by Harold Lamb
Stone walls, with barbed wire at the top shut out the desert. By the well in the courtyard the familiar convoy car stood empty. It might, Kari thought, be a jail. A phonograph shrilled in the dining quarters.
It sang and chorused at her, while she addressed two envelopes in the reception room, and sealed them. A wordless anger made her fingers brisk and careful—anger at slow-thinking, feckless Buck Chapin, and at dapper Captain Nicholson, who lived by rules and regulations. Swiftly she washed her face, brought her hair into some kind of order, and called one of the Arab servants before venturing into the dining room.
The others hadn’t waited. The Englishwoman looked up from feeding the children, with a mumbled, “So glad, Nurse.”
THEY were all at the long table with an immaculate cloth and shining silverware. “Well, you were lucky,” Sprague greeted her. He was quiet enough now, slightly amused. “I suppose the tribes would not meddle with a British lady, eh?”
“Oh, no,” said Kari amiably. Here were two men, and one had stolen three thousand dollars from the American consulate, and lied about it. Chapin had withdrawn into his blank silence, something smoldering in his eyes. Something that would explode in a minute.
“But,” objected Nicholson, his routine mind offended, “Mrs. Chapin must be an American now, you know.”
The Englishwoman looked up, incredulous. “Why, Nurse, you’re not married!”
“I’m not a nurse,” said Kari sweetly, “and I do happen to be Mr. Chapin’s wife, for the moment.”
Fleetingly Sprague’s eyes passed over her, as if to take stock of her anew. The Levantine merchant stopped eating his soup.
“Because,” said Kari, “the Arabs understand a woman going to the defense of her man.”
Then the Arab servant brought the two letters to the table, looking around inquiringly. “Mr. Sprague?” he asked.
That gentleman nodded, and held out his hand. Raised his brows when he saw the sealed missives bore neither stamps nor postmarks. Ripping one open with his finger, he took out a folded sheet of paper that was blank on both sides.
Kari quivered inside. Her knees were wobbling under the table, and she felt like running away. If she could only say just the right thing! Please, she begged silently, let it work—I’ll pile stones on that heap. Ever so many!
Sprague was looking up at the Arab servant. “How did you get this thing?”
“A lady, sir.”
Frowning, Sprague glanced at the other envelope, addressed like the first to him at El Matl, in care of the Convoy Company. When he ripped it open, he found another sheet of blank paper inside, and went dark with anger.
“Someone,” he said harshly, “is trying to play a very bad joke.”
He looked at the Englishwoman, and—quickly—at the Levantine date merchant, and at Kari.
“It’s not a joke,” said the girl quietly. Under the table, her hand pressed Chapin’s knee warningly. No one else had cared to sit beside him.
“Then I’d like to know,” Sprague demanded, “what you think it is.”
Kari noticed for the first time that his English was precise and clipped, without Chapin’s Midwestern twang. I suppose,” she answered, “you’d call it theft. At the consulate, Mr. Sprague, you opened that other letter with a knife, didn’t you?”
FOR a second Sprague stared at her. Then he smiled. “Why, yes.” He drew a small silver knife out of his coat. “With this. Like to see it?”
Kari’s head bent over it—cheap Oriental work, the kind anyone could buy at any bazaar. Incredulous, Chapin was staring at the two envelopes on the table, his lips quivering.
“But you opened these with your fingers,” she said, “just as you did your mail, this morning in the car. Nearly everyone does, of course. You used that paper knife at the consulate, didn’t you, because those two envelopes—” She reached over and placed the two on the table side by side. One had a corner hanging loose, and the other was ripped jaggedly along the top. “Because those two envelopes had to look exactly alike.”
“I don’t know,” Sprague frowned impatiently, “what you’re talking about.”
“Yes,” Kari cried suddenly, mercilessly, “you do.” If only, she thought desperately, she could guess. “You carried out the six thousand tumans in the envelope they gave you.”
Sprague’s hand moved toward his waist. Then his words fell like cold water upon her desperation: “That is libel, my girl, under British law. And before witnesses. Captain Nicholson, I’ll ask you to remember this.”
Chapin’s hand moved, closing upon the back of his chair.
“Buck!” Kari pleaded, her eyes hopeless.
“You leave her out of this,” the boy said thickly. “You’re not fit to look at her, you cheap crook—”
“He’s not a cheap crook,” Kari insisted. “He’s an international thief, who has been a bit too clever this time.”
“Crickey!” ejaculated Nicholson. But Sprague got up from his chair, his face like a mask.
“You heard that, Nicholson?” he snarled. “Now I’m going to ask you to search me, and search my luggage.” Impulsively, he turned to the Levantine: “Aravang, get my bags out of the convoy.”
With alacrity the date merchant rose, still gripping his brief case. And Kari sprang up with a gasping breath.
“Oh, Aravang,” she cried, “I’m so glad. I didn’t know Mr. Sprague knew you so well. You needn’t bother about his luggage. We’ll search yours, instead.” Her eyes glowed as the big man stared at her, startled. “Leave that brief case on the table.”
His round cheeks twitched, and he hugged the case tight. Aravang was a bazaar trader, and bazaar born, and he shrank before the anger in the girl’s eyes.
“You lied about Chapin effendi—the Yamrican!” she flung at him savagely, before Sprague could speak. And Nicholson’s head came up, as if he sighted game. Kari was merciless, just then, seeing the Levantine afraid. “You swore he came to you in the bazaar, to ask you to buy six thousand Persian tumans. The police will put you in jail, because you lied.”
Aravang’s mouth dropped open, and he began to shout: “La! I have done nothing. It was this effendi Sprague who came to me, saying—”
Sprague snarled at him. “Shut your mouth. Get the bags out of the convoy. Be quick.”
The mask of confidence had dropped from him, and his face was not pleasant. His eyes shifted along the table, frightened. His hand jerked at his pocket and came up with an automatic. The short barrel quivered. “You’re trying to do me in, with that sneak of a girl.”
Nicholson whistled softly. Kari giggled hysterically, and caught up the silver knife, striking the table gong to summon the servants.
THE clang of the gong broke something in Sprague’s nerves. The automatic in his hand exploded. Kari blinked, and began to cough, feeling as if she had been slapped hard in the face. She saw Sprague moving back toward the door.
And Chapin’s arm moved, with his chair swinging at the end of it. The chair struck on the floor, against Sprague’s legs. He staggered and hopped on one foot. Before he could get his balance, Chapin came after the chair, with his hands reaching out. Sprague turned the automatic on the yellow tousled head with the hungry eyes. Then Chapin was not there.
He was diving at Sprague’s knees. It was a savage tackle and the two of them slid to the wall. Nicholson jumped for them, and caught Sprague’s wrist. He had no trouble taking the pistol away.
Like a frightened, fat rabbit, Aravang bolted through the door. He ran full into an Iraqi sentry coming up at the double, rifle in hand.
Then Kari began to cry.
Half an hour later Nicholson finished going through the belongings of the two. In Sprague’s money belt he found the three thousand dollars paid over by the American consulate, and about as much in English pounds. Not a thing out of order.
But in Aravang’s brief case, he found the six thousand Persian tumans. Also two unlooked-for passports
, in different names. One was British and the other Egyptian. Both had Sprague’s picture on them.
Nicholson stared at them, fascinated. “Sprague alias Brubacher, alias Idrisi. A rose by any other name!” he ejaculated. “Whoever he is, he’ll have to go back to Baghdad for examination by the proper authorities.” He looked up at Chapin. “Lucky for you. Clears you at your consulate, what?”
“I’m going back there with that money,” said Chapin, his eyes shining, “on the next car.”
“Lucky for you your wife guessed how he stole those tumans.”
“I didn’t guess,” Kari stated.
“Oh.” The Britisher’s blue eyes were puzzled. “Then how did you know he was a thief?”
“He had to be. Buck never did it. He wasn’t clever enough.”
“Oh,” said Nicholson, “I see.”
You see now, Kari thought. But you didn’t think anything about it, or feel anything, until that pistol went off, and you had all those passports in your hands. “Falsification of a passport is a very serious thing, isn’t it, Captain Nicholson?” she said aloud and laughed a little, being utterly weary, because it was time for the convoy car to start on the night leg of the journey to Damascus, and she was all twisted inside, although she had not been shot.
WHEN Nicholson went out to the courtyard to see the car start he found Sprague standing by the open gate, the sentries eying him curiously.
The gate was open to the night and the desert. And Sprague was shaking like a man with a fever. “I know when I’ve been framed proper,” he snarled. “You did me in, all of you. Him,” he nodded at the interested sergeant, who was fixing up beds for the children in the car out of bags and blankets, “letting on he’d lost his way. Those Arabs making a bogus attack, like a cinema. Chapin fixing that revolver to look like it was meant for me. That sneak of a girl, shamming she was his wife.”
Nicholson studied him, realizing how frightened the man was.
“You’re imagining all that,” he said thoughtfully. “Odd thing. You were the only one who knew how guilty you were this morning.”
He nodded slowly. “Jove, man, if it hadn’t been for that young lady, you’d be going into French territory with a bullet in your brain.” He pondered, and exclaimed sharply: “There’s only one way you could have done it, Sprague! You had the bogus envelope slit open in your pocket, or sleeve, when you called for your money at the consulate. Jove! You opened the right envelope, and then showed the beggars the wrong 'un. What?”
Sprague said nothing.
“This car,” grumbled the sergeant, “is three hours late.”
Nicholson went to find Kari, and he found her sitting on a bench where the courtyard was darkest, with Chapin’s arm around her. And Chapin looked like a human being again. He looked, Nicholson thought, like a well man.
“Ready for Damascus?” he asked. Kari looked up at him, and at the night overhanging the beacon light.
“I'm really Nurse Valgard, Captain,” she said, “and I'm going back to Baghdad.”
Tiger, Tiger
THE Intourist people warned him it would rain, and it did. Before noon that day he was climbing through a driving rain. Behind him the twin peaks of Jangua-tau were turning white. The Russian Caucasus grow cold in a rain—above the ten-thousand-foot level.
Chuck Donovan had not thought that a little rain would interfere with his side trip through those mountains. But there wasn’t any shelter in the open car. He pulled his hat down over his eyes, and put on gloves. Then swirling mist shut out the valleys of fir forest below them.
It gave Donovan a queer feeling, as if he were climbing through clouds on the top of the world. A burst of hail spattered against the steaming hood of the car, and Donovan shouted to the Russian that they’d better head back for Tiflis and the hotel. But the Russian driver didn’t know any English.
“Da-da,” he muttered, and bore down on the accelerator.
The only two Russian words Donovan knew were for water and watermelon. They didn’t help much, just then. But Donovan wasn't the kind to worry—not that sandy-haired, lazy Texan. He didn’t say anything when the motor began to miss, or when it died, and the driver, working the starter clumsily, let the car slide back into the ditch where a young freshet boiled mud and stones against the wheel hubs.
“Finish!” said Donovan.
“Da,” the Russian agreed.
And the motor was dead, all right. For half an hour they worked over the ignition and gas line without result. Then the driver looked around him miserably. Through some stunted pines the gray snout of a glacier showed. Up the shoulder of the mountain a big flock of sheep huddled against a limestone cliff. The Russian pointed at it, and explained by signs that Donovan was to wait in the car while he went off to investigate.
“Sure,” said Donovan. “But—here!”
Pulling out a flask, he poured a capful of bourbon and gave it to the driver, who looked more cheerful immediately. They had another drink apiece, and the driver went off into the mist. It was an hour by Donovan’s wrist watch before he came back with a younger fellow who held an umbrella against the wind and clutched an embroidered shawl around his shoulders and began to shout in labored English, “Are you the United States America, sir?”
“YEAH," said Donovan.
“ ’Ave you the passport of you?” Under the swaying umbrella the mountain lad examined Donovan's passport and the Russian visa with his photograph that entitled him to travel second class for thirty days, all found, in the U. S. S. R. What the visa didn’t say was that Chuck Donovan, an officer in one of the last cavalry regiments of the National Guard, was tired of second-rate trains and bus rides in cities. So he’d been routed through the Caucasus by the Intourist people, who’d told him he would see magnificent scenery and horses and oil fields. Pretty much what he’d grown up with in Texas.
Apparently the wielder of the umbrella was satisfied with these papers. “Quite okay,” he observed. “I am speaking the-e Englis, Dunnaveen, sir. I am Shotha, who is the-e secretary of Mr. Nicolai. Now you come to the-e house of Mr. Nicolai.”
There was nothing else to do, with that wind driving the hail down like bullets.
“If you arre a sportman,” Shotha remarked, “Mr. Nicolai will be please. He is a ver-ry grreat sportman.”
Donovan saw evidence of that in the courtyard of Mr. Nicolai’s house—a rambling stone structure with a high tower, looking like a cross between a dude ranch and a feudal castle—the carcass of a brown bear, nearly full grown. He stopped to look at it because it had a chain around its neck, and it had been mauled into bloody ribbons. Shotha explained casually that the cub had grown too big and they had set the dogs on it.
And the great hall where they dined that evening had other proofs of Mr. Nicolai’s sporting instinct. Heads of wild boar, elk and mountain sheep hung along the walls. Donovan noticed that some of them were badly battered. What surprised him was the tiger’s head over the fireplace—a massive, snarling head without eyes.
It fascinated Donovan, this hall. Some twenty men in sheepskins gorged themselves at the other table, with the Russian driver. And the women who hurried in with sizzling platters of mutton and curd dumplings were all good-looking and almost all young.
They weren’t Russians. One looked like a gypsy with her nose cut off, and some of the others had white veils fixed back in their hair. They hadn’t a word to say, and they moved as gracefully as animals when Mr. Nicolai shouted at them.
He shouted a lot, Nicolai did. His deep-set brown eyes moved restlessly, watching every face. His chin bulged out over a high collar, and his heavy shoulders were crammed into a European cutaway, although he wore white lambskin breeches, and a red satin sash from which projected the carved ivory hilt of a long dagger and the ivory butt of a revolver, carved to match. An odor of eau de cologne hung about him, and he watched Donovan from the corners of his eyes.
“Mr. Nicolai says,” Shotha interpreted,
“have you women pretty like these in your country?”
“Well—not so many.”
Nicolai smiled politely, as if at a compliment, and filled Donovan’s glass with his own hand. As if he wanted the American to admire it, he held the revolver with the ivory butt pieces. Then he raised the muzzle and fired without sighting. No one moved or said anything.
The bullet hit between the eyes of the tiger on the opposite wall.
“Can you make a shot like that?”
“Maybe not,” Donovan admitted. “But I’d like to have a shot at a tiger.”
He was wondering about that tiger’s head. Tigers were hunted in India, and such parts. But he’d never heard of a tiger in Russia.
Shotha whispered to Mr. Nicolai. Mr. Nicolai stared at the powder fumes drifting up toward the smoke of the fire.
“Tomorrow, he says,” Shotha responded, “you can hunt a ti-gar on our land.”
Donovan laughed. He didn’t believe a tiger could be found in a place like this.
But Mr. Nicolai did not laugh. The ti-gar, he insisted, could be found early in the morning, as he said, and the American sportsman could kill it. He’d bet on that—bet anything.
“All right.” Donovan wouldn’t back down. “Ten dollars that you can’t show me a tiger tomorrow morning. That enough?”
Mr. Nicolai agreed, and Shotha wiped his moist face thoughtfully.
“You have American money, sir?” he whispered. “You have much American money. “You are rich. Give me fifty dollars.”
“No—certainly not.”
“You will be better if you give it, sir!”
There was something screwy about the place, Donovan thought that night when he turned in. Something about Shotha and the servants. They acted as if they were afraid. But he was too drowsy to puzzle about it. He put his wallet in his coat, folded his coat under his pillow, and went to sleep.
