“He said that, the vision not being intended for me, the presence of the angel overpowered me and the man who was with me and we swooned. I accused him of having drugged us, but he answered that we must have dreamed that. The dog of a thief!”
“Well, go on. What next?”
“He said that the angel beckoned and he and his sixteen rascals followed into the tomb of Abraham, where a spirit came and breathed on them and they all received the gift of fire. In proof of it every one of the sixteen eggs of Satan belched fire from his mouth as the father of thieving spoke.
“You should have summoned your seven men, and have sent them for others, and have had Ali Baba and his thieves jailed for sacrilege,” said Grim.
“But I tell you the seven men slept! I opened the door and shouted for them, but none came; and Ali Baba and his sixteen dogs pushed past me through the door and were gone! So after we had locked the door again I and the other man who was with me took counsel together and I was for sending for the Governor of Hebron; but he said that would be to make a public scandal, which it were well to avoid.
“He said that the Moslems of Hebron would not be pleased with us if it were known that we had let ourselves be tricked in such a matter and that they would be yet less pleased with us if we should appeal to foreigners. Moreover, he confessed himself afraid. He said that after all the story of the angel might be true and that if we denied it there might be a tumult. There are many wild fools in El-Kalil!”
“But you, not he, are the Sheikh of the mosque,” said Grim.
“Truly. Yet he refused to follow the course I favored. He vowed that he would tell what he had seen with his own eyes and no more: to wit, the broken masonry and seventeen men all breathing fire in this place where we sit. He insisted that the wisest course for both of us would be to say nothing and to wait and see what Ali Baba and his sons might have to say first; to that course he was willing to agree.
“There is wisdom in silence; so he and I carried in cement and replaced the broken masonry with great care, agreeing to tell no word of it to any man until circumstances should reveal to us the right course. And the day following he ran away, Allah knows whither; so I am all alone to bear the brunt of this matter. Allah send a poor man wisdom that I may avoid disgrace!”
“Well—what account has Ali Baba given of it?”
“Have you not heard? He and his brood go belching Hell-fire through the streets, saying they went into the cave and have a gift of prophecy. When men came to see the entrance of the cave and found it sealed up, that old father of lies declared that one angel had broken the masonry, and afterwards another came and closed it. They could see that the cement was fresh and the stones slightly disarranged and that convinced them! Do you realize my predicament? My choice lay between confession that I had not guarded the cave faithfully, or saying nothing. I have said nothing. I continue to say nothing. Let Allah speak, or the spirit of Abraham, for I am dumb!”
“I find that you have been unwise,” said Grim after a minute’s pause; and for half a minute after that the Sheikh battled with his own priestly pride. For many and many a year he had been fault-finder-in-chief in Hebron, and the licensed critic of others seldom suffers judgment dociley. However, he swallowed the verdict, Grim watching him as if a chemical experiment were taking place in a test-tube.
“But not unfaithful,” Grim added, when the right second seemed to have come to drop that new ingredient into the mixture of emotions.
The Sheikh’s eyes that had been blazing grew as grateful as a dog’s.
“Moreover, I find that the wisdom of your subsequent silence offsets the former foolishness and I shall say so to Seyyid Omar when I go back to El-Kudz.”
”Istarfrallah! (I beg God’s pardon!)”
“In silence there is dignity, and out of dignity may come deliverance,” said Grim.
”Inshallah! (If God wills!)”
“Those seventeen thieves are not men of keen intellect, are they?” Grim asked him suddenly.
“Allah! They are rogues with the brains of foxes—no better and no less.”
“How should they have thought of such a scheme as this?”
”Shi ajib. (It is a strange thing.) Who can fathom it?”
“There must be a brain behind them.”
“Perhaps the brain of Satan! Who knows?”
“Think!” said Grim. “Is there any foreigner in Hebron who might have put them up to it?”
“I know of none.”
“Has there been no stranger here, who perhaps took a particular interest in the entrance to the cave?”
“Ah! There was one, yes—about a month ago. But he was a dervish out of Egypt—a mere fanatic—a fool who did tricks with coins and eggs to amuse folk and begged his living.”
“Where is he now?” asked Grim.
“They say he lives in a cave near Abraham’s Oak.”
“You say a mere mountebank?”
“No better.”
Grim proceeded to dismiss that subject as beneath consideration. If I had dared air my Arabic I would have urged him to follow it up further and by the look in Cohen’s eye he felt the same about it; but the most that either of us dared do was to sit still and call as little attention to ourselves as possible. Nothing but the fact that Grim had forced the Sheikh on the defensive from the start was preserving us from being questioned in a way that would have exposed me certainly, and Cohen probably.
“And this fire-gift—they are going to display it now?” asked Grim, as if he did not know.
“Aye, now. And I, who am Sheikh of this mosque, must eat humility and watch them. Truly are the ways of Allah past discerning. Verily dust is dust.”
“Amen!” said Grim. “But did you never see a vision? May the Sheikh of a mosque such as this not talk with spirits now and then?”
The Sheikh stared back at him with his jaw down. You could have put anything into his mouth that you cared to and he wouldn’t have known it; the suggestion had hit home.
“If seventeen thieves can see an angel,” Grim went on, as if propounding a conundrum, “how many can the Sheikh of this mosque see?”
“But the fire-gift? These men show a miracle. How to answer that?”
“With another.”
“But—but—I am no mountebank. I can do no tricks with fire.”
“New tricks would do no good without a prophecy,” said Grim. “In a matter of prophecy, whose word would be listened to, yours or theirs?”
”Inshallah, mine!”
“And which is wiser: to confound your adversary with his own arguments, or yours?”
“With his. Surely with his, for then he has no retort.”
“So then—these seventeen thieves say that the fire-gift came out of the tomb of Abraham. If you were to say that because they are thieves the fire-gift must return again; if you were to say that an angel had appeared to you and told you that, would not all Hebron listen?”
“It might be. But Ali Baba and his sixteen sons have preached a killing of the Jews. The swords of El-Kalil are sharpened. They are ready to begin.”
“Yes, and if they do begin all Hebron will say afterwards that the fire-gift and the prophecy were true. Ali Baba will be reckoned a true prophet and you will have a competitor on your hands.”
“Truly.”
“Therefore the massacre