“My bet is down,” said I.
“Good,” Grim nodded. “It goes. All the same, you get a joy-ride. Can’t take too many chances. Tell you about that later. Meanwhile, will you detail an officer to come and spend the night in this hotel and masquerade as me at dawn, sir? He can wear this uniform that I’ve got on—somebody about my height.”
“Turner will do that. What are you going to put in the bags?” asked Goodenough.
“Cartridges. They’re heavy. You might tell Turner over the phone to bring them with him.”
At that point Suliman returned, sooner than expected, with news that made Grim whistle. Suliman had not been inside the place where his mother was. She would not let him. But he had seen around her skirts as she stood in the partly opened door.
“There was a hole in the floor,” said Suliman, “and a great stone laid beside it. Also much gray dust. And I think there was a light a long way down in the hole.”
But that was not what made Grim whistle.
“What else? Did your mother say anything?”
“She was ill-tempered.”
“That Scharnhoff had beaten her.”
“I knew he’d make a bad break sooner or later. What did he beat her for?”
“Because she was afraid.”
“That’s a fine reason. Afraid of what?”
“He says she is to sell oranges. Four wooden benches have been brought, and tomorrow they are to be set outside the door in the street. Oranges and raisins have been bought, and she is to sit outside the door and sell them. She is afraid.”
“Fruit bought already? Can’t be. Was it inside there?”
“No. It is to come tomorrow. She says she does not know how to sell fruit, and is afraid of the police.”
Grim and Goodenough exchanged glances.
“She says that if the police come everybody will be killed, and that I am to keep watch in the street in the morning and give warning of the police.”
“That should teach you, young man, never to take a woman into your confidence—eh, Mrs. Davey?” said Goodenough.
“We’re certainly the slow-witted sex,” she answered, piling the finished bags one on top of the other on the table.
Grim took me after that to the hotel roof, whence you can see the whole of Jerusalem. It was just before moonrise. The ancient city lay in shadow, with the Dome of the Rock looming above it, mysterious and silent. Down below us in the street, where a gasoline light threw a greenish-white glare, three Arabs in native costume were squatting with their backs against the low wall facing the hotel.
“Noureddin Ali’s men,” said Grim, chuckling. “They’ll help us to prove our alibi. The enemy is nearly always useful if you leave him free to make mistakes. You may have to spend the whole night in the mosque—you and Suliman. I’ll take you there presently. Two of those men are pretty sure to follow us. One will probably follow me back here again. The other will stay to keep an eye on you. About an hour before dawn, in case nothing happens before that, you and Suliman come back here to the hotel. The car shall be here half-an-hour before daylight. You and Turner pile into it, and those three men watch you drive away. They’ll hurry off to tell Noureddin Ali that Staff-Captain Ali Mirza and the deaf-and-dumb man have really started for Damascus, bags of gold and all.
“Turner must remember to drop a couple of bags and pick them up again, to call attention to them. There’ll be a change of clothes in the car for you. When you’ve gone a mile or so, get into the other clothes and walk back. If I don’t meet you by the Jaffa Gate, Suliman will, or else Narayan Singh. Things are liable to happen pretty fast tomorrow morning. Let’s go.
“I’m supposed to have found out somehow that you’re awful religious and want to pray, so it’s the Dome of the Rock for yours. Any Moslem who wants to may sleep there, you know. But any Christian caught kidding them he’s a Moslem would be for it— short shrift. He’d be dead before the sheikh of the place could hand him over to the authorities. If the TNT were really in place underneath you, which I’m pretty sure it won’t be for a few hours yet, that would be lots safer than the other chance you’re taking. So peel your wits. Let Suliman sleep if he wants to, but you’ll have to keep awake all night.”
“But what am I to do in there? What’s likely to happen?”
“Just listen. The tunnel isn’t through to the end yet, I’m sure of it. If it were, they’d have taken in the TNT, for it must be ticklish work keeping it hidden elsewhere, with scores of Sikhs watching day and night. But they’re very near the end of the tunnel, or they wouldn’t be opening up that fruit stand. You’ll hear them break through. When you’re absolutely sure of that, come out of the mosque and say Atcha—just that one word—to the Sikh sentry you’ll see standing under the archway through which we’ll enter the courtyard presently. That sentry will be Narayan Singh, and he’ll know what to do.”
“What shall I do after that?”
“Suit yourself. Either return to the mosque and go to sleep, if you can trust yourself to wake in time, or come and sit on the hotel step until morning. Have you got it all clear? It’s a piece of good luck having you to do all this. No real Moslem would ever be able to hold his tongue about it. They’re superstitious about the Dome of the Rock. But ask questions now, if you’re not clear; you mustn’t be seen speaking in the street or in the mosque, remember. All plain sailing? Come along, then. If you’re alive tomorrow you’ll have had an adventure.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.
“POOR OLD SCHARNHOFF’S IN THE SOUP.”
We ate a scratch dinner with the Daveys in their room and started forth. Grim as usual had his nerve with him. He led me and Suliman straight up to the three spies who were squatting against the wall, and asked whether there were any special regulations that would prevent my being left for the night in the famous mosque. On top of that he asked one of the men to show him the shortest way. So two of them elected to come with us, walking just ahead, and the third man stayed where he was, presumably in case Noureddin Ali should send to make enquiries.
You must walk through Jerusalem by night, with the moon just rising, if you want really to get the glamour of eastern tales and understand how true to life those stories are of old Haroun-al-Raschid. It is almost the only city left with its ancient walls all standing, with its ancient streets intact. At that time, in 1920, there was nothing whatever new to mar the setting. No new buildings. The city was only cleaner than it was under the Turks.
Parts of the narrow thoroughfares are roofed over with vaulted arches. The domed roofs rise in unplanned, beautiful disorder against a sky luminous with jewels. To right and left you can look through key-hole arches down shadowy, narrow ways to carved doors through which Knights Templar used to swagger with gold spurs, and that Saladin’s men appropriated after them.
Yellow lamplight, shining from small windows set deep in the massive walls, casts an occasional band of pure gold across the storied gloom. Now and then a man steps out from a doorway, his identity concealed by flowing eastern finery, pauses for a moment in the light to look about him, and disappears into silent mystery.
Half-open doors at intervals give glimpses of white interiors, and of men from a hundred deserts sitting on mats to smoke great water-pipes and talk intrigue. There are smells that are stagnant with the rot of time; other smells pungent with spice, and mystery, and the alluring scent of bales of merchandise that, like the mew of gulls, can set the mind traveling to lands unseen.
Through other arched doors, even