“Nothing! I know nothing, nothing! What do I know of any fire- gift?” said the Rabbi.
“Perhaps he doesn’t!” said de Crespigny.
“He lies! He does! One was released from the jail this morning, who says he knows the thieves no longer have the fire-gift. So the Jews must have it! Who else?”
“Kill the liar! Kill him!” yelled the rear ranks that were close enough to hear.
De Crespigny looked up, for inspiration probably, and caught sight of Grim’s face peering over the roof. Grim nodded violently, that being the only available signal for “go ahead.” De Crespigny seemed to understand, and smiled at last.
“I know a way to persuade the Jews,” he said. “They no doubt have the fire-gift and they shall return it tonight. Leave the Rabbi and his friends here. I’ll see justice done!”
“Good boy!” Grim muttered. “That young Crep has gall and guts. Couldn’t be better! Now we’ve got the Rabbi with the wind up where he can’t talk back and can’t refuse! Oh, good!”
CHAPTER IX.
“I am Rabbi, not governor!”
Crowds in those latitudes gather and disperse as suddenly as storms and, like the storms, leave a change of atmosphere behind them. In a sense they resemble waterspouts, destructive as the very devil if allowed to boil along unchecked—always fooling themselves that they are doing good, and hiding their real motive from themselves under a noisy pretense of moral purpose. And they can be handled in much the same way as a waterspout, with pretty much the same result. If you can sever the nexus, as it were, between the clouds and the sea—remove the connecting link between a mob and its desire—all’s calm again; or, if not calm, then at any rate much safer. There are typhoons, too, that have to be ridden out.
The nexus in this instance was the Jews and the underlying motive, loot. Ever since the heel of the Turk had been lifted the Moslems of Hebron had been aching to loot somebody. Turkish governor after governor had wrung from them in fines and taxes every piastre that he could and given nothing at all in return for it. So they were poor; and if the Jews weren’t rich, they were supposed to be.
Not even the Hebron crowd that prides itself on thieving will lay plans to loot a whole quarter of the town and cut three thousand throats without establishing a moral issue first to stalk behind. All humans act that way in the mass and if Hebron is not thoroughly human it is nothing. So old Ali Baba and his fire-gift had come, like many another apparent miracle, in the nick of time to salve the public conscience.
I never found out just to what extent Ali Baba had been opportunist. He may have planned the whole thing with a view to looting; but I think not. I think he only boasted of having planned it, after receiving instruction in the cave from that Egyptian devil; for Ali Baba and all his sixteen sons and grandsons were too childish and direct to have thought the thing out in the first instance. It takes Egypt to invent such a dark scheme.
But whoever invented it, Grim saw through it. He knew Hebron too intimately not to be sure that the Jews would be in deadly danger whenever any sort of uprising occurred anywhere in southern Palestine. Given loyal troops enough, anyone can suppress a mob; but the trouble had come at a moment when all the troops were occupied elsewhere, so the solution demanded genius. And genius is always simple, although it has a way of seeming subtly baffling to the onlooker.
It would be absurd to pretend that I, or any one but Grim himself, saw until afterward the thin thread of principle he followed to the final solution. But you can see it now. He established a clear issue. Without once showing his own hand, he pinned the Moslems down to a definite claim against the Jews.
All that remained after that was to get the Jews to pay the claim. Even a fanatically angry mob that receives what it demands needs time in which to formulate a new cause; and time meant the arrival of Sikhs and their machine guns.
But the Jews of Hebron are a cagey, self-reliant and suspicious crew. Anyone who had survived among Moslems under Turkish rule in that place would have to be. They no more trusted Grim and de Crespigny than Aaron Cohen, whom they despised as a renegade; and to get them to see the point and play Grim’s game until troops should come was about as easy as getting Scottish Highlanders to invest in foreign loans.
The crowd dispersed sulkily, shepherded by the lone policeman gamely parading his authority, and leaving the Rabbi and his friends in the Governorate, where they crowded the hall full and noisily abused de Crespigny for having permitted their Chief Rabbi to be outraged. They seemed to think, or pretended to think that the whole affair was his sole fault, and that he could restore order in a minute if he chose to.
We went and fetched Cohen from the hospital and thrust our way through their midst into the sitting-room, where Grim sent for the Rabbi at once. He refused to come in alone, but brought three friends with him, so we made a party of eight, facing one another across the table; and the din in the hall was so prodigious that whoever spoke had to bellow in order to be heard. Have you ever noticed how the need to shout at a man makes for rising temper? There was not much love lost at that session.
The Rabbi began by refusing point-blank to have anything to do with the fire-gift. He consulted his friends in Spanish, which none of us could understand; and they agreed with him. You would have thought we were asking for a loan of money on poor security to see the look of scandalized disapproval on their faces.
Asked by de Crespigny why he should refuse to countenance a plan that had been devised for the safety of himself and his people, the Rabbi answered that he had nothing to do with politics and refused to interfere.
“Suppose we were to refuse to interfere and just let you get massacred?” de Crespigny retorted.
“But that is your business!” said the Rabbi. “You are the governor. You receive a salary to keep the peace. I am Rabbi, not governor!”
“Have you any alternative suggestion?” de Crespigny asked him.
“Give us rifles! We will defend ourselves.”
“In the first place,” said, de Crespigny, “I haven’t them.”
The Rabbi looked utterly incredulous.
“There’s one each here for the police and the jailer, two or three revolvers and a pistol. That’s all. There’s hardly any ammunition. What other suggestion can you make?”
Grim was sitting back watching faces. I don’t know whether he had a solution in mind or not; it looked like an impasse.
The Rabbi turned and talked in Spanish with his friends.
“It is your business,” he said at last in Arabic. “We are not able to do anything. If we are attacked, we shall defend ourselves to the last. If you wish to prevent a massacre you should send for Sikhs.”
“There’s no knowing when the Sikhs can get here,” said de Crespigny. “You’re asked to help us gain time by pretending to return that fire-gift to the tomb of Abraham. Surely that’s not much?”
“Ah! It will be said afterward that we took liberties with the Moslem religion. It will only be a further excuse for a massacre.” We must have made a strange picture arguing the point over that table with its near-art cover and the flowers between us crammed into two brass cartridge cases that the Germans had left behind. De Crespigny and Cohen were the only men in modern costume. The Rabbi and his friends were dressed pretty much as the Pharisees were in Bible days, and bearded in keeping with it. Their faces wore the ivory pallor that comes of ghetto life, and were blanched beneath it with fear that has already