“I agree,” he said at last. “As Allah is my witness, I agree. Let us be friends, O Jimgrim!”
Grim shook hands with him and offered him a cigarette, while Ali Baba’s men outside the cave sent up a great shout of victory. Then to Ali Higg’s inexpressible delight Mahommed started to sing the Akbar song, and they all roared the chorus:
“Akbar! Akbar! Akbar Ali Higg!”
The song put everybody in good temper, so that when Jael wrote out a letter to the bank at Grim’s dictation Ali Higg affixed the seal to it without a murmur and ordered food supplied at once to all Grim’s men; and we had a feast up there on the ledge outside the cave—in sight of the very spot where Amaziah, King of Israel, once hurled ten thousand of his enemies into the gorge below—that, in some respects, was the most enjoyable I ever shared.
But Grim was not the man to spoil success by lingering in what might yet turn into a trap. He who sups with the devil should not sit long at the feast; and I warned you this was a story without an end to it.
There is the lady Ayisha, and what became of her, and the account of when and in what way the Lion kept his bargain. Well, have you heard of those tale-tellers in the East, who sit under a village tree with the menfolk all around them? They work up to the climax, and then pause, and pass the begging-bowl for whatever the tale is worth. I fear those masters of inducement would mock me as a tyro for having already told too much before the pause!
THE END
* By Allah, this is a strange happening.
* You shame me with your friendship!
* The name of the valley that leads into Petra.
The Woman Ayisha
CHAPTER I “Ali, I say go with him!”
CHAPTER II “Once before she called herself his wife, on half the provocation.”
CHAPTER III “We’re all set now.”
CHAPTER IV “A cent for your sympathy!”
CHAPTER V “May you deal with your enemies like iron, even as you deal with me.”
CHAPTER VI “I will stick that pig Yussuf when I find him!”
CHAPTER VIII “Have you heard of Jimgrim?”
CHAPTER IX “Should I stoop to a pig-Pathan, with a prince waiting for me?”
CHAPTER X “Wallah! And you say she has a following of fifty men?”
CHAPTER XI “I see no sin in holding to my given word. Let Allah judge me!”
CHAPTER I
“Ali, I say go with him!”
Consider the situation for a moment first. There were twenty of us—seventeen Arabs, Narayan Singh the Sikh, myself, and Grim. We were in Petra over-Jordan, which was no-man’s land until Ali Higg, self-styled Lion of Petra, friend of the Prophet of Islam, Lord of the Limits of the Desert and Lord of the Waters—Ali Higg the Terrible, swooped into it from Arabia and, with the aid of Jael, his European wife, established himself there as a thorn in the flank of Palestine. You couldn’t choose a better place to be a thorn in. Impregnable without long-range artillery; inaccessible except by aeroplanes, if once the Valley of Moses leading into it through a twelve-foot gap were blocked; furnished with enough half-ruined graves and temples for accommodation purposes; close enough to Palestine for sudden raids, and surrounded by dry desert over which no mandatory power would think of sending an army if that could possibly be helped, Petra is the perfect outlaw’s paradise—a paradise of opal set in savage mountains.
As for ourselves, you could hardly call us an official expedition, nor even exactly authorized, for Grim enjoyed a free hand subject to the definite proviso that he would be promptly disowned by the Palestine authorities if trouble came of it. The British, having heard from the taxpayer, did not want to send an army against Ali Higg, besides which they had no mandate yet for the trans-Jordan country, as Ali Higg and all the Bedouins were well aware.
An American, even though commissioned in the British Army, can get away with things no Britisher would dare attempt because, of course, the authorities would have to stand behind a Britisher, whereas Americans are all born crazy and act without authority, and everybody knows it, and there you are, old top, so what’s the use?
And Grim, by using brains and information, which is a combination nobody can beat, had cornered Ali Higg, as I told in another story. One hundred and forty of Ali’s men under a veteran named Ibrahim ben Ah were resting their camels miles away in an oasis. The remaining forty and odd were camped in another direction. Jael, Ali Higg’s wife, after being made prisoner, had grudgingly agreed to help Grim tame her lord and master; and what with drenching him thoroughly, lancing his boils and catching him at an all-round disadvantage, we had forced him to give a hostage for good behavior in the shape of a deposit of fifty thousand pounds lying in his wife’s name in the Bank of Egypt.
So far, good; but there were complications. In the first place, that document was not worth a plugged piastre until safely under lock and key in Jerusalem, for Ali Higg would surely steal it back if he could. The money had been paid into the bank in gold, mainly half-sovereigns that were earned by Arab troops in the war against the Turks. The man who could squeeze all that money out of fighting Bedouins was unlikely to lose his grip on it, even for the three-year term of the agreement, if force or chicanery should provide him an alternative. If those troops of his should suddenly return, for instance, not only the agreement but our lives would be at stake.
The easiest course would have been to scoot out of Petra and head for Palestine, avoiding that oasis where the “army” waited. But Grim had made a promise which prevented that. In return for Ali Higg’s pledge and in the general interest of peace he had undertaken to deal with a Sheikh at Abu Lissan, farther South, who with eight hundred men proposed to come and “eat up” the terrible Ali and his scant ten score. While on our way southward there would be nothing to prevent Ali Higg from swooping on us treacherously from behind; but in dealing with people who might perhaps break faith there is nothing nearly so important as observing your own promises.
Nor was that all. Our opportunity to visit Petra, give the slip to Ali Higgs’ men, capture his head wife and corner the gentleman himself had come through Ayisha, his second wife, whom Grim had found making purchases in Hebron and who welcomed our escort on her