by Harold Lamb
“Yes,” I said, “after all, he drowned.”
Near Baghdad
READY be’ind?” said the sergeant over his shoulder.
And the six-wheeler, the desert convoy car, backed out of its New Street garage, scattering the beggars and the tea sellers with their brass urns. The convoy car, starting out of Baghdad at seven o’clock in the morning, on its twice-a-week run to Damascus.
Ready, thought Kari, and please hurry. Out of the streets, across the river—
“Beg pardon?” said the Englishwoman beside her. “Did you speak?"
“Did I?” Kari said. “I must have been thinking out loud.”
“It sounded," the Englishwoman with the two children looked at the girl, “as if you said something. You’re the Hilla nurse, aren’t you?” She herself was an officer’s wife, going home after two years’ residence in Iraq.
“No,” Kari laughed, her voice rising over the churning of the motor. “Not any more.”
For three years she had been the graduate nurse at Hilla Mission Hospital, with its hundred beds. She had been Kari Valgard, that Scotch girl of a Norwegian father, and she had come out to the East to work in a hospital at five shillings a day. More than one thousand days, with only a few weeks rest in Baghdad. That city pictured with palms and hanging gardens in the tourist folders—the City of the Thousand and One Nights.
“Oh,” said the Englishwoman, “you’re going home.”
“Yes,” said Kari.
THE car was turning in the street. The tourist in the seat behind the driver had on a good-looking gray suit—he was opening his morning mail, running his fingers under the flaps of the letters. He looked cool, and satisfied with the morning, and very healthy. Back of him a fat Levantine hugged a leather brief case.
Then, before the car could gather speed, a stocky figure appeared moving beside it, tapping on the door. A figure in soiled white ducks, looking as if he’d sat up all night in them. He had no hat, and he carried only a worn suitcase with some hotel labels on it.
When he stepped into the aisle of the car, his face changed, as if someone had hit him.
“He has been making a night of it,” Kari thought. He was about old enough to have graduated from a university at home—about as old as the cool-looking tourist. He had one of those broad, stubborn heads with a small chin, and deep grayish eyes. Just for that second he looked ready enough to tear someone with his hands. It passed, and he shambled on to a seat in the middle of the car.
“My dear,” the Englishwoman whispered, “he’s chucking Baghdad.” Kari didn’t care. “He couldn’t stay, of course,” the Englishwoman whispered on. “Didn’t you hear about him? Buck Chapin, the junior assistant to the American consulate?”
Kari shook her head. Athwart the road ahead a Kurdish girl with a baby on her arm was hauling at a donkey’s rope in a panic.
“Colonel Byers told me how it happened,” the woman went on.
Buck Chapin, the Englishwoman said, hadn’t been in Baghdad a year. He’d been alone in the American consulate that afternoon when the money had been left with him. By a traveler named Sprague, with an American passport, who had called to leave some papers and more than six thousand tumans in Persian paper money for safekeeping. Officially, of course, as they all knew, Persian paper couldn’t be taken out of that country. But quite a bit of it turned up in Baghdad, and was traded in, in the bazaar.
This person, Sprague, handed the money, with an oil lease of some kind, to Chapin in an open envelope. After looking it over, Chapin sealed the envelope and locked it in the safe.
Sprague came for it in ten days. Chapin being out of the office at the time, another member of the consulate took the envelope from the safe and gave it to Sprague, after the traveler identified himself. And Sprague opened the envelope under the eyes of the consulate people. No doubt whatever about that. He used a pocket paper knife to open it. A man of precise habits.
The money was missing. All but some two hundred tumans in small notes folded up in sheets of blank paper. Sprague was more upset about his oil contract than his money, but he claimed that quickly enough from the consulate.
Young Chapin admitted that he had known the money was in the envelope, but insisted that he had not touched it.
What finished Chapin was the statement of a Levantine date merchant named Aravang that the young American that week had tried to get him to purchase six thousand tumans, and he had refused to buy.
After that, the American consulate repaid Sprague the full amount of his loss and Chapin was through.
“Of course salaries in the consular service.” the Englishwoman observed, “are so inadequate. . .
At noon when they stopped to eat from the lunch baskets the company provided, a haze of the dust had drawn closer about the car, and the sun had vanished. Chapin didn’t eat anything, Kari noticed. He went out to talk to the Arab helper who was fiddling around the radiator—avoiding the other passengers.
When he got back in, he brushed past Kari at the water tank. His eyes were half closed, unmoving. It wasn’t a case of fever, the nurse in Kari decided—rather, sleeplessness and stupor of fatigue. Something weighty and metallic in the side pocket of his coat touched her hip. It was heavier than a cigarette case or loose change, and it might, she thought, be a revolver.
Chapin acted like a stupid boy. As if he carried a mark on him that anyone could see. Even the tourist in the gray suit kept glancing at him curiously.
Until, at five o’clock that afternoon by Kari’s watch, the convoy car came to a stop. The Britisher at the wheel began to argue with the Arab helper. They had lost the track they were following, and the dust curtain hung so close about the car they could see no distant landmarks.
Kari got out with the other passengers, stiff with the hours of dozing in a seat. The Arab mechanic insisted that El Matl was ahead of them, on the left. He started off into the haze to look for landmarks, and Chapin spoke for the first time to the tourist.
“Want to have a try,” he suggested, “the other way?”
The other man pondered, his dark eyes intent. Kari heard a curious sound as if bells were chiming behind the dust curtain.
“No, thanks,” the tourist said.
“Suit yourself”—the young American grinned without mirth—“Mr. Sprague.”
Sprague? This must be the man, Kari remembered, who had been robbed and repaid at the American consulate. She wondered if Chapin had followed him on the convoy car. But it was natural enough, if both of them were leaving Baghdad, that they should take the same car.
“I say!” muttered the sergeant. “Listen to that.” The echo of bells in the air had become a familiar clong-clang. And the Arab mechanic came running out of the dust curtain, pointing to the car.
"Pleess,” he panted, “go back to the automobile.”
At his heels grotesque shapes moved through the haze. Bells jangled.
“What in blazes—” Sprague exclaimed.
Camels. Unloaded, Kari saw at once, and not tied together. And so, a herd being driven. And the men who drove them appeared out of the dust at a gallop, bearing down on the car.
“Jebel Chadafis,” said the Arab driver.
The fat Levantine scrambled first into the car, clutching his brief case, while the sergeant helped the children and their mother in after him. The tribesmen were clamoring, in falsetto voices.
Kari was at the car door, looking over her shoulder, Sprague pushing at her, and shouting at the sergeant, “Start your motor.” She was watching Buck Chapin. Standing facing the Arabs, drawing the revolver from his coat.
A rider, seeing the revolver, swung toward Chapin, raising a long cudgel.
“Aow!” barked the sergeant. “Don’t shoot, sir.”
Then everything moved at once. Chapin stepping back, turning and tossing the revolver toward the car door. “Take it, if you want it.” The blow of the cudgel missed him but the horse’s shoulder whirled him to the ground. �
�That’s done it,” grunted the sergeant, who had caught the revolver.
Then the sergeant looked at the revolver, swinging the cylinder out, staring at two cartridges in it. Only two. “No use putting up a fight with that.”
“Look at that—” barked Sprague. Chapin was on his feet, his face twisted with anger, grasping at the rein of the Arab’s horse, forcing it back among the others, away from the car.
“Yah ahmakat!" he shouted at them. “O fools! O dwellers in a dung heap. Who is your jeeb al rais? Who is headman among ye?”
His anger caught at them. Someone pointed out a man who had a Turkish scimitar in his girdle.
CHAPIN had no weapon. He snarled at the rais, demanding if this was not the land of the Jebel Chadafis? Here, he cried, the convoy car had lost its way. They were searching for El Matl. Where was the well, and the post of El Matl?
The Arabs knew, because they all pointed in the same direction, ahead and to the left.
“Two cartridges!” Sprague was repeating. “Look at them. Did you ever hear of a man putting in just two cartridges? He meant them for us.” His bright eyes swept the Arabs. “Get going—quick!”
The sergeant looked worried. He was responsible for all the passengers. And those Arabs were as uncertain as spilled mercury. If they started shooting—
“You can’t go without that boy,” said Kari suddenly.
“Go on!” Chapin’s voice reached them. “What are you waiting for?”
“Excuse me, Miss,” said the sergeant, reaching for the door. He had the car in gear, moving forward. “The officer at El Matl had best deal wi’ this.”
The car jumped forward, and Kari caught her breath. Ducking under the man’s arm, she jumped to the ground and ran back to the horsemen and the figure in white ducks. She was frightened, but Dr. Ferguson had often told her at the hospital that Arab tribesmen would never harm a foreign woman, unless they thought she was a loose woman. And, of course, the convoy car would not go off now. She thought she could get this boy out of trouble.
But the convoy car kept on going, until it vanished in the dust haze. Some of the Arabs reined their horses forward, after it.
Then they stopped, staring, fascinated, at the girl walking toward them.
Here, evidently, was something they failed to understand.
And Chapin scowled at her. “What do you think you’re doing?” he exclaimed.
“I’m trying to get you out of a mess.” She made her voice sound casual, and she held herself very straight. Dr. Ferguson had told her the tribes were like animals, only dangerous when they were starving or frightened. “Why didn’t you come back to the car?” she demanded.
CHAPIN’S haggard eyes touched hers, and dropped. “I don’t know. Anyway, these birds are going to hold me for ransom.”
“Are they?” Kari considered. Turning to the rais, she said briskly, “Awa-fikh!"
The Arab with the scimitar looked at her uneasily. “Health!” he responded.
“In the name of God,” Kari went on, trying to remember the right words. “I am the family of this effendi. I go where he goes.”
The other tribesmen edged closer, to hear the better. They were quiet enough now, and the chieftain began to finger his beard. “Aiwah!” he grunted assent.
“Hold on,” said Chapin, startled, “you’re not my wife—”
“I’ve got to be,” she assured him, “an honest woman. It’s very important. Only a loose woman would run after a man who wasn’t her husband. At least that’s what these Arabs think.”
“Gosh,” said Chapin.
“We are Inglisi,” the girl told the chieftain, "husband and wife. We travel in the face of the Inglisi Sirdar. We travel on the land of the Jebel Chadaf. What is your mind toward us?”
Something like admiration gleamed in the thin face of the rais. This young woman without a veil and with unbraided hair stood very straight—she spoke in a voice as clear as a bell. She must be valuable and undoubtedly she was British. This Nazarene. To take horses or camels was profitable to the Jebel Chadaf, but to take such a married girl as this would mean the start of a blood feud. Being a British girl, it would mean payment of a money fine by all the villages of the Jebel Chadaf.
The chieftain of the Chadaf was too cunning to make such a mistake. “Har’m,” he said to his men. “Forbidden.”
“Yes,” they assented. “Forbidden. There is calamity in her.”
They turned their horses, and began to round up the scattered camels. The bells jangled again, and without a word the riders disappeared into the dust curtain, going away from El Matl.
“Now,” said Kari, hiding the relief she felt, “it looks as if we’re going to be here a long time.”
Making herself comfortable on the nearest rocks, she considered the tracks of the convoy car. “Why didn’t you come back to the car?”
Chapin laughed. “Do you really want to know? Well, I was afraid. I wanted to blow the head off a guy in that car.” Hysteria, Kari thought. “No one else?” she asked. “I mean, you didn’t want to do for two of us, did you?”
FUMBLING with an empty cigarette package, Chapin shook his head. “I’ve felt like murdering people,” Kari observed, “these last weeks. But no one in particular. Just people. What is your particular urge?”
The lines about his mouth tightened. “You can skip that.”
“Right.” Kari glanced at him fleetingly, and offered him a cigarette. It was strange to be so close to the thoughts of a man who had nothing to do with Hilla Hospital. “My name,” she said conversationally, “is Kari, and I used to be a nurse until I chucked it. Now I’m rolling home to Glasgow, just because there are hats in the shop windows, and the pavements are wet at night, and I don’t care if I never have a job again.” She wished she knew more about psychology. Why, if Chapin had stolen from his consulate, should he want to shoot Sprague?
Chapin turned the cigarette in his fingers slowly. “I never took those Persian tumans,” he said harshly. “And no one at the consulate touched them.”
“Tumans?” Kari wondered. “What are they?”
Then Chapin began to talk. He told her just what the Englishwoman had told her—how he had taken the papers and the money from Sprague, and had sealed them in an envelope, and locked up the envelope in the office safe. He hadn’t forgotten about that money—nearly three thousand dollars.
He’d been sending drafts home, forty dollars every month—to his sister, who was in high school. He’d written home that Baghdad was swell, and how fine it was to be in the service.
“Then you needed money badly,” Kari remarked impersonally.
“I didn’t touch that envelope. Sprague got it out of the safe somehow.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Maybe somebody else could figure out how he did it. But they all think I was the one—” He shook his head. “That fellow in the bazaar, Aravang, lied. Then this morning by pure chance I find him on the car with Sprague. Seeing them together like that made me—made me—”
“Yes. Still, you put the two cartridges in that revolver of yours before then, didn’t you?”
“Two cartridges?” Chapin looked blank. “Were there two? I didn’t look. I just put it in my pocket.”
Yes, Kari thought gloomily, you did. And if ever a man told a guilty story, you did. Only, she believed it.
IT WAS nearly seven by her watch when she saw two eyes of light moving over the ground. Before long they heard a motor, and a touring car came up the line of the convoy’s tracks. When its headlights picked them up, it stopped and a slender figure hopped out from beside the driver. A solitary officer armed with a walking stick.
“Hullo,” he called. “I’m Nicholson from El Matl. The Chadafis turn you loose?”
“I think,” said Chapin without interest, “they were afraid of my wife.”
Kari started to speak, then closed her lips. Nicholson glanced at them.
“Your—I see. Er, quite, Mr
s. Chapin.” He laughed. “The Chadafis have been on the prowl, taking Chour camels. Guilty on one count, you know. Suppose they balked at a woman. Sporting of you to go back, Mrs. Chapin. Yes. ’Fraid we’ll be late for dinner.”
Kari stood at the car’s door, her small face intent. “Do you realize, Captain Nicholson, that my husband risked his life, to get the convoy car away?”
“Rather.” Nicholson hesitated. “Don’t want to put my oar in. None of 'my business, of course. But your countryman at the post, Sprague his name is, has the wind up about you, Chapin. Swears you were carrying a weapon to do him in—tried to get him away from the car, out into the desert, alone. Says he had to accuse you of theft in Baghdad. Not that I want—”
“But you can do something, Captain Nicholson,” Kari begged. “Six thousand Persian tumans were stolen from the American consulate. And either Mr. Chapin or Mr. Sprague must have taken them, mustn’t they? You can search both of them, at El Matl.” Perceptibly, the officer stiffened. “Hardly. No authority, you know.”
“But El Matl is the last post in Iraq. We’ll be in French territory before sunrise.”
Nicholson shrugged. “The American consulate accepted responsibility—paid back the money.”
“Forget it, Kari,” Chapin said. Nicholson felt relieved when the girl said nothing more. Sitting by the driver, as they raced along the tire tracks toward the post, he thought she was a good sort. Maternal instinct and all that. Wrought up by the scrimmage with the Arabs, probably. But he, Nicholson, couldn’t imagine Sprague burgling his own money out of the safe at the American consulate, and leaving another envelope there instead—
“Can you give me,” Kari asked suddenly, “two envelopes and some paper at the post? I’ve just remembered two important letters that I ought to write.” Then she kept quiet, until they slowed down for the entrance to El Matl. The red beacon light of the post glowed against the night sky. The Iraqi soldiers saluted their officer, and moved the bar aside from the gate, Kari read the big sign at the entrance: “Warned not to stray out of sight of post, as many travelers who went out for a stroll have lost their way.”
