Complete Works of Talbot Mundy, page 791
I nodded, not that I had any doubt of Feisul; whoever has met him, and isn’t a Frenchman with ambition to turn Syria into another Algeria, respects that man and trusts his given word. But I would play a busted flush against four kings for Jeremy’s sake. “Better soak me with the responsibility,” said Grim. “I know Feisul better than either of you two fellows do. Jeremy doesn’t know him at all, except by hearsay. I’ll endorse Feisul’s paper in blank, as it were.”
“Meaning exactly what?” asked Jeremy.
“That if Feisul breaks his word to you, we’ll reckon it as if I’d broken my word. In that event I’ll let you name the penalty.” Jeremy grinned hugely.
“All right, old top, I’ll name it now. We’ll play this like one of your U.S. election bets. If Feisul makes a bargain with me and breaks it, you quit the army and come to Australia as junior member of the firm of Ross, Ramsden, and Grim. You start at the bottom as office boy — lick the stamps — polish up the brass plate on the door — argue over the phone with central — live for a year on thirty bob a week — and don’t get promoted to a partnership until we own a mine as good as this one!”
“And if Feisul makes you a promise and keeps it, what then?”
“Why, then we’ll be Grim, Ramsden, and Ross. Rammy’s head ain’t delivering its rated horsepower just at present, so he can’t say no to anything. You’d better not try, Rammy; there are several sore spots on you that I could land on!”
“Very well; we’ll call that a bet,” said Grim. “Shall, we write it down? But remember, I don’t guarantee to join the firm unless I lose. If I win, I have the option to become a partner. That right?” “Sure. Senior partner if you win.”
Jeremy wrote down the terms of the bet in Grim’s memorandum book, and though he would have it that my brains weren’t functioning, it was I, not he, who detected a ringer in our woodpile.
“Feisul’s good faith is a cinch,” I said, “but how about that report that Grim must turn in at headquarters? Are you going to cook it, Grim?”
“No, sir.”
“Then what? Suppose some snooping office clerk gets hold of it? He could sell his information to a Levantine, or in London, Rome, Paris — anywhere. There’d be gangs with some Foreign Office pull out hunting for Jeremy’s mine like cruisers picking up a derelict; and if the Arabs tried to prevent ’em there’d be a new war, that’s all. How are you going to keep your end of the secret, Grim?”
“Easy enough,” he answered. “I report direct to the Administrator. He’ll have to share the confidence with his Chief of Staff and three or four others; but every single one of them is pro-Feisul. There’ll be nothing put in writing beyond a bald, and rather vague account of my journey to this place. The Administrator will send a private report to London, but if he calls this mine ‘ancient workings,’ such as are known to exist all over Arabia, that will only interest the archaeologists. And if he adds that steps were taken to prevent desecration of ancient tombs by private, adventurers nobody will be in any hurry to investigate. There’s only one chance for a leak that I can see.”
“Then sit on it and keep the water out!” said Jeremy. “That gold that you sent to El-Kalil. It was bought by the bank in Jerusalem.”
“There’s going to be more of it, too,” said Jeremy. “I’m going to take a bagful of the stuff away with me, and cash it in, for I’ll need money.”
Grim sat tight and looked puzzled for several minutes, like a player studying a chess-board.
“We’ll manage that all right,” he said at last. “Didn’t you come here all the way from Yemen, Jeremy?”
“Sure did. Got fifty witnesses. Ask some of my bob-tail following. Pick out the lads who had to hoof it while I rode a camel.”
“Well, we needn’t lie about it. We’ll contrive to tell the truth to anyone who’s curious in such a way that he’ll conclude you brought the gold from Yemen.”
“And that’s a thousand miles from here,” remarked Jeremy rather boastfully. But I think that if I had accomplished this feat I might be tempted to boast too.
Grim pocketed his memorandum book with an air of having closed a satisfactory deal.
“So that’s all settled. Good. Now let’s put Ramsden back to bed, and go and look at the defenses. If I know the Avenger — and I think I do — he’ll come for us with all he’s got. Just at present he’ll be rounding up some other Sheikhs to help him; but he’ll come quick before their enthusiasm wanes. Let’s go.”
“Lord! This is the life!” laughed Jeremy. “Sundowner one day. Millionaire mine owner the next. Now turn politician and shuffle thrones — me that would kid a king as quick as look at him! Suits me all right! Come on.”
CHAPTER XIII. “Oh, I say!”
I MADE the swift recovery that men of my type usually do. It is the ultra-sensitive and subtle-minded fellows who linger in bed after an accident; the less abstract the mentality the quicker its recovery, until you get away down in the scale to the lobster and the lizard, who can grow a new claw or a tail without troubling the doctor.
I lay through the day, but was tired of inactivity by nightfall; and even though the Avenger’s brother with his broken collarbone, and Ali Baba and Narayan Singh all came and talked with me on Jeremy’s roof under the stars — for they weren’t allowed into the mine and knew next to nothing about it — I had a hard time to idle through the following night, and dawn found me, if not yet fit for work, still less fit for doing nothing. The Avenger’s brother — his name was Achmet by the way — took quite a shine to me because I didn’t resent his blows on my skull. But unless he had used the blade or the dagger first and killed me from behind, I don’t see what else he could have done, do you? He had a perfect right to try to escape, and I was looking for him on purpose to prevent that very thing.
It wasn’t a case for resentment at all; and besides, he had much the worst of it, for his broken collar-bone had pierced the flesh; and the wound, together with Grim’s and Jeremy’s amateurish surgery, caused him a lot of pain, which he endured, however, like a man.
“I will see that your life is spared when my brother comes, Ramsden Effendi. He will deal with Jmil Ras as with a scorpion that he crushes underfoot,” he assured me. “But you and Jimgrim shall be set free, because Jimgrim is his friend and you mine.”
At that old Ali Baba snorted like a blowing grampus. He and the Avenger’s brother were hardly on terms at all, and only tolerant of each other’s company because there was no alternative. Ali Baba was really acting jailer, although he did not emphasize the point; as captain of our gang he ranked next after Grim and me, so Grim had chosen him for the task in order to show as much respect toward the Avenger’s brother as was possible in the circumstances.
“Wait and see!” Ali Baba advised, nodding his old head sagely. “You think that the Avenger can sweep all before him; and he certainly must try for his own honor’s sake. If he doesn’t try to destroy Jmil Ras after this, his own men will laugh at him. But Jmil Ras holds Jimgrim, and Jimgrim has the brains.”
“What of that?” the Avenger’s brother sneered. “A prisoner can be made to talk; he can be made to work; he can even be made to fight grudgingly against his own side; for few men suffer torture very long without yielding up their will. But who knows how to make Jimgrim think, or how to make any prisoner think? Can you make me invent for you a way out of your difficulty, and teach you the way?
“No! Neither, then, can Jmil Ras make use of Jimgrim’s brains. Make thy peace with Allah, Oh ancient of days, for the Avenger will tie thee to a gate-post in the sun, and where the ropes cut the skin the ants will enter!”
“Jmil Ras has bought Jimgrim,” Ali Baba answered. “Gold is the stuff that can make a prisoner think.”
“Mashallah! My brother the Avenger has more gold than Jmil Ras, and Jimgrim must know that.”
“Maybe,” Ali Baba retorted. “But he is meaner with his gold. This fellow Jmil Ras acts like a prince. He has paid me my price and the half again added to it. He will buy Jimgrim in the same manner, and you shall see a plan born, that will leave Jmil Ras contented, the Avenger obedient, and Jimgrim smiling; because that is Jimgrim’s way. I know the man. Wallahi! I am the cleverest thief in all these parts, yet Jimgrim had the better of me; and if he can do that he can trap and defeat any ten Avengers! Wait and see!” And then came Ayisha, equally a prisoner and deprived of her rifle at last though not of liberty to come and go within definite limits. She looked askance at Narayan Singh and laughed openly at me.
“Aha! Miyan, little use was thy magic against a man’s blows! A millieme for such magic! And the other great magician had to use a butt-end to protect you! Bah!”
She evidently shared the opinion that the Avenger would come presently and capture the lot of us, and had made up her mind finally as to which side her own bread was buttered. She went straight to the Avenger’s brother and rearranged his cushions, re-wetting the sponge under his arm, and doing all she could to keep his favor.
It was well that she chose that course, for though her forecast of events was wrong as it turned out, it would have been awkward for us, and worse for her, if the Avenger’s brother hadn’t approved of her.
There are much more pleasant fates than that awaiting a disloyal woman in Arabia, and simpler tasks than finding a new husband for Ayisha.
We certainly couldn’t have left her to her fate, if the Avenger’s brother had seen fit to charge her with treason; but she had another shot in her locker yet, and took good care before the climax came to establish her position.
Grim spent all that night alone on the same roof, but aloof from us, “thinking fish,” as Jeremy expressed it. Did you ever see a Cape Cod schooner captain go into a brown study for hours on end “doping out” where the cod will go to feed next? All born fishermen acquire ability to do that; so do big game hunters; I have astonished myself more than once after a long spell of camp life and shooting for the pot, by an uncanny ability to reason out where the game will be at any given moment.
Grim, I think, applies the same sort of mental process in dealing with human problems. He seems able to withdraw himself from immediate surroundings and to think as Arabs do — exactly like a schooner captain thinking fish — with the result that he knows in advance what they will do without their telling him, and can make use of his knowledge either to assist or confound them. In that respect he’s exactly the opposite of Jeremy, who stages his play on the spur of the moment as a general rule, confounding all adversaries by a combination of quick wit and pugnacity. Compared to either of them, I’m slow-minded — slow on my feet, too, having to make up for that by a kind of patient tenacity — a sort of heavy siege-gun of a man, more often than not exasperated by my own inability to size up situations quickly.
* * * * *
I DON’T think Grim slept at all that night. The roof we were on was the usual flat stone affair with a coping all around it — about the only roof in all that village that hadn’t needed patching when Jeremy pounced on the place. The house underneath it, strangely enough, was in ruins, the second floor and one of the walls having almost totally collapsed; but the roof provided a good view of most of the country-side, so Jeremy had made it his watch-tower and called the comfortless barn underneath, headquarters.
From time to time Jeremy’s snatches of song and his leisurely cavalry footstep broke the silence as he came to report to Grim some information brought in by a spy, or to ask advice about a change in the defenses; for, though I expect friend Jeremy would have resented deeply anything that smacked of interference, he is no such fool as to neglect opportunity; being told to do things, and getting good counsel when you ask for it are as the poles apart, especially if you’re Australian.
It was on Grim’s advice, re-inforced by mine — for I’m a cautious man, not caring to bite off more than I can reasonably expect to chew — that Jeremy cut down ruthlessly the area he proposed to defend. The ruined, patched-up village lay on the spur of a mountain, whose true name nobody knew, for only the goat-herdsmen pretend to local knowledge of geography, and though they can always find their way among the hills, and each height and ravine has a name as old as history, no two of them ever apply the same name to the same place — which adds variety, of course, and is a gorgeous ingredient for building lies, but annoys us matter-of-factish Westerners.
It was a rather straggling village. That long line of tombs interfered with its formation, there being a Moslem prejudice against digging foundations too near to ground made sacred by dead men’s bones. Months ago Jeremy had joined up house to house, pulling down the worst ruins for material for his wall; but the eggshaped enclosure thus contrived was too big for the three hundred men at his disposal, and the greater part of the night was spent in flattening one end of it, as well as in improving the roof stockades, so that an enemy seeking cover behind outlying ruins could be raked from more than one angle.
Totaling up, we had water enough to last forever; food enough for about three weeks, after which we would have to eat starving camels; about a thousand rounds of ammunition to a man — Jeremy having raided the supplies of more than one local Sheikh — and men who did not deceive themselves with any hope of quarter from the Avenger, and who would consequently die, if need be, in the last ditch.
On the other hand, the news brought in by Jeremy’s spies was not reassuring. In the first place, the Avenger’s city, as he called it, of Abu Kem was only twenty miles away; so he had a perfect base for operations and could launch his attack without being hampered by a long supply train — the bugbear of all who take the field. Added to that, there wasn’t a Sheikh within fifty miles who hadn’t been annoyed by Jeremy in one way or another, and though the Avenger was far too ambitious to be popular, and too powerful to be trusted, a common cause will unite the most suspicious rivals for a while, and Jeremy had provided just that.
One spy after another brought word that the Sheikhs of neighboring villages were promising support to the Avenger. Promises don’t always amount to much in that land, but there came information of night marches toward Abu Kem, and as the night wore on there were watch-fires lighted on the hills within ten miles of us. The Avenger’s brother grew jubilant at sight of them, and vowed that he knew by their arrangement whose fires they were.
“Five thousand men will come against this place at dawn!” he said confidently, Ayisha nodding confirmation of his guess. “Better send messengers and try to make terms. Perhaps, if you surrender all the arms and all the loot, and if the men agree to forsake Jmil Ras for the Avenger, even the life of Jmil Ras may be spared. My brother the Avenger is no hyena; but, by Allah, he makes his name good when men oppose him!”
Coffee was brought up to the roof just then, and I made that an excuse for going over to Grim’s corner and telling him what the Avenger’s brother had just said. Grim nodded, and looked as if he expected me to understand the whole series of deductions that the nod meant.
“Out with it!” I urged him. “Coffee cuts grease; drink some and cough up what you mean.”
He put his head on one side and looked up at me with a humorous twinkle, and a twitch at the corner of his mouth.
“He sure did batter up that bean of yours!” he answered. “Doesn’t it occur to you that if he still thought Jmil Ras was an Arab he’d never have suggested sparing his life? Dog eats dog, you know. They’re more bitter against their own heretics and schismatics than against any foreigner. That fellow knows his brother’s mind pretty nearly as well as you know what’s in your pocket. They think like twins.”
“Well, what do you make of it? Is his opinion good news or bad?”
“You bet it’s good. Guess I was tired or something. I’ve been puzzling the blamed conundrum and had it all doped out except for that one obvious point. Honest; it never occurred to me! You’ve put the key into my hand.”
“Not consciously,” I said. “I don’t see the point even now.”
“I’ve been figuring all the while that the Avenger would insist on having Jeremy executed for desecrating tombs and working magic.” He brought his hands together as if sweeping the chessmen off a board. “The Avenger is mate in one move. Feisul wins!”
Well; I’ve overlooked a bet or two in my day. I went hungry for three days once, with forgotten corned beef in the locker; and on another occasion I forgot that you can make fulminate from cyanide and quicksilver, and wasted I don’t know how many days waiting for detonators. And there was nobody in those days to give my tired-out thinking gear the necessary twitch, as it seems I did to Grim’s. None the less, I can’t help thinking that with all his mental alertness he would have found that loophole when the time came — as it did with disconcerting speed.
When the sun rose angrily above the skyline in a glowing smother of dust it was as if the vultures had been gathering overnight to attend our obsequies. There was no five thousand gathered against us — for Arabs exaggerate more wildly than the U.S. yellow press — but certainly two thousand riflemen were bivouacked in sight of Jeremy’s crude ramparts; and, what was worse, they had green banners with them, which implied that the real issue had been cloaked in a religious garb, so that we had fanaticism on top of greed to deal with. Jmil Ras had been denounced as a heretic impostor, and the sure reward of paradise had been promised to all who might die in the effort to wipe him off the map.
But no man living could take down friend Jeremy’s colors by any form of threat. He came up to the roof grinning his usual boisterous greeting to the world at large, and using astonishing profanity in Arabic — which is a language all Australians ought to learn; it was built for hard swearing.
