“God damn you, Rabbi! Don’t you see that your refusal means a death sentence for us all?”
“Tch-tch! I sentence no one! I am not responsible for this. I will take no part in it!”
De Crespigny glanced at Grim hopelessly.
“I pass, Grim. Can you say anything?”
Grim nodded.
“Cut loose, Cohen. Tell ‘em your views.”
I don’t know whether Cohen took Grim by surprise or not. He surely astonished the rest of us. I’ve never seen a man handle a meeting with half such passionate wrath. He grew suddenly red in the face as if he could command his rage to order; stood up; threw off his jacket on the floor; rolled up his shirt sleeves, and sat down again. Then he brought his fist down on the table with a crash that upset both vases and, as Grim had suggested that he should, cut loose.
Arabic was the speech he used, with occasional bursts of English when expletives failed him; and he reeled off a list of the faults of the ancient Jewish race with a completeness and fervor that would start a riot if set down in print.
“You old moss-backs!” he fairly yelled at last. “You silly old suckers! You think I care, perhaps, if you all get your throats cut! Guess again! You’re dummies, that’s what you are! Marionettes! You’re goin’ to be used! Who’s goin’ to use you? Me! Yours truly!”
Then back into Arabic again, reeling out abuse until he gasped for breath.
“Gimme a drink, some one! Now, you left-overs, listen to me! You haven’t a word to say! You’ll do izzactly as you’re told! This plan’s all thought out, an’ you’ll fall in with it! That fire goes back tonight—see? I’m the feller that takes it back —I take the risk, too! I’ll show you—watch!”
He sprang to his feet again and stripped himself naked to the waist; then seized the lamp on the side-board, jerked out the wick arrangement, poured kerosene into his hand and rubbed it on his stomach. Next he struck a match and set it alight. “There! That’s what!” He smothered the fire with his hands again.
“Tonight I go to the Ghetto. Ali Baba breathes on me and I burn like the Fourth o’ July. I’m a Jew, and you’ll acknowledge me! Two hundred Sephardim will come along behind me in procession to the tomb of Abraham, chantin’ hymns, an’ doin’ it all in first-class style, or I’ll take the fire an’ throw it in your face, and tell the Moslems to go get it from you! D’you believe me? So help me God, I’ll do it!”
“And that would be the end of every living Jew in El-Kalil,” said Grim, quietly approving.
“You are a bad man to talk that way!” the Rabbi objected.
“Bad man? Sure, I’m a Hell of a bad man! Throwin’ fire in fellers’ faces is meat to me! D’ye see this young officer here? He’s a decent feller. D’ye see these others? They’re friends o’ mine—bad men—bad as me—worse! D’ye think I’m goin’ to stand by an’ see them get their throats cut without makin’ sure that you goody-goodies get yours first? Huh! If there’s goin’ to be a massacre tonight it starts in the Ghetto, an’ the Rabbi is goin’ to be number one for the knife! So suit yourselves, only make your minds up quick!”
“We shall stay here—here in this place!” the Rabbi announced suddenly.
“Not you! I’m goin’ to kick you out into the street five minutes from now!”
“The governor must protect us!”
“Must he? You try him! Here he is listenin’ to what I say! I happen to know izzactly what he’ll do; soon as I’ve kicked you out, he’ll call for his cops to chase you down to the Ghetto where you belong! No; you’ve got your last chance; take or leave it! Who’s got a watch? Clock ‘em, some one. Give ‘em three minutes to decide!”
Grim pulled out Cohen’s own gold watch that had been the means of introducing him to all the trouble and laid it on the table ostentatiously, face upward.
“Time starts now!” he announced.
Cohen proceeded to put his shirt on, as if he always made a point of doing that before committing acts of violence; he looked something like a gladiator fitting on his mail—a muscled, beefy man, perfectly able to carry out his threat.
The Rabbi looked imploringly at de Crespigny for any sign of weakness, but was met by a smile whose enigmatic corners suggested anything but that. He tried to consult with his friends, but they thrust back the responsibility on him with shrugging shoulders and something vague about making complaint to Jerusalem later on.
“Thirty seconds more!” announced Grim and Cohen started for the door to open it.
“It is a scandal; but you compel me!” said the Rabbi, throwing up both hands, palms upward.
“Compel nothing!” Cohen retorted hotly. “You choose!”
“I have no choice. I am in the hands of determined men; what can I do?”
“Do you agree to the proposal?” asked de Crespigny. “I must!”
“No side-stepping!” said Grim. “We want a definite affirmative. Will you or won’t you?”
“Very well, I will. But there should be a writing—something in writing to prove afterwards that I am not responsible. This is none of my doing. I must not interfere with Moslem prejudices. I cannot accept the blame for it. You must absolve me.” Grim’s eyes met de Crespigny’s curiously across the table.
“How about it, Crep? If the old bird wants to be nasty afterward they may have to make an official goat of someone.”
“Oh, what’s the odds? I’ll sign it.”
“Don’t you!” broke in Cohen. “I’m the guy that forced him. Let me sign it! No reason why you should lose your job for this. The worst they can do to me is fire me out of the country. Come on, write him out a paper and I’ll sign it.”
“You’re a good scout, Aaron,” Grim answered, “but we won’t let you do it all. Rabbi, you write your own acquittal and I’ll put my name on it. I’m responsible for this.”
CHAPTER X.
“We must score the last trick with the deuce of spades!”
Cohen took charge of the training of the Rabbi and his men; not that they would not have preferred almost anyone else, for their scorn of him was marrow-deep. He had a certain amount of kindly feeling for them; they none for him whatever. Those timid old last-ditch conservatives had clung to their orthodoxy in the face of worse calamity than Cohen had ever dreamed of; and the pride that accompanies all conservatism had fossilized their humanity to a point where almost nothing mattered except form and ritual.
Most of them traced descent to ancestors who had been driven from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella and so added to a natural pride of race and creed an unnatural, exotic arrogance copied from the Dons.
But Cohen was for that very reason exactly the man to handle them. He had just enough sympathy to understand them and know what verbal shafts would surest sting them into obedience. He knew enough to threaten—too much to strike; to mock their pride and yet play up to it. And his business brain was working; he had grasped the extent of the possibilities and was keener now on making the most of the situation than on saving his own skin and ours.
I suspect that at the back of that bull-necked head of his he already had a scheme for making money out of the adventure somehow; if so, I am equally sure he abandoned it afterward, because, although a man of his parts might build up a business with the Hebron suk, the