.  Anyhow, you'll have to talk in front of
+me, because my master is afraid of being murdered;  he isn't afraid of
+ghosts or bad smells, but the sight of a long knife turns his heart to
+water and sets him to praying so loud that you can't get a word in
+edgewise.  Go on, both of you--yalla!  Talk!"
+
+Does it begin to be obvious why kings used to employ court jesters?  The
+modern cabinets should have them--men like Jeremy (though they'd be hard
+to find) to break the crust of situations. Suspicion weakens in the
+presence of incongruity.
+
+"This fellow seems less than half-witted," I said, "but he's shrewd, and
+I've found him useful.  Unfortunately he has picked up a lot of
+information, so we'll have to keep an eye on him.  My business is to
+communicate with the French General Staff and I'm told you know how to
+manage it."
+
+"Huh-huh?  Who told you that?"
+
+"Those who gave me my instructions.  If you don't know who they are
+without my telling you, you're the wrong man and I'll not waste time
+with you."
+
+"Let us suppose that I know then.  Proceed."
+
+"Your name was given to me as that of a man who can be trusted to take
+necessary action in the interests of ... er ... you understand?"
+
+"Uh-huh!"
+
+"The plot for Feisul to be kidnapped by some Syrian members of his staff
+has been discovered at the last minute," I said, looking hard at him;
+and he winced palpably.
+
+"Mon Dieu! You mean--"
+
+"That it is not too late to save the situation.  You have not been
+accused of connection with it.  I came here in pursuance of a different
+plan to kidnap him--a sort of reserve plan, to be employed in case other
+means should fail.  All arrangements are in working order except the one
+item of communicating with the French General Staff.  I require you to
+accompany me for that purpose, and to send off to them immediately a
+message at my dictation."
+
+"Tschaa!  Suppose you show me your authority?"
+
+"Certainly!" I answered.
+
+Realizing that he wasn't in immediate danger of life he had returned his
+own pistol to his pocket.  So I showed him the muzzle of mine, and he
+divined without a sermon on the subject that it would go off and shoot
+accurately unless he showed discretion.  He didn't offer to move when
+Jeremy's agile fingers found his pocket and flicked out the mother-of-
+pearl-handled, rim-fire thing with which he had previously kept his
+courage warm.
+
+"I was told not to trust you too far," I explained.  "I was warned in
+advance that you might question my credentials.  You are said to be
+jealous of interference.  As a precaution against miscarriage of this
+plan through jealousy on your part, I was ordered to oblige you to obey
+me."
+
+"And if I refuse?"
+
+"Your widow will then be the individual most concerned.  Be good enough
+to take pen and paper, and write a letter to my dictation."
+
+Jeremy went to the door, which was partly open, made sure that the
+servant was out of earshot, and slammed it tight.  Rene the banker went
+to his escritoire, took paper, and shook his fountain pen.
+
+"How shall I commence the letter?" he asked me with a dry, sly smile.
+
+He thought he had me there.  There are doubtless proper forms of address
+that serve to establish the genuineness of letters written by a spy.
+
+"Commence half-way down the page," I answered.  "We'll insert the
+address afterwards.  Write in French:"
+
+
+"I shall accompany the Emir Feisul and Colonel Lawrence to the front
+tonight, former plan having miscarried.  When Syrian retreat begins look
+out for automobile containing Feisul and Lawrence, which may be
+recognized easily as it will also contain myself and another civilian in
+plain clothes.  At the psychological moment a white flag will be shown
+from it, waved perhaps surreptitiously by one of the civilians.  In the
+event of breakdown of the automobile a horsed vehicle will be used and
+the same signal will apply.  For the sake of myself and the other
+civilian, please instruct all officers to keep a sharp lookout and
+protect the party from being fired on."
+
+
+"There," I said, "sign that and address it."
+
+He hesitated.  He couldn't doubt that his own arrangements with traitors
+on the staff to kidnap Feisul had gone amiss, else how should I be aware
+of them at all--I, who had only arrived that evening in Damascus?  But
+it puzzled him to know why I should make him write the letter, or, since
+his plan must have failed, why I should let him share in the kidnapping.
+He smelt the obvious rat.  Why didn't I sign the letter myself, and get
+all the credit afterward, as any other spy would do?
+
+"You sign it," he said, pushing the letter toward me;  and I got one of
+those sudden inspirations that there is no explaining--the right idea
+for handling fox Rene the banker.
+
+"So you're afraid to sign that, are you?  All right;  give it here, I'll
+sign it;  pass me your pen.  But you'll come along with me tonight, my
+lad, and make your explanations to the French in the morning!"
+
+Looking back, I can see how the accusation worked, although it was an
+arrow shot at a venture.  His greasy, sly, fox face with its touch of
+bold impudence betrayed him for a man who would habitually hedge his
+bets.  Feisul's safe-conduct had protected him from official
+interference, but it had needed more than that to preserve him from
+unofficial murder, and beyond a doubt he had betrayed the French in
+minor ways whenever that course looked profitable.  Now in a crisis he
+had small choice but to establish himself as loyal to the stronger side.
+He hurriedly wrote a number at the bottom of the letter, and another
+followed by three capitals and three more figures at the top.
+
+"Seal it up and send it--quick!" I ordered him.
+
+He obeyed and Jeremy called the servant.
+
+"Summon Francois," said the banker, and the servant disappeared again.
+
+Francois must remain a mystery.  He was insoluble.  Dressed in a pair of
+baggy Turkish pants, with a red sash round his middle, knotted loosely
+over a woollen jersey that had wide horizontal black and yellow strips,
+with a grey woollen shawl over the lot, and a new tarboosh a size or two
+too small for him perched at an angle on his head, he stood shifting
+from one bare foot to the other and moved a toothless gap in his lower
+face in what was presumably a smile.
+
+He had no nose that you could recognize, although there were two blow-
+holes in place of nostrils with a hideous long scar above them.  One ear
+was missing.  He had no eyebrows.  But the remaining ear was pointed at
+the top like a satyr's, and his little beady eyes were as black as a
+bird's and inhumanly bright.
+
+The banker spoke to him in the voice you would use to a rather spoilt
+child when obedience was all-important, using Arabic with a few French
+words thrown in.
+
+"Ah, here is Francois.  Good Francois!  Francois, mon brave, here is a
+letter, eh?  You know where to take it--eh? Ha-ha!  Francois knows,
+doesn't he!  Francois doesn't talk;  he tells nobody; he's wise, is
+Francois!  He runs, eh?  He runs through the rain and the night;  and he
+hides so that nobody can see him;  and he delivers the letter;  and
+somebody gives Francois money and tobacco and a little rum;  and
+Francois comes running back to the nice little, dark little hole where
+he sleeps.  Plenty to eat, eh, Francois?  Nice soft food that needs no
+chewing!  Nothing to do but run with a letter now and then, eh?  A brave
+fellow is Francois--a clever fellow--a trustworthy fellow--a dependable,
+willing fellow, always ready to please!  Ready to go?
+
+"Well, there's the letter;  be careful with it, and run-run-run like a
+good boy!  A whole bottle of rum when you come back--think of it!  A
+whole bottle of nice brown rum to yourself in that nice little room
+where your bed is!  There, goodbye!"
+
+The creature addressed as Francois vanished, with a snort and a sort of
+squeal that may have been meant for speech.  "That is the best messenger
+in Syria," said Rene.  "He is priceless--incorruptible, silent, and as
+sure as Destiny!  The French General Staff will have that letter before
+dawn.  Now--what next?"
+
+"You come with me," I answered.
+
+He felt better now that the message was on its way;  second thought
+convinced him of my connection with the French.  There is no more
+profitless delusion than to suppose that a country's secret agents are
+always its own nationals.  They are almost always not.
+
+If the French used only Frenchmen, Germany used none but Germans, Great
+Britain only Englishmen, and so on, it might be prettier and easier for
+the police, but intelligence departments would starve.  So there was
+nothing about an obvious American doing spy-work for the French that
+should stick in his craw;  and that being so, the more cheerfully he
+aided me the better it would likely be for him.
+
+So he called for the servant again, and proved himself a good campaigner
+by superintending the packing of a big basket with provisions--bread and
+butter, cold chicken, wine, olives, and hot coffee in a thermos bottle.
+
+"The French will be in Damascus by noon tomorrow," he said.  "Ha-ha!
+Those French and their hungry Algerians!  We do well to take a good
+provision with us--enough for two days at least.  We shall enter with
+them, I suppose, or at least behind them, and of course my house here
+will receive consideration;  but--ha-ha!--how many chickens do you
+believe will be purchasable in Damascus one hour after the first
+Algerians get here?  Eh?  Put in another chicken, Hassan, mon brave.  Eh
+bien, oui--pack the basket full; put in more of everything!"
+
+At last he got into an overcoat lined with fox-pelt, for the night air
+was chilly and an overcoat is less trouble than blankets if you expect
+to spend a night on the move.  We hove the huge basket into the waiting
+auto, slammed the front door of the house behind us, piled into the back
+seat and were off.
+
+"I shall be glad when this business is over," said Rene, with a sigh of
+satisfaction.  "I am a banker by profession.  For me the ebb and flow of
+trade, with its certainties and its discretions. But what would you?
+Trade must be prepared for;  doors that will not open must be forced;
+those who stand in the way must be thrust aside.  This Feisul is an
+impossible fellow.  He is a hypocrite, I tell you--one of those praters
+about righteousness who won't understand that the church and the mosque
+are the places for that sort of thing.  Eh?  You follow me?  But tell
+me, what has been done to Daulch, Hattin and Aubek?  Were they backed
+against a wall and shot?  Who betrayed them?  Too bad that such a plan
+should fail, for it was perfect."
+
+"Far from perfect," I answered;  for that one piece of strategy I have
+by heart--the way to make a man tell all he knows is to pretend to
+superior knowledge.
+
+"Heh?  How could you improve on it?  Three members of the staff to order
+sauve-qui-peut unexpectedly, seize Feisul, and deliver him dead or
+alive?  What is better than that?  But what has been done to the three?"
+
+"Nothing," I answered.
+
+"Just like him!  just like him!  I tell you, that man Feisul would
+rather be a martyr than succeed at his proper business." We reached the
+palace just as Feisul was leaving it.  Several members of his staff were
+hard on his heels in the porch and our party was behind them again, with
+Mabel last of all.  There was a line of waiting autos nearly long enough
+to fill the drive, but an utter absence of military fuss, and no
+shouting or hurry.  It looked in the dark more like a funeral than the
+departure of a king to join his army at the front.
+
+I remained in the car with the banker and sent Jeremy to report our
+doings to Grim.  Presently I could see him standing under the porch lamp
+with a hand on Grim's shoulder, and I leaned out over the auto door to
+watch;  but Rene the banker leaned back, snuggled up in his overcoat,
+liking neither to be seen nor to get his skin wet.  I expected to see
+the three staff officers Daulch, Hattin and Aubek arrested there and
+then;  but nothing happened, except that Feisul suddenly drove away with
+Mabel and Grim in the same car with him.
+
+There followed a rush for the other cars, and the whole line started
+forward, Jeremy jumping in as our car passed the porch. "Daulch, Hattin
+and Aubek are at the front," he said, and began humming to himself.
+
+"At the front?" demanded Rene, sitting upright suddenly.  "At the front,
+you say?  When did they leave for the front?"
+
+"This evening," answered Jeremy.
+
+You couldn't see his face in the dark, but I think he was chuckling.
+
+"Strange!" said the banker.  "Yet you say they have been betrayed--their
+plan is known--yet they left for the front this evening?"
+
+It was pitch-dark inside the car, for the rain swished down in torrents
+and Jeremy fastened the flaps after he got in.  Rene's change of
+expression was a thing that you could feel, not see. He kept perfect
+silence for about two minutes, while the car skidded and bumped at the
+rear of the procession.  Then:
+
+"You tell me that Feisul knows, and yet..."
+
+"Oh, I didn't tell you that," laughed Jeremy.  "It was this other man
+who said so.  I never deceived anyone;  I'm an honest fellow, I am.
+Remember, I warned you against him when we talked in the hotel;  you
+can't blame me.  I told you he was up to mischief.  I advised you to
+keep a careful eye on him and to look twice at his paper!  Wallah!  You
+must be a lamb in foxskin.  My master is a wolf in a woolly overcoat!
+Wait till you've seen him eat that chicken that you brought, and then
+you'll know what kind of a man he is!
+
+"You see, you should have given me money when I asked you for it. I'm a
+fellow with a price, I am.  Whoever pays my price gets his money's
+worth.  If you'd had the sense to pay me more than this man does, I'd
+have helped you trick him instead of helping him trick you;  but he gave
+me my wages before dinner and you gave me nothing, so here you are, and
+I wouldn't like to be keeping your pair of trousers warm!  I tell you,
+this Ramsden effendi is an awful fellow, who will stick at nothing, and
+I'm worse because I'm honest and do what I'm paid to do!"
+
+I took the precaution of putting my arm around Rene, for it was likely
+that he had another weapon hidden somewhere, and the obvious thing for
+him to do was to shoot the two of us and make a bolt for it.  For a
+second I thought I felt his hand moving;  but it was Jeremy's, searching
+all his pockets and feeling for hidden steel.  So I pulled out a cigar
+and lit a match.
+
+Of course, anyone's face looks ghastly by that sort of sudden light;
+but Rene's was a picture of hate, rage, baffled cunning and fear, such
+as I had never seen;  his eyes looked like an animal's at bay, and the
+way his lips parted from his teeth conveyed the impression that he was
+searching his mind wildly for a desperate remedy that would ruin all
+concerned except himself.
+
+But it was only a stale old recourse that he had.  In a man's extremity
+he turns by instinct to his own tin gods for help, and you may read his
+whole heart and religion then.
+
+"Very well;  very well," he said, as if he were on the rack, speaking
+hurriedly to get it over with.  "I make the sacrifice. You will find my
+money in an inner vest pocket underneath my vest.  It is a life's
+savings.  Take it, and let me go.  It is not much--only a little--I am
+not a rich man--I had hoped to be, but it would mean a fortune to you no
+doubt.  Take it and be merciful;  give me back the smaller packet of the
+two, keep the larger, and let me go."
+
+Out of curiosity I reached inside his vest and pulled out both packets.
+Jeremy struck a match.  The smaller packet contained a draft on Paris
+for a quarter of a million francs.  The larger held nothing but
+correspondence.  I returned them to him.
+
+"Listen!" I said.  "I've never yet murdered a man, so if you provide me
+with another excuse for murdering you, you'll be a virgin victim.  Keep
+that in mind!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+"Catch the Alfies napping and kick hell out of 'em!"
+
+
+You're no doubt familiar with the fact that the accounts given by two
+men who have witnessed a battle from the same angle will differ widely,
+not only in minor detail but in fundamentals;  so you won't look to me
+for confirmation of any one of the countless stories that have seen the
+light of print, pretending to explain how the French won Damascus so
+easily and unexpectedly.  I was only on the inside, looking outward as
+it were;  the fellows on the outside, looking in, would naturally give a
+different explanation.
+
+Then you must bear in mind that this is a day of "official" accounts
+that would make a limping dog of Ananias.  When the General Staff of an
+invading army controls all the wires and all lines of communication you
+may believe what they choose to tell you, if you wish.  But you don't
+have to, as they say in Maine. And I admit that all I saw was from a
+curtained auto as we swayed and bumped over broken roads, with an
+occasional interlude when Jeremy and I got out to lend our shoulders and
+help the Arab driver heave the car out of a slough.
+
+My clearest memory is of that Arab--silent, stolid, staring like an owl
+straight forward most of the time--but a perfect marvel in emergencies,
+when he would suddenly spring to life, swear a living streak of
+brimstone blasphemy in high falsetto, and perform a driver's miracle.
+
+By two hours after midnight we were running on four flat tires; and
+I've got the name of the maker of those wheels for future reference and
+use.  One spring broke, but we went forward sailor-fashion, with a jury-
+rig of chain and rope, after getting more gas from some Christian monks,
+who swore they hadn't any and wept when one of Feisul's officers
+demonstrated that they had.  You couldn't see any monastery;  I don't
+even know that there was one--nothing but lean faces with tonsured tops
+that nodded in unison and lied fearfully.
+
+The gunfire began to be heavy about that time, although nothing like the
+thousand-throated bedlam of Flanders.  As neither side could see the
+other and neither had any ranges marked, my guess is that the French
+were advertising their advance--doing a little propaganda that was cheap
+for all concerned except the tax-payers.  And the Syrian army was
+shooting back crazily, sending over long shots on the off chance, more
+to encourage themselves than for any other reason.
+
+The sensation was rather like riding in an ambulance away from the
+battle instead of toward it, for you couldn't see anything and you had a
+sense of helpless detachment from it all, as if a power you couldn't
+control were carrying you away from a familiar destiny to one that you
+couldn't imagine.  It wasn't so much like a dream as like a different,
+real existence that you couldn't understand because it bore no kind of
+relation to anything in the past.
+
+Anyhow, we bumped and blundered on until dawn came, streaked with
+wonderful rolling mist, and gave a glimpse at intervals of a wide plain
+sloping toward the west, with long lines of infantry and here and there
+guns extended across it in parallels drawn north and south.
+
+The rifle firing started ten minutes after dawn, and it was all over in
+less than half an hour;  but I can't describe exactly how the finish
+came, because the wind was toward us and the morning mist blew along in
+blanketing white masses that only allowed you a momentary glimpse and
+then shut off the view.
+
+We were about a mile behind the firing-line and I couldn't see Feisul's
+car or any of the others.  For the moment there was just one clear line
+of vision, straight from where I sat to the nearest infantry.  I could
+see about fifty yards of the line and perhaps that many men;  and they
+were blazing away furiously over a low earthwork, although I couldn't
+see a sign of the French. There was hardly any artillery firing at that
+time.
+
+Suddenly without any obvious reason the men whose backs I was watching
+broke and ran.  The mist obscured them instantly and the line of vision
+shifted, so that bit by bit I saw I dare say a mile of the firing line.
+The whole lot were running for their lives and, look where I would,
+there wasn't a sign of a Frenchman anywhere.
+
+I should say it took about ten minutes for the first of them to reach
+the dirt road, where our autos stood hub-deep in mud, and by that time
+we had shoved and pulley-hauled them into movement, our engines making
+as much row as a nest of machine-guns as they struggled against the
+strain.  We didn't want to be swamped under that tide of fugitives.
+
+But they took no notice of us.  They had thrown away their weapons and
+were running for home with eyes distended and nothing in mind but to put
+distance between there and the enemy.  I jumped out of the car and
+seized one man.
+
+"What are you running from?  What has happened?" I demanded, holding him
+harder the more he struggled.
+
+"Poison gas!" he gasped, and I let him go.
+
+I thought I caught a whiff of the darned stuff then, but that may have
+been imagination.
+
+"Poison gas!" I said, returning to the car, and Rene made a fine
+exhibition of himself, smothering his head under the foxlined overcoat
+and screaming.
+
+He got right down on the floor of the car and lay there huddled and
+gasping--which may have been a sensible precaution;  I don't know.
+There was no time just then to bother with him.
+
+
+The flukey morning breeze shifted several points.  The mist curled
+suddenly and began to flow diagonally across our line of cars instead of
+toward us, and from one moment to the next you could see straight along
+the road for maybe a mile or more. There was a sight worth seeing--
+Feisul's cavalry in full rout--running away from ghosts by the look of
+it--their formation hardly yet broken, horse and man racing with the
+wind and a scattering of unhorsed fugitives streaming behind like a
+comet's tail.
+
+According to Grim, who should know, that cavalry division was the
+kingpin of Feisul's plan.  He had intended to lead a raid in person,
+swooping down the French flank to their rear;  but the three staff
+traitors, Daulch, Hattin and Aubck, sent forward the previous evening to
+place the division and hold it ready, had simply tipped the French off
+to the whole plan and at the critical moment of Feisul's arrival on the
+scene had ordered the sauve-qui-peut.  I don't believe the French used
+more than a can or two of gas.  I don't believe they had more than a few
+cans of it so far advanced.
+
+But the sauve-qui-peut might have been useless without Feisul's capture,
+for he was just the man to rally a routed army and snatch victory out of
+a defeat.  Nobody knew better than Feisul the weakness of the French
+communications, and the work of those three traitors was only half done
+when the cavalry took to its heels.  The one man who could possibly save
+the day had to be bagged and handed over.
+
+I didn't realize all that, of course, in the twinkling of an eye, as
+they say you do in a climax.  Maybe I've never faced a climax. I'm no
+psychologist and not at all given to review of sudden situations in the
+abstract.
+
+There was a fight, or a riot, or something like it going on near the
+head of our line of autos.  The first two or three had come to a
+standstill;  several in the middle of the line were trying to wheel
+outward and bolt for it behind the fleeing cavalry, and those at the
+tail end were blocked by one that had broken down. Of course everybody
+was yelling at the top of his lungs and the hurrying shreds of blown
+mist further confounded the confusion.
+
+So Jeremy and I ran forward, plunging through the mud and knocking over
+whoever blocked our way.  It was rather fun--like the football field at
+school.  But one man--a Syrian officer--stood near the last of the
+forward cars with the evident purpose of standing off interference.  He
+took careful aim at me with a revolver, fired point-blank, and missed.
+
+I forgot all about my own pistol and went for him with a laugh and a
+yell of sheer exhilaration.  There's an eighth of a ton of me, mostly
+bone and muscle, so it isn't a sinecure to have to stop my fist when the
+rest of the bulk is under way behind it.  I landed so hard on his nose,
+and with such tremendous impetus, that he hadn't enough initial
+stability to take the impact and bring me up on my feet.  He went down
+like a ninepin, I on top of him, laughing with mud in my teeth, and
+Jeremy landed on top of the two of us, holding the skirts of his cloak
+in both hands as he jumped.
+
+Jeremy picked up the fellow's revolver and threw it out of sight, and
+the two of us ran on again--too late by now to help in the emergency,
+but in time for the next event.
+
+Grim had managed everything, although he was bleeding, and smiling
+serenely through the blood.  Hadad was there, not smiling at all, but
+bleached white with excitement;  he had brought a number of Arab
+officers with him, six or seven of whom were standing on the running-
+board of the front car and all arguing with Feisul, who sat back with
+his feet and hands tied, guarded by Narayan Singh.
+
+At Grim's feet--dead, with bullets through their heads--were three
+Syrian staff officers.  They were the traitors Daulch, Hattin and Aubek.
+Grim's pistol was in his right hand and had been used.
+
+There had been a first-class fight, all over in two minutes;  for the
+traitors hadn't arrived on the scene without assistants. Unfortunately
+for them, Hadad had turned up at the same moment with his loyalists.
+Narayan Singh had jumped from the car behind and seized Feisul, thrown
+him to the floor out of the path of bullets, and tied his arms.  It was
+actually Mabel, hardly realizing what she was doing but obeying the
+Sikh's orders yelled in her ear as he struggled to keep his wiry
+prisoner down, who tied the king's feet, using her Arab girdle.
+
+Feisul, of course, was all for dying at the head of a remnant of his
+men.  That would be the first impulse of any decent leader in like
+circumstance.  But his loyal friends, eager to die with him if they
+must, but unwilling to die at all if there were an alternative, were
+overwhelming him with streams of words and promises.  Suddenly two of
+them jumped into the car and began to untie his arms and feet.  Grim,
+looking swiftly to right and left, saw Jeremy and pounced on him so
+fiercely that an onlooker might have guessed another fight to the death
+was under way.  Too excited to say what he had in mind, he tugged at
+Jeremy's clothes.
+
+"I get you, Jim--I get you!" Jeremy laughed gaily, and in ten seconds
+had stripped himself down to his underwear.
+
+Hadad must have been discussing details of the plan with Grim along the
+road;  for he got busy at the same time, persuading Feisul to part with
+his garments--not that his consent really mattered at the moment;  they
+were pulled off him by half a dozen hands at once, and Jeremy had the
+best of that bargain all right, for in addition to silk headdress and a
+fine black Arab full-dress coat, there was linen of a sort you can't
+buy--better stuff than bishops wear and clean, which Jeremy's own
+wasn't.
+
+The time it takes to read this gives a totally false impression of the
+speed.  The whole thing took place, I should say, within two minutes
+from the time when I punched that Syrian's nose until Mabel and Narayan
+Singh stood beside me watching Hadad, two more Arabs and Feisul drive
+away, with a second car crowded full of loyalists in close attendance.
+
+
+By that time Jeremy was dressed in Feisul's clothes;  and though he
+didn't look a bit like Feisul from a yard away, in the mist at ten
+yards, provided you were looking for Feisul, you'd have taken your Bible
+oath he was the man;  for he had the gesture and mannerism copied to
+perfection.
+
+However, standing there wasn't going to increase the real Feisul's
+chance of escaping.  The sooner we got caught, the quicker the French
+would discover that our man had given them the slip.  Our business was
+to give the French a long chase in the wrong direction, and those bogged
+autos weren't ideal for the purpose.
+
+But they were the only means in sight just then, and we had to bear in
+mind that message I had made Rene send, warning the French to look out
+for an auto with a white flag and two civilians together with Feisul and
+Lawrence.  So we picked out the two best that remained, pitched Rene and
+his basket of provisions into the front one with Mabel and Jeremy, piled
+Narayan Singh in after them to take my place as the second civilian, and
+started them off straight forward, Grim and I following in a second car
+after I had paid our former Arab driver handsomely and sent him off
+grinning to give a lift to as many runaways as the car would hold.
+
+We learned afterward that the rascal made a fortune, charging as much as
+fifty pounds sterling for the trip halfway back to Damascus, at which
+point the car collapsed.  They say he carried eleven officers that far,
+bought two wives with the proceeds and escaped all the way to a village
+near Mecca, where his home was.
+
+You know how bewildering and tricky those early mists are when they
+start to roll up before the wind.  We had hardly got going when the
+whole mass seemed to shift in one great cloud, covering the fleeing
+troops and incidentally Feisul, but leaving us in our two autos high and
+dry, as it were, in full view of the French. And they were advancing by
+that time.
+
+I couldn't see more than a division of them that we would have to reckon
+with--nearly all Algerians--and they looked dead-weary.  I guess they
+had forced the pace in advance of the main body in order to take
+advantage of the treason of Feisul's officers. They came slouching
+forward with their rifles at the trail and a screen of skirmishers
+thrown out a quarter of a mile or so ahead.
+
+There were cavalry and guns far off on their right, evidently trying to
+work around to the flank of the fleeing array, but those were much too
+far away to trouble us and were going in the wrong direction.  Rolling
+banks of mist shut off the farther view to westward and there was no
+guessing where the main French force might be, and for all I know it
+hadn't started from the coast yet.
+
+
+Fortune came to our rescue with one riderless horse, a splendid Arab
+gelding tied by the bridle to the wheel of a water-cart and left behind
+in the stampede.  Jeremy appropriated it, riding Arab fashion with short
+stirrups, and I wouldn't have blamed Feisul's own brother for falsely
+identifying him at ten yards.  He was born mischievous and he
+caricatured Feisul on horseback as if he were acting for the movies.
+
+I guess the French officers had good glasses with them, for Jeremy had
+hardly mounted when the advancing Algerians opened a hot fire on us.
+The whole division surely wouldn't have blazed away, with machine-guns
+and all, at two cars and a man on horseback unless someone had passed
+the word along that Feisul was in full view.
+
+So Grim and I abandoned our car, driver and all, and jumped into
+Jeremy's place.  It wasn't more than two hundred yards to the top of a
+gentle rise, over which we disappeared from view;  and just as we bumped
+over it I wrenched out the white tablecloth in which Rene's chicken and
+stuff was wrapped and waved it violently.
+
+Then, Lord, what a sight!  Below us, sheltered between two flanking
+hillocks, was about a division of Feisul's Arab infantry, packing up
+sulkily, preparing to follow the retreat. It was a safe bet the French
+didn't know they were there, and I dare say the same thought occurred to
+every one of us the same instant.  Mabel thought of it.  I know I did.
+But Jeremy voiced it first, heeling his horse up beside us.
+
+"What do you say, Jim?  I bet you I can rally that gang.  Shall I lead
+'em and lick hell out of the Algies?"
+
+But Grim shook his head.
+
+"You might, but the game is to pull the plug properly.  Get this lot on
+the run.  The less fighting, the less risk of drasticism when the French
+get to Damascus.  Chase 'em off home!"
+
+So Jeremy did it;  and that, I believe, accounts for a story that got in
+the newspapers about Feisul trying to spring a surprise on the French at
+the last minute.  Some French officers in armored cars came over the
+brow of the hill in pursuit of us--three cars, three officers, three
+machine-guns, and about a dozen men.  One car quit on the hill-top, so I
+suppose it broke down, but its occupants must have seen Jeremy careering
+up and down the line encouraging those sulky Arabs to get a move on, and
+I suppose they told tales afterwards to a newspaper correspondent at the
+base.
+
+Anyhow, the two pursuing armored cars didn't dare come near enough to be
+dangerous until we had followed the retreating Arab regiments for about
+a mile, and the Algerians appeared over the hill-top, coming very
+slowly.  A long-range rifle-fire commenced, the Arabs returning it
+scrappily as they retreated;  and we made believe there were other
+regiments to be shepherded, steering a northward course downhill toward
+broken ground that couldn't have suited our purpose better.  By the way
+those armored cars came after us, keeping their distance, it was clear
+enough that they suspected an ambush.
+
+So we had a clear start and led them a dance in and out among boulders
+and the branches of a watercourse, Jeremy galloping ahead to spy a
+course out.  Whenever they came in view we acted a little piece for
+them, making Rene wave the white cloth while I protected him and held
+off Mabel and Grim, who went through the motions of trying to brain me
+with pistol butts.
+
+Two or three times they opened fire, more by way of forcing a surrender,
+I think, than with any intention of hitting us;  they wanted to take
+Feisul alive.  It was like a game of fox and geese, and with Jeremy
+scouting ahead we could have kept them dodging us for hours if we hadn't
+run out of gas.
+
+Then we abandoned the car and took refuge in a cave that stank as if it
+had been a tomb for generations.  The French drew up their cars fifty
+yards away with machine-guns covering the cave mouth; and after we were
+sure they weren't going to squirt a stream of lead at us, I went out
+with the tablecloth to negotiate terms.
+
+I didn't want to go, but Grim seemed to think they'd understand my
+French.
+
+Of course, there wasn't anything really to argue about, but I played for
+time, because every minute was of value to the real Feisul, speeding on
+his way to British territory.  The French officer who did the talking
+for his side--a little squat, pale, pug-faced fellow, who gave the
+impression of having risen from the ranks without learning polite
+manners on the way, agreed to accept our surrender and spare our lives
+for the time being;  and by that time the smell in the cave had nearly
+overcome our party, so they all marched out.
+
+And Lord!  The French captain was spiteful when he discovered that
+Jeremy wasn't Feisul after all.  He swore like a wet cat, accused Mabel
+of being a spy, took away our basket of provisions, and I think would
+have shot Jeremy out of hand if Jeremy hadn't started clowning and made
+the other Frenchmen laugh.
+
+Laughter and murder no more mix than oil and water.  He did what he
+called a harem dance for them, misusing his stomach outrageously, and
+the incongruity of that by a descendant of the Prophet took all the
+sting out of the situation.  But they burned our abandoned car in sheer
+ill temper before crowding us into their own.  And they shot the good
+horse.
+
+The joy-ride that followed was rather like the kind they give pigs on
+the way to the sausage shop--hurried and not intended to be mirthful.
+
+"What's the use of losing tempers?" I asked Captain Jacques Daudet, who
+had captured us.
+
+He sat on my knees, with his pistol pressed against my chest. "Why not
+regard the whole thing as a joke?  You've done your best and nobody can
+blame you.  Besides, what can possibly happen? What do you suppose
+they'll do to us?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders and his little cold blue eyes met mine.
+
+"You will all be shot, of course," he answered.  "After that..."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders again.  But he cast no gloom;  for Jeremy kept
+the lot of us, French too, excepting Daudet, in roars of laughter for
+ten miles until we reached temporary headquarters, where a born
+gentleman in a peaked red cap with gold on it sat on a camp-stool
+directing things.
+
+He recognized Grim at the first glance and knew him for an American in
+British service.  He looked Grim in the eye and smiled.  We told our
+story in turns, interrupting one another and being interrupted by Rene.
+The officer turned on the banker savagely, ordered him sent to the rear,
+and smiled at Grim again.
+
+Then he picked up the banker's belongings, including the two packages,
+and tossed them after him with an air of utter contempt.
+
+Whereat he smiled at all of us.
+
+"And you are quite sure that the Emir Feisul has escaped?" he asked.
+
+"Well, there are those whom the news will annoy, which is too bad, but
+can't be helped.  For myself, I cannot say that I shall shed tears.
+Madame..."  He looked straight at Mabel.  "Major..." He met Grim's eyes
+and smiled.  "Messieurs ..."  It was my turn, and Narayan Singh's;  his
+steady stare was good and made you feel like shaking hands with him.
+"Monsieur Scapin (Clown)..."  That was meant for Jeremy, and they both
+laughed. "You have been adroit, but do you think I could depend on your
+discretion?"
+
+We did our best to look discreet.
+
+"You see, Madame et Messieurs, this is not warfare.  We desire to
+accomplish a definite object with as little unpleasantness as possible.
+I shall regret the necessity of sending you to Beirut, but that is for
+your safety.  An additional and very sound precaution which you
+yourselves might take would be to preserve complete silence regarding
+the events of the last two days. Subject to that condition, you will be
+given facilities for leaving Beirut by sea in any direction you may
+wish.  Do we understand one another?  Good!  Now, let me see whether I
+have your names correctly."
+
+He carefully wrote them down all wrong, described us as noncombatants,
+who should be allowed to leave the country, warned Jeremy that in a
+king's clothes he looked too "intriguing," provided plain clothes for
+him, returned our belongings (except the basket of provisions, which he
+kept) and sent us off in an ambulance on the first leg of the journey to
+Beirut, whence we got away in a coastwise steamer within the week.  "Not
+all the French are swabs!" said Jeremy grievously as we took our leave
+of him.
+
+Grim agreed.
+
+"Not all of 'em.  Let's see--there was the Marne, the Aisne, the Somme,
+Verdun..."
+
+
+The End
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Affair in Araby, by Talbot Mundy
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