I can’t say which was most astonished—Ali Higg at sight of Grim, Ayisha and Ibrahim ben Ah, or the Avenger at discovering the prisoner’s identity.
“By the Prophet’s beard and my feet, this is a worse trick than I thought!” growled the Avenger. And he glared at Ali Higg for several minutes, while his brother Achmet gave an account of the capture, and what preceded it.
“He left a man in wait for us, by Allah, who swore that Jimgrim waited at a place ahead, whence he would lead us to Ali Higg’s flank in such manner that his capture would be easy. But it sounded like strange talk to me, so I kept the man with me, and rode hard. We overtook this person who pretended he was Jimgrim. I passed my word not to kill him, and he surrendered. Lo! It was Ali Higg, who had thrown himself on my protection. He has not told me why Ali Higg should offer to betray Ali Higg by leading us on to Ali Higg’s flank that we might capture Ali Higg—nor why he should call himself Jimgrim! Now make him tell. I promised him his life, but said nothing about torture. Moreover, there was nothing said about his men; if they were bastinadoed—”
“He only had a little private difference with me,” said Grim. “I have the key to his private fortune in my pocket. As long as I have that, he can’t make war without losing fifty thousand pounds. I suppose his wife Jael persuaded him. It seemed simple to her to use the Avenger’s men to waylay me. But Allah doesn’t make all things easy for everyone. Jael suggested, but the Lion of Petra bungled.”
No one else spoke for several minutes. Ali Higg hardly resembled Grim any longer, for he was too dejected, besides being utterly fagged from the pain in his neck, his prodigious ride, and want of sleep. It would have been an act of charity to tell him to sit down, but the Avenger wasn’t feeling charitable just then.
His face was black with anger, and the blackness deepened as he glared at the distant hills and began to realize the extent of the whole trick that Grim had played on him. There was smoke there now, and nothing else. The men had all disappeared behind the sugar-loaf hill, whence they could scoot for Petra at the first alarm.
Grim leaned forward at last, and took a cigarette from the Avenger’s silver box. He lit it casually before breaking the silence, and then it was to Ali Higg that he spoke, not to the Avenger.
“O Ali Higg,” he said, “I’ve made a bargain for you with Ben Saoud the Avenger, who is a man of his word, although he doesn’t like the bargain. There is to be peace between you two for three years. It extends to persons. His person is to be inviolable, so is yours. To bind the bargain, and in token of good faith, I have told him that you will give him your wife Ayisha, along with any fifty men who care to follow her fortune, camels and all. He undertakes not to invade your territory; you undertake not to invade his. This place Abu Lissan as far as both water-holes to the northward is to be neutral ground. Are you ready to sign?”
Ali Higg nodded. I think he was afraid that if he spoke he might wake up and find the good luck only a dream. He glanced once sharply at Ayisha, but made no sign to her—gave her no nod of recognition, although she met his eyes boldly.
At last the Avenger spoke, and in the dawn light his face looked grey with grief and disappointment.
“I will sign the agreement with this dog who calls himself a Lion, Jimgrim; for I swore by Allah, and by the Prophet’s beard, and by the honors of my race. I will take his wife, for she is good to look at, and has fifty men. The men will find better employment under me than under the Dog of Petra. Taib. Let a deed of peace be drawn accordingly, and I will sign it. But how about the issue between thee and me, Jimgrim? It was your suggestion that the account between us should be reckoned as balanced. Therefore we stand as two men not beholden to each other. As between you and me personally there has been no agreement made, nor oath passed, either as to your life or any other matter.”
“Have one of my cigarettes,” Grim answered calmly. “They’re better than yours.”
The Avenger waved the offer aside, indignantly.
“I call myself Avenger. None has proven to me yet that is not my name!”
Narayan Singh’s eye caught mine, and he patted the part of his cloak that concealed the revolver. I made ready, too; but Grim didn’t seem in the very least disturbed.
“Very well, friend Saoud. I told you beforehand that I was going to trick you. If the account was even just now, let’s admit that the balance between us has swung in your favor. I’m no more a maskin than you are. I’ll consider I owe you a turn. How’s that?”
“Such talk is easy. You have robbed me in the first place of a conquest; second, of a prisoner, whom I would rather hold than any in Arabia; third, you have made a fool of me.”
“Not so,” said Grim, still smiling his seductivist. “I’ve made a fool of Ali Higg—saved you from destruction by a British Army— provided you with a beautiful wife—and added fifty men with camels to your army, without your having to strike a blow for them. Now, since you think the scales are still too low on my side, I say name your own make-weight.”
“By God, Jimgrim, your life would never be enough to balance this!”
“Of course it wouldn’t! I’d be no use to you dead.”
“By Allah, I have known revenge to taste sweet!”
It was in keeping with Grim’s usual tact that he was silent on the subject of the British, who would certainly have exacted retribution, severe, though possibly indirect, from any Sheikh who caused him to be slain. He chose a different line of argument.
“See here, Ben Saoud, you’re too fine a fellow altogether to give way to ill-temper now. Smile, and shake hands! You’ve got the right now to call on me in an emergency; I’ll keep my word as well as you keep yours.”
“You mean you will come if I call on you?”
“Inshallah,” answered Grim. “I can’t do impossibilities. But if you call, and it’s possible, I’ll come.”
“And do as I bid you?”
Grim laughed aloud and reached for another of the Avenger’s cigarettes.
“Here, take one of mine. No, you optimist! If I were to do what you told me to, we’d both be in a British gaol within the week! What I do mean is, that if you’re in a bad mess at any time, and if it’s humanly possible, I’ll come and help you out.”
Well, that Avenger fellow was the nearest approach to a sportsman that I had seen yet in that part of the world, if you except our old fox Ali Baba and his sixteen performing thieves. He laughed, and decided to make the best of matters—in the teeth of opposition, too; for his staff-officers, and his brother Achmet argued for an hour, going so far at last as to produce a m’allim, very learned in Koranic law, who maintained stoutly that to fulfil any agreement imposed on him by the trickery of an infidel would be to set a bad example, and therefore sin.
“I see no sin in holding to my given word,” he answered finally. “Let Allah judge me!”
After that, all of us except Ayisha ate breakfast together on the roof (women don’t eat with the men); and a devilish nasty mess it was, concocted of rice, powdered coconut, camel-butter, tumeric, and the flesh of a goat that had been bleating less than an hour before. The Avenger went through the form of eating salt with Ali Higg, but without enthusiasm, and insisted on referring to him as the Dog of Petra.
Then Grim drew up the agreement in triplicate, to which we all attached our signatures; and I don’t know what law I broke, or what the penalty should be, but I set down an Indian name in the place reserved for me, and gave my address as Lahore, Punjaub, India.
Since we were all dog-tired, it was agreed that we should sleep the day through in Abu Lissan, and all of us go our separate ways that evening. Grim would have been quite contented to take the Avenger’s word for our safety, and so would I; but when word was sent to Ali Baba about it, he turned up within the hour with his sons