But if anyone was trembling it was he, and not with fear but anger almost too intense to be suppressed. Having won the upper hand of him mainly through Narayan Singh’s presence of mind, it was up to us to hold it, and about as certain as anything well could be that the old man would reverse the situation at the first chance.
“I asked a question that you haven’t answered yet,” said I. “By the Prophet’s feet this is a fine reception for the Lion’s messengers! A strange tale we shall have to tell him!”
“Aye!” he croaked, moving his Adam’s apple several times in rapid succession as he choked down his rising passion. “A very strange tale, on top of stranger happenings! I would like to see how Ali Higg with twenty men can make me move with a hundred four and forty! First it was toward the British border I was sent, to raid El-Maan, which was feasible; there is loot there for the taking. Then I was told to cool my heels in that oasis. Now it is to march on Abu Lissan, where we have no chance at all, and I am sick of the changing orders from day to day. By Allah, who am I to be ordered about like a bought slave? And who in the name of the Prophet is Ali Higg, that he should play fast and loose with me? I will not march on Abu Lissan, and that is all about it!”
I laughed. I couldn’t think of anything to say for the moment. If Ali Higg’s main force was going to mutiny, I didn’t see that Grim had much chance left in checkmating the Avenger and restoring a kind of order on the countryside. My main trouble is that I think too slowly to be of much use in a crisis of that kind; but Narayan Singh stepped nobly into the breach.
“By Allah’s Prophet and my teeth!” he boomed out. “Say thy prayers, Ibrahim! These men who obey thee at a handclap shall choose between you and a woman presently!”
“Jael has returned to Petra,” he answered, rather smugly.
Narayan Singh had had Ayisha in mind, not Jael; but here was a new note in the discord. Evidently Jael had got word to Ibrahim by one of those three messengers who brought news to Ayisha in the night; and Ibrahim had drawn his own conclusions.
I saw clearly now the strength of Grim’s contention in refusing to divulge his plans. If he had outlined any definite course for us to follow I would have felt bound by it; whereas I was free to use my own judgement, as it was. If Ibrahim ben Ah had determined, as seemed possible, to desert with all his force to the Avenger rather than run the risk of defeat, we stood confronted with a fine kettle of fish. The Avenger would be free, for one thing, to establish himself as paramount chief of all that district; success would breed success; next, he might capture El-Kerak—perhaps Es-Salt as well—and raid like a whirlwind into Palestine with thousands of loot-hungry malcontents.
From my personal standpoint I wouldn’t have worried much if the Avenger should accomplish all those things, for sooner or later he would be brought to bay and smashed by the British Army. It didn’t seem to me that the price of U.S. Government securities would be affected. But I was set like any decent member of a team on seeing Grim win out. You can’t like a man and not do your darnedest to help him win the game, even if it isn’t your game exactly. And my game it was, to the extent that Narayan Singh’s life and mine were teetering in the balance.
You can’t explain thought processes, or at any rate I can’t. Something takes place inside your tympanum, and you act or speak. If the grey stuff functions neatly, you say or do the right thing; then you’re a wise one. If it doesn’t, the temporary lessees of other sorts of cerebellums describe you afterwards as a fool or a poor fish, while someone cashes in on the insurance and the undertaker makes another entry in his ledger. So don’t put me down as a psychologist, for I’m only guessing when I say that keenness on the job has a lot to do with inspiration. To state a case with proper caution, “I’ve observed” that when you’re really keen to help another man you’re more likely to do the right thing than the wrong one, even in the dark.
“Have you heard about Jimgrim?” I asked him, and the question went straight as a bullet into the very centre of his perplexity. So I’m a wise one, even though I did shoot at a venture.
“Heard of him? May Allah change his face!” he snarled. “Aye, I have heard of him. What do you know of him? What is he doing, prowling the desert with twenty men, and sending me messages? They say he resembles Ali Higg, even to the wrappings on his neck. What is his purpose?”
“Tell me what message he sent you, and perhaps I can answer,” said I.
“He sent word to me at dawn today to run no risks, but to wait in this place until he shall speak with the Avenger. What does that mean?”
It obviously meant that the Lion of Petra pretending to be Grim (even as Grim was pretending to be the Lion of Petra) was venturing on the risky course of trading on Grim’s reputation. How he could hope to escape being recognized by the Avenger, whose face he boasted of having spoiled, was past imagining; but it was easy to understand why he should want to keep Ibrahim ben Ah inactive until he should have a chance to try the trick.
“What does his impudence mean?” Ibrahim repeated. But I am too old a bird to be caught airing my knowledge at the first request. Information, like hard cash, is for use, not squandering.
“Why didn’t you catch him and find out?” I asked.
“Wallahi! If I could have caught him I would have flayed the fool alive! I sent two-score men after him, but he was gone. Does the Lion know about him?” he asked with sudden suspicion. “Is Ali Higg employing him to make terms with the Avenger?”
But I hedged again. If I could keep Ibrahim ben Ah from deserting to the other side by stimulating doubt, that looked like good business.
“I am in the Lion’s confidence,” said I. “Tell me what you know of Jimgrim; then—dates in exchange for rice, camels for horses, sheep for wheat—if the trade looks good I will tell what I know in return.”
“Jimgrim,” he said slowly, speaking through his teeth, as a man does when he mentions sacrilege, or anything else that he detests, “is an Amiricani; an infidel, who has been to Mecca, to my knowledge, in disguise. He was useful to Feisul and Lawrence in the Great War, when we Arabs defeated the Turks, and the Allies took the credit and the plunder. He is a bold man, with the cunning of a hundred. And he once saved a day for Saoud the Avenger by getting camels for him when the Turks had captured most of the Avenger’s beasts.”
“So, if Jimgrim should get to the Avenger’s ear, he might listen on the score of friendship?” I suggested.
“Wallahi! That might be. The point is, what will Jimgrim say to the Avenger?”
I nodded; but I knew that wasn’t the point. If there was one dead certainty on earth, it was that the Lion of Petra, whether or not disguised as Grim, would never dare trespass into the Avenger’s camp, for fear of recognition and the inevitably gruesome death that would certainly follow. An Arab doesn’t dub himself “Avenger” and then forgive the mortal enemy detected in the act of tricking him. However, my job seemed to be to keep Ibrahim on tenterhooks.
“Jimgrim is in league with the Lion,” I said, quite truthfully. Following that, I drew hard on imagination. “Jimgrim’s plan is to take camels away from the Avenger for a change. There are men in the Avenger’s camp who will desert at Jimgrim’s bidding, driving off the camels with them.” And having known a little frankness on occasion to leaven a prodigious lot of lies, I added: “The Lion suspects you of intending treachery.”
“Allah!” he exclaimed, trying to cover up alarm with a display of indignation.
“By Allah, yes!” said I. “And if Jimgrim should return from Abu Lissan with a couple of hundred of the Avenger’s best men, it would fare badly with any traitor in this camp.”
At the word traitor the irascible old bandit made a motion as if to draw one of his weapons. But he thought better of it. Narayan Singh’s revolver was too obviously pointed straight, and my own pistol was equally in evidence.
The deuce of it was that, though we held him helpless for the moment, the situation was going