The tomb proved to be low, but long and wide—thirty feet at least each way, with a smooth floor showing traces of the chisel, although the roof was in its natural state. A swift examination of the walls by the torchlight showed deep recesses cut into the sides about four feet above the floor, each one doubtless in its day a separate sepulcher. Jim started to examine them one by one, commencing from the nearest to the entrance, and got no farther. His man was there—alive, alert, apparently amused.
Squatting in the mouth of a hole that once held human bones, like an Indian idol, except that most of the Indian gods lack humor, the leper smiled and said nothing, resting his chin in the hollow of one hand and his elbow on one knee, blinking at the light.
He looked abominably leprous. Whole patches of his skin from face to heels were glistening white and scaly. Yet his muscles seemed as firm as a horse’s and as magnificently molded underneath the skin, while the expression on his face was not that of a man grown used to gnawing agony or the leprous local anesthesia. His eyes shown healthy in the torchlight, and except for the disgusting state of parts of his skin he looked more like an athlete in condition than a sick man.
For two minutes no one spoke. Then the leper reached behind him with his left hand, and Jim covered him instantly with his pistol.
But all that the groping hand brought forth was a candle-end and a match. The iblis set the candle-end on a ledge in the broken wall of the recess and lit it, never moving the rest of his body or shifting the position of his chin. So Jim put out the torch, to save the meager battery.
“Shoot him, Jimgrim,” Suliman whispered unable to bear the tension any longer.
“Sa’id, ya Jimgrim!” boomed the iblis.
Having snatched Jim’s name out of the silence as it were, he saw fit to speak. Moreover, having apparently only his sharp wits for a weapon, he proposed to take the upper hand by assuming the role of questioner.
“What manner of name is Jimgrim? What sort of Arab prowls by night with such a name for the diba (hyenas) to laugh at?”
The man’s voice was pleasant, though his consonants were hard and vowels coarse. Being an Egyptian his opinion on the subject of Arab names was certain to be at fault as well as unimportant. The Arabs themselves gave Jimgrim his name. Jim answered instantly, mocking him in turn.
“Do the lepers of Egypt all smear on the sickness form a paint- pot?” he asked.
The iblis blinked steadily, still smiling, but saw fir not to answer.
“And smear so clumsily that the pain peels off at the edges here and there?” Jim asked again.
“What kind of cursed mother of impudence brought thee forth?” asked the iblis.
“One whose son can smell an Egyptian from half a mile away, and knows the look of paint, O father of unimportant questions,” Jim replied.
“Come close. Touch me then, and count how many days until you too have leprosy!” sneered the iblis.
Suliman clutched at Jim to hold back, but Jim was no fledgling to take a dare and step within reach of those bronze arms. The man’s fingers looked strong enough to pull out an opponent’s muscles as an ape pulls off a chicken’s head, and the candlelight was in his favor.
“Shoot him, Jimgrim; shoot him!”
Suliman, with no affairs of state to complicate the issue, could imagine only that one remedy.
“Are you afraid to? Give me the pistol. I am not afraid.”
The iblis answered that by putting out his tongue between his teeth, screwing his face into a hideous likeness of the prince of darkness, and hissing like an angry cat. Suliman screamed and jumped back against the far wall.
“Shoot, Jimgrim! If he spits and it hits you, you will die!”
The iblis took the hint and spat, wide of the mark on purpose, as a warship fires an “angry blank” across another’s bows. Past master of bluff and opportunity; he was too wise to spit straight and prove his ammunition harmless. It obviously disconcerted him that Jim stood still.
“What do you want?” he demanded.
“Nothing more than I can have,” Jim answered.
“Fool!” sneered the iblis. “He who wants no more than that is like the rat that craves a bellyful. Get out of here. Ruh min hene!”
“Not until I have what I can have.”
“What is it then?”
“Partnership.”
“Thou—dog of an Arab—son of a mother of abominations—spat-upon offspring of sixty dogs—fuel for the fire of Eblis—partnership with me?”
“Aye, with you, father of impotent curses.”
The iblis laughed again.
“Shoot!” he jeered. “No bullet can harm me.”
And whether the man really believed that or not Jim was at a loss to know. A deal of fanatical self-confidence goes to the attainment of such dancing and deviltry as his.
“The bark of the pistol will bring my friends in any case,” said Jim.
“The bark of a jackal summons the pack to eat carrion,” the iblis answered; “but one roar of a lion sends them scurrying.”
Jim pointed the pistol straight at him, and met his eyes along the blued steel barrel. The iblis did not flinch, and Jim felt in rather a predicament. He, too, was bluffing, for he had not the slightest intention of killing the man—even in self-defense if he could help it.
Dead the rascal would be useless. Alive there was the possibility of making him uncover all the ramifications of his plans. If Jim managed to call Catesby and Narayan Singh they could easily capture the man between the three of them. By gagging him and waiting near the cave they might even secure a few of the thieves when they came to deliver loot.
But Jim knew better than to suppose that this imitation leper was without influential backing, and he wanted the “men higher up.” One or two words that Jenkins dropped had convinced him that the brigadier was making use of the most tempting of all tools to the unscrupulous ambitious man—the criminal network of the underworld, and he did not propose to play into Jenkins’ hands by destroying the evidence too soon.
He suspected that nothing would suit the brigadier’s purpose better at the moment than to have this particular tool safely under lock and key. The iblis had served his purpose by producing a condition, out of which Jenkins proposed to get credit by destroying it and then attributing the blame to his superiors, adopting the U.S. brand of cheap city politics transported to another sphere, without quite all the subtlety or half the brains.
“Better shoot soon,” grinned the iblis, probably mistaking Jim’s deliberation for superstitious funk.
Jim lowered the pistol. He decided to summon his two friends by other means.
“Suliman,” he said, “come here a minute.”
But Suliman had had enough of it and had vanished, creeping like a ghost among the shadows. A moment later he heard the boy scramble out of the passage into the entrance and take to his heels.
“The child is wiser than the man,” the iblis grinned maliciously.