Ayisha paused dramatically to give her revelation time to take effect. In lands where almost no men, and even fewer women, can read, the art of reporting verbally maintains a high plane. She waited for Grim to nod once more before resuming.
“Ali Higg was doubtful and afraid. He complained about his neck. He feared to leave Petra ungoverned. But she told him to cover up his neck with bandages and to hide the bandages beneath the kuffiyi.* He said he knew no English, and therefore could not pretend to be Jimgrim. But she said: ‘Neither does the Avenger or any of his men know English; and is not Jimgrim pretending to be an Arab? Cannot an Arab pretend to be an Arab likewise?’ So he said again that if Petra were left ungoverned there would be no knowing what might happen. And she said: ‘Then I myself will return and govern Petra. I will go with this Jimgrim, and make believe to fall in with his plans, displaying reluctance for the sake of being all the more convincing when I yield; but I will seize the first chance to escape and return to Petra, and occupy thy place until thou come again.’ So spake Jael, and the Lion finally agreed.”
(* Headdress)
She paused, and Grim spoke at last.
“Do she and the Lion still propose to let me deal with the Avenger?”
“Surely. And to defeat you afterwards.”
“Then who do they think will make Ibrahim ben Ah and his hundred and forty men obey me, seeing that Jael was to have contrived that part?”
“The Lion thought of that at once,” Ayisha answered. “But Jael said: ‘Malaish!* This Jimgrim thinks himself so clever. Let him puzzle out that problem after I have left him. If he finds a way, well and good. If not, we shall be no worse off, and an intruder will have burned his fingers. If Ibrahim ben Ah should suspect him, and lay hands on him, and kill him, let that be the judgement of Allah, and we will find another way to deal with the Avenger.’”
(* No matter)
“And has Ali Higg left Petra?”
“Surely.”
“And that camel yonder, whose head appeared just now from behind the rock?”
“There were three camels. This man came with two others to bring word to me. Jael knew nothing of that, but she will know now. That is why this man is afraid. But as the other two came to protect this one, and knew nothing, it maybe they will tell her nothing; and this man, who is a father of lies always, can tell Jael that the Lion sent him to help her escape. So he has no need to feel so very much afraid, although he is a great coward.”
Grim raised his eyebrows comically. It was a predicament all right.
CHAPTER VI
“I will stick that pig Yussuf when I find him!”
The news spread through our camp in a twinkling, for the two men whom I had sent up to Grim with the prisoner while I looked into Jael’s tent had been listening to Ayisha’s story, and one of them ran down below to tell his brothers.
From their viewpoint it was a wonder of a tale, full of enchanting possibilities and side-issues, and especially gratifying because it would oblige Grim to display his genius for counter-intrigue. Their faith in him was measureless, and why not? Had he not outwitted Ali Baba, grandsire of the gang, and bound the whole lot by good will to his chariot wheels? The man who could accomplish that was capable of anything. We could hear them down in the dark fiumara exclaiming “Allah!” “Mashallah!” “Wallahi!”as the tale unfolded and its ramifications dawned on their appreciative minds.
It was no use my trying to suggest anything. I’m no diplomatist, and even strategy is a thing I can appreciate far better than invent. I suppose if we all were strategists it would take a man from Mars with something new, like “relativity,” to lead us anywhere; and if we were all just plain Merry Andrews with a pound or two of muscle on our arms and legs, we’d reduce the world to a fine mess of hash. Each man to his profession, then, and let the man whose job is thinking have a chance to think.
Narayan Singh stood like a statue, making no sign. Grim sat looking at Ayisha, and the prisoner still trembled against my leg, although not so violently. Suddenly Grim pointed a finger at him.
“Go!” he ordered. “Give him back his weapons, somebody.”
A startled cat would have taken longer to obey that order. Inside a minute the fellow was scrambling up the far bank of the fiumara, pursued by volleys of ridicule from our men. He wasted no time taking cover as he ran, but raced his own shadow across the open to the place where he had left his camel.
Ayisha, with her placid brow and burning eyes, had been doing some thinking, meanwhile, on her own account. She spoke at last—to Grim, of course; Narayan Singh and I hardly figured any longer in her consciousness.
“So now I have told all the truth. Am I unworthy of my lord’s favour? I am as one who had a fortune and has given all of it. Shall I be cast off like a broken shoe?”
Grim seemed to come out of a brown study suddenly, and Narayan Singh heaved an enormous sight of relief. I believe he has been praying to all the gods of the Hindu pantheon to give his leader wisdom; for he forgets his Sikhism in times of stress and falls from orthodoxy, speculating that there might be virtue in the old gods after all.
“There is no way, is there, by which Ibrahim ben Ah could have learned of your divorce?” Grim asked suddenly.
“Not unless old Ali Baba has told him,” Ayisha answered.
“When that old fox parts with information he isn’t paid for it will be time for Gabriel to sound the last trump,” Grim said, smiling. “Have you ever given orders to Ibrahim ben Ah, Ayisha?”
“A hundred times. I was the Lion’s second wife. Once, when Jael was away with the Lion on a raid against the men of El-Kerak, I was left in sole command in Petra, with Ibrahim ben Ah and fifty men to do my bidding. I am a Sheikh’s oldest daughter,” she added proudly. “I am used to be obeyed.”
“And will you help me now?” Grim asked her.
“Even unto the end of the world,” she answered, in a voice that would have melted icebergs.
Her promise was likely more reliable than Jael Higg’s, but she made it clear she would demand her price. It was difficult to guess whether she was really in love with Grim; not because he wasn’t lovable from a woman’s viewpoint, for at least a score of women of his own speech, and several from his own country, have made small secret of their regard for him. But the customs of the country entered into it. Where women are practically bought and sold—occasionally given by their parents—and very often plundered like raided cattle, the sex acquires a viewpoint that the West can’t grasp. The famous advice of the American Quaker to his son, not to love money, but to love where money is, has its adaptation in Arabia; and it might be that Grim’s peculiar genius pointed the way to her ambition. Whether she would be really heartbroken in our sense of the word, when the inevitable truth should dawn that Grim lived in another world, as it were, and never would dream of making her his wife, was a conundrum. Of one thing, though, I was