Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Don’t you know what the difficulty is?” asked Grim.

  “Wallahi! That I do!”

  “Is it a secret?”

  “As secret as the devil’s hiding-place! Some say that King Solomon has come back to Earth and has the witches working for him. Others say that the devil in person has made his abode in Arabia. There has been a comet, and the great well at Abu Kem has run dry.”

  “I can’t catch comets in a net, or fix dry wells,” said Grim. “Witches are none of my business either. I wouldn’t know how to deal with the devil, and as for King Solomon, I guess as much of him as isn’t dead is hard to find. You’ll have to tell me a plainer tale, than that, my friend.”

  “But ben Saoud the Avenger has your promise. What is the word of Jimgrim worth, then?”

  “I didn’t promise ben Saoud to do exactly what he said at any time. He demanded that, and I refused. What I did promise was to help him in my own way, if he should get into difficulty. You’ve got to tell me what the difficulty is.”

  “By Allah, not so! When I call my camel he must come.”

  “I am no man’s camel,” answered Grim.

  “If a man owes me money and I demand it, he must pay. I am not required to tell him what I need the money for.”

  “Does ben Saoud realize what it means for me to get men together and make that journey? Is he so hard pressed that he feels entitled to put me to all that expense and inconvenience?”

  “By Allah, Jimgrim, you know me,” our visitor answered. “You know I am the Avenger’s trusted man. You hear my words. You hear me say I speak for the Avenger. You hear me say he needs you. You made the Avenger a promise. Keep it!”

  “I intend to,” Grim answered.

  “Taib.”

  “But answer this: Which would likely be of most use, a friend with his eyes shut, or a friend who can see all sides of a matter and so make preparation in advance?”

  “A friend is a friend, Jimgrim.”

  “True; and a rifle is a rifle, but some shoot straight and others don’t. Suppose the rifle is supplied with cartridges that don’t fit?”

  “Well; this is a matter of life and death. Come well armed and supplied. Bring machine guns and six regiments if you have them,” said our visitor.

  Grim laughed aloud at that, and clapped his hands for the servant to bring coffee.

  “You fellows believe in just one solution for all problems, don’t you!” he said.

  “True, Jimgrim. It is the law of Allah that death solves everything. A man is righteous; he dies, and enters paradise; shall he complain? A man does evil; he is slain and hurled into Jehannum; the survivors have his goods, and Allah smiles. Without death in the reckoning all would be talk and no solution. A good rifle and a sharp sword are Allah’s arbiters.”

  The coffee came, and we drank it in comparative silence. The snorts and lip-smacking of our visitor were intended for a compliment — an echo, as it were, of inward ecstacy, not to be confounded with mere noise.

  “Are you fit to travel?” Grim asked at last.

  “Inshallah, I would like to go tonight, but my camel is exhausted.”

  “I can lend you another camel. We’ll give your beast a day’s rest, and I’ll bring it along after you. You’ll start back at moon-rise?”

  “By your honor’s favor.”

  “Then tell ben Saoud the Avenger this: I’m coming at once, because of the promise. If he needs help badly, I’ll do my best.”

  “God give your honor long life!”

  “But it is neither simple nor convenient just now for me to come. If I find that the Avenger has sent for me without good reason, not only will my promise be wiped out, but the balance will swing heavily the other way. Will you tell him that?”

  “If I live.”

  “I shall start tomorrow night. If on second thought the Avenger decides he can do without me, let him send back a messenger to meet me on the road. In that case, well and good; I will turn aside to important business, and no harm will have been done. But unless such a messenger meets me, I will go forward, and the Avenger will have hard work to make his peace with me afterwards, if this should prove to be false alarm.”

  “Better write all that in a letter, Jimgrim.”

  “Why? The Avenger sent his message by word of mouth to me.”

  “But if I should die on the road, or be made prisoner?”

  “In that case a letter would certainly fall into wrong hands. No. If there is to be any writing, the Avenger shall do it over his seal and signature at my dictation.”

  “By Allah and His Prophet, these are words at random anyhow!” said our visitor. “The affair is serious, as you shall see. The Avenger believes you are the only man capable of understanding, to say nothing of solving it. He holds you to your promise, but he is no ingrate. Show him the way out of this, and you may name your own terms afterwards.”

  “Trust me. I will!” Grim answered dourly.

  “He who keeps promises shall find that promises are kept,” said the Bedouin sententiously.

  * * * * *

  SO, by a bolt from the blue, as it were, our activities were outlined for the next three weeks. All Grim’s immediate plans were swept into the discard, and we began there and then the always exhilarating business of preparing for a fresh campaign. There isn’t any greater fun on earth than that, whatever the subsequent outcome. I believe that wars are made more often than not by the fun men have in getting ready for them; and the misery of the last is straightway forgotten in the sport of preparation for the next. Lord knows, I’ve had as much trouble in wild lands as most men of my age, but I’m as thrilled as the greenest tenderfoot at the sight of blankets being rolled; tents made ready; and, above all, saddles. Saddles and sails — the day has not yet come when gasolene or steam can quite replace them; they are rather more than symbols in the desert of this latter-day efficiency, and their lure has the old heart-tug in it. And camel-saddles are the best of all.

  Nevertheless, the trappings are as nothing compared to the men who shall use them. Given good men, you can campaign on a shoe-string, and the worst of starting in a hurry is the risk of taking with you handsome fellows who will lie down in a pinch, and quarrel over trifles twenty leagues from home.

  That was where Grim enjoyed his great advantage. He was under no necessity to employ the alleged efficient hirelings, who make nightmares of most journeys in that country. The absurd delusion that a jail-sentence unfits a man for official jobs obsesses governments, so the men who ought to be in jail get government employment and the fellows who have learned by sharp experience that off-side isn’t in the game are left off-side without a chance to put their schooling to fair use.

  But, being on short allowance for expenses, Grim was not only permitted, but encouraged to pick his men from among the reputed undesirables. The widows of the riffraff don’t draw pensions, and there aren’t any union rates of pay; but the riffraff, if you want to call them that, are usually grateful for small mercies. The same rule applies, with obvious exceptions, to enlisted men. It isn’t always wise to choose the men who know the inside of the regimental clink, but some men with scandalous defaulter sheets are rebels against monotony rather than against discipline, and what such fellows hunger for is interesting work. The first man Grim sent for was Narayan Singh, our Sikh friend, who had been with us on one or two adventures — the best man in his regiment by almost any way of reckoning but, as it happened, in disgrace — and in the cells — just then.

  There wasn’t anything they could have done but put him in the cells. The cantonment life had bored him badly after our last trip, and the hooch they sell in the out-of-bounds slums of Palestine works miracles with the sign reversed. As a rule when he is drunk he likes to parade without his pants, but on this occasion he had turned up stark naked on the drill-ground and, being a man of muscle and adroitness, had provided ten men and a sergeant with an hour’s strenuous work catching him and putting him in irons. Good soldiers, like good workme
n at any trade, possess friends in high places and corresponding advantages unguessed by the ranks of mere malingerers. A telephone message to Narayan Singh’s colonel relieved more individuals than one; you could almost feel over the wire the satisfaction with which Goodenough agreed to continue the Sikh’s “punishment” — to make a horrible example of him, in fact — by ordering him out of cells at once and away on special service under Grim.

  I am told that not a man in the regiment smiled next morning when the order was made known. There are people — Sikhs among them — who can enjoy a joke without disturbing the conventions.

  Narayan Singh arrived that evening, resplendent in a brand-new khaki uniform for which his pay would probably be docked for months to come. His beard was oiled and curled; his dark eyes had already lost the dissipated glare that goes with drunkenness; and somewhere in the middle of the black hair was a streak of flashing white teeth that showed first as he loomed enormous in the doorway of our sitting-room with the night behind him.

  Not a word of explanation or excuses. Grim and he understood each other. Narayan Singh saluted, Grim nodded, and there all ceremony ceased.

  “We’re going back of Abu Lissan, Narayan Singh.”

  “Wherever you say, sahib.”

  “It’s a blind affair. No knowing what’s in the wind.”

  “So long as the affair is blind, and not we, let the wind blow how it will, bahadur. Who else goes?”

  “We’ll take the old gang.”

  “Better so. Old dogs hunt best.”

  “Suppose you get away to El-Kalil tonight. Take a Ford car, and have the driver hurry. Call at the governorate first; then roust out Ali Baba in the suk [bazaar] and tell him to get ready to start tomorrow with his sixteen sons. If any of the sons are away, or can’t be spared, or happen to be in jail on serious charges, tell Ali Baba to find substitutes. But if any of them are in jail for a minor offense, ask Captain de Crespigny to release them. You can’t travel as a Sikh beyond El-Kalil; dress as a Pathan; here’s money; account to me for it. That’s all, I think.”

  There was something else, though. Narayan Singh stood without speaking, motionless, like a great meek simpleton — he who is neither meek nor simple in any circumstance. He was technically still a prisoner, and his rifle and bayonet were locked away until such time as Grim should report his sentence served. It was beneath his dignity to refer to the matter, yet a dog without teeth would be happier than that Sikh without weapons.

  It was about a minute before Grim understood the situation.

  “Hadn’t you better go for that car?” he said.

  But Narayan Singh continued to stand in silence.

  “You don’t need a note from me. The driver knows you. Just jump in the car and tell him where to go.”

  But the Sikh’s expression remained wooden, and Grim looked puzzled. The world was more likely to come to an end from surfeit of morals than that Narayan Singh would balk at active service and responsibility. But an almost unnoticeable gesture of helplessness — a relaxing of the muscles of arms and shoulders — provided the clue, and Grim sat down at his desk to write a note to the Governor of El-Kalil.

  “Give that to Captain de Crespigny, and he’ll let you pick over the governorate armory. I don’t suppose what he’s got there is any good, but you’ll have to manage.”

  The Sikh grinned contentedly, saluted, and was gone. Until midnight we two overhauled old maps, Grim’s old notebooks, pistols, kit, and what not; and we were about to turn in when the same Ford car that had taken Narayan Singh came to a clattering, tooting halt outside the gate, and someone began pounding on the front door.

  * * * * *

  WE were used to midnight messengers, for Grim’s business works day and night. It was likely enough some scaremonger who had begged a ride on the strength of wild tales of a rising somewhere. Grim went to the door with his face set ready to cut short the interview, but a moment later ushered into the sitting room no less a personage than Ali Baba, father and grandfather of the sixteen thieves of El-Kalil.

  Now what is it that makes a nod of confidential recognition from such a man seem more like balm of Gilead than the smile of a proconsul? Ali Baba was a thief, and the proud progenitor of thieves. I don’t suppose there is a species of raw rascality that he and his have not been intimately connected with at some stage of their careers; and the last time I had anything to do with the old villain he stole my good repeating pistol, and made a song about it, which he and his sons sang repeatedly thereafter in my presence, it being part of their creed that no theft is really profitable. or amusing unless the victim knows who perpetrated it.

  I should say you couldn’t find a more disreputable character than Ali Baba in the whole of the Near East — and mind you, that is a broad statement — yet the old man’s nod to me was like the handshake of a friend.

  Well, I didn’t make the world. I’m telling facts, not trying to explain things.

  Ali Baba was perturbed. His gray beard bristled with excitement, and his dark eyes shone with nervousness. As he sat down cross-legged on the couch his wrinkled hands twitched; and though he normally looks bland and respectable enough to be custodian of a saint’s tomb, there was an air about him now of impotent rascality caught napping. He wasn’t exactly in a rage, but he was ready to blow up at the first excuse, and his right and left hand went in turns to the dagger stuck in his waist-cloth. But after he had sat down he went through all the long formality of Arab greeting, first to Grim, and then all over again to me — question and reply — question and reply — all about our health, the state of our bowels, glory be to Allah the condition of his own inside — the weather — the crops — the price of camel-feed — then, suddenly:

  “That Sikh Narayan Singh came, Jimgrim. He bade me be ready tomorrow with my sons and God knows how many camels for an expedition to last a month.”

  Grim nodded, smiling. He smiles with his eyes at Arabs in a way that seems to break down all suspicion and open the way for confidences.

  “But it is impossible. By Allah, it can’t be done.”

  “You’ve been doing things that can’t be done all your life,” Grim answered. “What’s the trouble, O father of impossibilities?”

  “I have a business in hand. It is profitable. All my sons and grandsons are engaged in it. Every camel I own, and twenty more that I have hired are in training for a long trip. The loads are made up. All is ready. We would have been gone day before yesterday, inshallah, if that young dog they have made Governor of El-Kalil hadn’t got wind of it and set his cursed police to prevent us. He threatens the lot of us with jail if we as much as move. May Allah change his face! He only let me out of El-Kalil tonight to see you, Jimgrim, on condition that the driver promised not to set me down anywhere between there and here.”

  “Uh-huh. Young de Crespigny has wisdom.”

  “Wisdom, has he! Taib. I have business! Listen, Jimgrim; I have been a friend of yours. You and I have seen the color of the face of death together. When have I refused to do you a service? I have risked my neck, and the necks of all my sons for your sake—”

  “Wasn’t it worthwhile?”

  “Yes, by Allah! But it is your turn to do me a favor. You have power in the land. When you suggest, the Administration listens. When you request, what you ask is granted. So say the word, and let me go about this business.”

  “What is the nature of the business?” Grim inquired cautiously. But subsequent events convinced me that he knew very well what the business was, only it is part of his method almost never to admit how much he knows.

  “We had a prosperous thieving business, you know, Jimgrim, until you came to El-Kalil and put an end to it. There are no cleverer thieves than we, but you are a devil, and we can’t outwit you.”

  “Well?”

  “A man and his sons must live.”

  “That seems to be an axiom.”

  “But only a Jew can live legally in this land, nowadays. We are not used to these new laws an
d restrictions, and can’t understand them, because they are not in the Koran and we had no hand in making them. Under the Turks there was law, but that was good. All men understood it. There was a law against this, and a law against that — there were laws against all that was desirable; but there was a price for breaking the law which could be arranged beforehand with the Turk; the price varied, but a good bargainer could make a profit.

  “But these young British idiots won’t play that game. The Turkish governor used to make his own laws, which everybody understood; but these British infants, such as de Crespigny, enforce laws made elsewhere by other people, which neither they nor any other man except a Jew can possibly understand, and though you can bribe a policeman to his heart’s content, the man whose orders he must obey is incorruptible.”

  “Too bad,” Grim commented, when the old man paused for breath.

  “So it became necessary to arrange for business beyond the border, where there are no British to enforce whatever the Jews require. And when I took my sons on that last trip with you to Petra, we all kept our ears to the ground.”

  Ali Baba paused again, this time in order to judge how much it might be safe to tell. His foxy old eyes blinked keenly for several seconds, trying to read faces in the jumpy light of the reading lamp: but there was only a smile hovering about Grim’s eyes, and as I knew nothing it was easy for me to look the part of a stuffed owl. Grim raised his eyebrows at last, and relighted his pipe, to get the old man to talking again.

  “So it happened that Mujrim, my oldest-born, went on a little expedition all alone. There was great risk, but he is a great adventurer, and he was in Allah’s keeping; so he came back—”

  “With a bag of gold-dust, which he sold for cash to Aaron Cohen,” said Grim. “We all know that. Go on.”

  “You all know it, you say? Who are all of you that know it? Bismillah! Is there no such thing as a secret any more? Cohen swore he would not tell. Curse him, he shall eat his oath whole, and feel the knife that carves it inside his belly!”