by Talbot Mundy
“Forward, sahib!” he urged; and the tone of his voice bordered on insolence. “Shall Jimgrim and the butcha need us and we play vulture above a carcass?”
Catesby laughed dryly.
“Do as I say,” he ordered.
They were able to go quite a long way without losing sight of the black, velvet-looking belt of gloom that was the wady bottom, and Catesby’s plan proved not so contemptible after all. Keeping a company of Sikhs in fighting trim for months past had given him a knowledge of all that countryside that could not desert him in the dark, and presently they reached a low eminence from which they could look down into the wady in either direction.
By that time, too, the moon shone at such an angle that the darkness below them was considerably broken up and patches of sand were beginning to be visible in places. To their left, clearly outlined in the yellow light, lay a sandy amphitheater, and if they had only known it they could see the opening of the tomb to which the Arab had led Jim and Suliman.
Nevertheless they seemed to have missed their opportunity, and Narayan Singh suddenly swore a streak of Indian oaths that would have made a mere comminating prelate shudder with mixed envy and dread. Down below them, passing in single file across a yellow sand-patch to their right, they caught sight of men’s figures moving swiftly. Catesby counted five, the Sikh six, but there might have been more because of the shadows, and some might have crossed the patch of light before they saw the others. They were all swallowed in black night again before the brain could get any clear impression of their general appearance.
Catesby made up his mind swiftly enough then, and Narayan Singh approved, since decision entailed action.
“Come on! After them from the rear!”
They slid down the sandbank into the wady and started to run, keeping in the middle where the track was loose and soft, so as to make less noise. Neither man knew exactly what they meant to do other than force the party ahead to stand and give an account of themselves. If that should entail a free fight, well and good; the Sikh, at least, would sooner fight than not, and Catesby had no objection.
But the one paramount, essential objective was to get tidings of Jim Grim, and neither of them made a single stipulation as to ways of means. They simply ran.
Whether or not they were gaining on their quarry they never knew; for suddenly, down the sandbank just abreast of them, panting, staggering, tripping, tottering, tumbling into their arms to sob and cling to them — Suliman came like a bolt out of the night — too scared and breathless to explain himself, kicking and punching at Narayan Singh because he should comprehend without words — too bewildered to speak English to Catesby, who had scant Arabic.
Catesby was not much of a hand with children. He tried sternness to antidote hysteria, and succeeded only in making his victim cry. So Narayan Singh squatted in the wady as if time were no consideration, and took the boy in his lap.
“A brave fellow!” he said. “Truly a brave fellow! Out in the night alone and not afraid of leopards! A soldier in the making! A swift runner! A man of deeds, not words! A scout who knows friends in the dark and can find them! A skirmisher who takes a cliff-side like a warhorse galloping! Truly a proper friend for such a one as Jimgrim! And what said Jimgrim? I wager had had a message for Narayan Singh?”
“Curse you religion! Curse your mother and her family! What are you waiting for? Let me go!”
The youngster struggled, and struck the Sikh’s face with his fists, but stirred no reprisals. Narayan Singh held on an laughed.
“Aha! A ruffian! A fighting man! A very Rustum (a famous warrior) at the age of eight. I wager Jimgrim sent him out to fight the iblis!”
The word iblis loosened the floods of speech at last. Suliman spat into the Sikh’s black beard and followed up the illustration with his text.
“Come and get him! Come quick! The iblis sits and spits at him! Jimgrim is bewitched. The iblis curses him. Jimgrim’s pistol is bewitched; he can’t use it. The iblis laughs. I ran to find you and you were gone, so I came back to kill the iblis with my kukri. Now you sit and grin, you son of sixty dogs, while the iblis murders Jimgrim. Have you no heart? Have you no courage? Jimgrim is in danger!”
“Aye, father of reprimands! But where?”
“Where? In the cave, of course! In the cave, idiot!”
“Which cave, O father of whirlwinds?”
“Which cave, Narayan Singh? As if there were more than one! Can Jimgrim be in two caves?”
“Can you lead us to the cave?”
“No! I have lost my way!”
That admission was altogether too much for Catesby, who was listening in shadow. He stepped closer to try again what stern authority might do. But Narayan Singh waved him back with an imploring gesture, and resumed the milder method.
“Such a scout! Such a father of long memories! I wager he has not forgotten what I taught him in Jerusalem. You were in the cave, Suliman? And you came out of the cave? Then on which side shone the moon — on this or that hand? This hand I wager. No? That one? Ah! And you crossed this wady to reach the place where I waited with the sahib? Ah! Then the cave is this way. Come!”
He got up, took the child by the hand and led him along the wady in the opposite direction to that in which they had been running, Catesby following in agonies of impatience. At every projection Narayan Singh would stop and try to get the boy to recognize it, but it was not until they reached the open amphitheater that Suliman gave a gasp of sheer excitement and began to run.
“There! There is the cave! I see it! Hurry, Narayan Singh! Curse you for a crawling beetle! Pick me up and carry me, I am halas — finish!”
Narayan Singh gathered him up in his hairy arms, gentle as a woman’s, but as strong as two pythons, and broke into a double. The moonlight shone straight into the cave mouth, and Catesby, having no load, reached it first. By the time Narayan Singh overtook him and had set down Suliman, Catesby was disappearing head first into a black hole, sending his voice ahead of him:
“Grim! Hullo! Jim Grim! Hullo, Uncle Sam, are you there? The reserves are coming, Grim — hold on!”
Suliman was next into the hole, charging under the Sikh’s legs and pulling out his kukri as he scrambled, yelling too:
“Oh Jimgrim! Taib (all right) Jimgrim! All right, Jimgrim! Coming! We are here!”
They plunged forward into utter darkness; and because Suliman was to busy shouting to think of warning them about the tricks of the place they all three took a header down a four-foot drop into the echoing home of blackness.
Narayan Singh proved heavy, for it is bone and thew that weigh, not fat. It took Catesby two minutes to recover breath, and then at last he struck a match. He held it high over his head, and the light showed all four walls of a cavern.
“Grim! Where are you?”
The cavern, with a row of sepulchers hewn into the walls, was empty. The echoes mocked them. Catesby struck match after match, and they peered together into every niche and cranny, finding nothing but a dollop of candle- grease to prove that anyone had ever been in there.
Catesby burned his fingers with his last match, and the blackness of the womb of darkness shut them in again.
“Too late? Surely not too late?” muttered Narayan Singh.
Then Suliman lifted up his voice and yelled:
“He is gone! Oh, Jimgrim! Prince of men! That iblis has eaten him! Curse the iblis! Curse his religion and his mother and his eyes and his belly and his teeth! In the name of Allah, may his soul be flung into the fire that burns. May devils torture him forever. Oh, my Jimgrim! Oh-oh — ai-ee- ee!”
He flung himself face down and beat the floor of the cavern with his fists, sobbing his heart out for his vanished hero.
CHAPTER VI
“Thieves again!”
THE worst part of scheming for your own advancement is that sooner or later, and generally sooner, you are forced to employ paid assistance; and in the very nature of things such men as will assist are all self-seekers on
their own account. The only safe ambition for even the cleverest men is on behalf of an ideal.
There are plenty of instances. Napoleon obsessed with the thought of lifting France out of the ruck of misery and restoring his country to her right place in the sun was invincible. Napoleon on a throne, scheming to make himself an ancestor of kings, was only dangerous. And Brigadier-General Jenkins was an immeasurable way behind Napoleon, without ever having possessed high ideals of any kind, although he could talk about them in a florid way that deceived some folk.
At about the time when Jim left camp on the trail of the iblis Jenkins was burning overtime oil in the wooden shack that did duty for office, with a corner of one window left uncovered in order that the world might appreciate his devotion to duty.
But he had given up sitting at the desk and rummaging through papers. Papers were the bane of his existence. Covering it under an air of lordly military scorn for trifles, he had been afflicted all his life with carelessness at odd moments, such as would account, for instance, for the R.T.O.’s confidence in washing his hands of the stolen TNT. Jenkins had received a memorandum about that explosive and mislaid it; now he had lost another paper, and this time there was no one else on whom he dared lay blame.
If it had been an official document he could certainly have pounced his clerk, but unfortunately it was something about which it was to be hoped the clerk knew nothing. If the clerk did know, then the sooner that unfortunate should leave for far-off parts the better. The worst of it was that he was expecting a visit that evening from the man who had signed the paper, and he had reasons for needing it to flourish under that individual’s nose.
He paced up and down the narrow office, casting huge shadows that made his mustache seem like a tea-pot handle and annoyed him, for he was vain of personal appearance as of everything else. Every now and then he paused to rap his forehead with a clenched fist, as if to shake into action that magnificent memory of which he boasted. Then the pacing was resumed, while his lower lip sucked at the corner of the red mustache to present the offending shadow.
One incident kept recurring to mind that he hoped explained the loss away, but he would have given a month’s pay to be sure of it. He remembered a soiled, creased, dog-eared hundred-piaster note that had come in halves and had to be stuck together. He had sat at his desk — he remembered that distinctly — clipped a strip of paper with the shears, gummed the strip and joined the two halves of the note.
In all likelihood he had crumpled up the remainder of the piece of paper and thrown it into the box that did duty for waste-basket, but of that he could not be certain. It was possible that was the missing document. And he could not for the life of him remember to whom or for what purpose he had paid out the banknote, repaired with a strip of paper that might have Arabic handwriting on it.
He might have paid a mess-bill with it, or settled a bridge account — although he very rarely lost at cards — in which case the note was probably long ago in circulation far enough away to be out of danger. That was to be hoped, but hope is often a fidgety weakling.
An incident nagged his memory. He had paid one hundred piasters on a recent occasion to the man who was coming to see him tonight — the very man under whose nose he wanted to brandish the lost signature.
As he turned for another worried beat up and down the room a Sikh sentry rapped on the door to announce his visitor. He went behind the desk and studied his appearance in the little canteen store looking-glass for a minute before answering, twisting his mustache straight and practicing a couple of grimaces. He believed as thoroughly in advertisement as any manufacturer of patent pills, and never overlooked the cover of the capsule.
* * * * *
For an Arab the visitor seemed overconfident. He was a little man, dressed in expensive European clothes, but with a tarboosh at least a size too small for him so that it sat jauntily on a head that grew very suddenly narrow above the ears; and like many little men he walked mincingly, suggesting an insect — but an insect with a sting, for his smile did not succeed in hiding malice. He was the sort of man one would instinctively keep at a distance. But his voice was like oil on troubled waters.
“I have nothing but good news for your honor,” he began, smiling jubilantly. “I confess myself more than ever amazed at your genius that suggested this plan to organize Arab thieves and blame their thefts on the Zionists. It works! Never was such a thieving — tee-hee-hee! And a fair proportion of the plunder is already stowed in a place owned by the Zionist Committee — hee-hee! — such a joke! — isn’t it exquisite?”
“Sit down! And listen to me, Charkas. How many times have I to tell you that I’ve nothing to do with your plans? I won’t have you as much as suggest it, even in private. Do you understand me?”
Ibrahim Charkas folded one hand on the other, chose the edge of an uncomfortable chair and sat down facing him. The corners of his mouth looked meek, and his eyes immensely mischievous.
“I’m willing to help you Arabs, sub rosa, so to speak. And I’m willing that it should be known in the right quarter at the right time that I have been your friend all along. But nothing indiscreet — you understand me?”
“Certainly. Yes, indeed. And when the time comes you may rest assured we shall show ourselves most grateful — practically grateful.”
“Um-m-m! By the way Charkas, do you remember a hundred-piaster note I gave you the other day for expenses? There was a hundred, and I think four fifties and ten tens.”
“Yes, indeed. You have been most generous. I was wondering tonight whether I might not ask—”
“D’you happen to have that hundred by you?”
“I have a hundred piasters—”
“I mean the original bank-note that I gave you.”
“No, sir. Why?”
“I suspect it’s a bad one. I’d like to give you another for it.”
“Tee-hee-hee! You need not worry, general. It has been passed on long ago. Whoever has it now may do the worrying. Hee-hee! But I would like some more money for expenses.”
“Damn it! D’you take me for a millionaire?”
“No, sir. Indeed I know better. But these agitators all need wages, and if we are to work up a proper feeling against the Zionists there must be plenty of paid men at work.”
“Haven’t you Arabs any guts, that you can’t raise a campaign fund among you?”
“Ah-h-h! We are mostly poor, and those who are not are inclined to keep out of trouble. My own little business in the suk (bazaar) is not profitable nowadays, because the soldiers buy all they require in the canteen at prices I cannot meet. Now if I had a few hundred piasters tonight—”
“Sorry, Charkas; I’ve no cash by me.”
“But a check, general? A check made out to bearer—”
“What do you take me for? How many times must I repeat that my name doesn’t appear in connection with this business? Besides, I’m getting sick of it. It’s time to bring things to a head. Major Grim has been sent down from Jerusalem to inquire into the thieving, and he’s one of those persistent men who generally get what they’re after. The way to make the most of that is to let him discover the loot as soon as possible in the hands of Zionists, and then advertise it here, in Egypt, and in England.”
“Tee-hee-hee! Exquisite! As I said, a fair proportion of the loot is already—”
“I don’t want to know where it is. Don’t tell me. News reached me by mail this morning that the feeling at the Foreign Office is turning strongly against the Zionists at present. The fools have been demanding too much, with the result that pro-Arab sentiment is gaining ground. Much the same story comes from Egypt. Anything just now that puts the Zionists in a more unfavorable light would be opportune. You may depend on it, Major Grim will run that loot to ground in short order, so you’d better cover up your own tracks.”
“Oh, my tracks are very well covered.”
There was a suggestion of insolence underlying the certainty in the Arab’s voice that made Je
nkins turn suddenly and face him.
“How d’ye mean?”
“You are powerful. I look to you for protection in case of necessity. Otherwise—”
“Look here! Are you fooling yourself by any chance? Do you suppose I’d budge one inch to protect you? You people have no sense of proportion. To help the Arab cause — sub rosa as I said — is one thing; to ruin my whole career by becoming involved in your intrigues is another, and doesn’t appeal to me at all. I’d let you hang rather than lift a finger.”
He glared at Charkas with dark eyes that had cowed many a subordinate and rescued him in many an awkward moment. He had made a deliberate study of that frown and the attitude that went with it, growing expert in their use but rather overestimating their value on the strength of occasional successes.
The Arab flinched like an animal under the lash. Jenkins turned his back on him. It was more from habit than intention that he strode behind the desk and faced the looking-glass.
Ibrahim Charkas was less cowed that he chose to seem, being one of those men who can keep their wits alert under a protecting mask of physical fear. The moment Jenkins’ back was turned he leaned toward the desk and began searching the papers that lay scattered all over it in the confusion made by Jenkins himself half an hour previously. His fingers were as swift and supple as a card-shaper’s, and his eyes, glancing every second at Jenkins’ back, as wary as a rat’s.
In less than thirty seconds he had spotted a railway notice of consignments due to arrive. Watching his chance, he flipped it toward the corner of the desk. A second more and he had it in his pocket. Then Jenkins turned on him.
“Give that back!”
“Give what back?”
“Don’t try to argue. I watched you in the glass. Give it here. It’s in that pocket. Out with it!”
With his head sunk between his shoulders, feet apart, ready to jump for his life, and his eyes looking like black shoe-buttons, the Arab laid the paper on the desk. Jenkins glanced at it.
