Bleating piteously, and shedding tears that would have made the fabulous weeping crocodile look like a very poor actor indeed, Suliman turned aside to squat by the side of what had once been a cart-road but had grown to a mere track since bombardment wiped the village out. But he did not stay in that position much longer than was needed to be out of range of missiles.
* * * * *
The normal daylight activity of camp and town was under way. Bugles were blowing. Guards had been relieved. Long strings of mules and horses were being led to water at the troughs. Engines were moving in the station yard, and strings of Egyptian laborers were slouching sullenly to work in the railroad sheds. Donkeys, women and other beasts of burden were emerging from the town, where the muezzin had long since finished wailing his injunction to the four winds.
One cartload of merchandise was already on its way from railway to town, and the kites were patrolling overhead on the watch for offal and remains. Suliman had a perfect right to head for the town, too, if he saw fit.
So had Catesby, looking like any other shiftless Arab mediating breakfast. He strolled along the cart track leisurely with his head down, imitating the measured native gait that looks so dignified but oftener than not means merely pride in laziness.
As he walked, fingering the pistol under his heavy brown cloak, he began wondering just how much the night’s work had accomplished in the matter between Jenkins and himself. Adding it all up he could not make the total come to anything at all.
Suddenly he laughed, though. There was a hundred-piaster bank-note taken from a dead man! But Narayan Singh had found that, and if the real ownership should never be established no doubt it would be awarded to the Sikh. He took out the crumpled note and examined it, taking care to keep Suliman in sight.
He was not at all expert in Arabic, but presently he whistled, for he could spell out the thin, cramped, right-to-left writing when he took the time. An Arab writing with a fine pen can condense a deal of information on a half- sheet of ordinary notepaper.
The strip that fastened the halves of the note together was of generous proportions; it had been cut off with scissors, and looked like the lower third of a half-sheet. The gum used was very ordinary office paste, with the result that one corner had come loose and curled upward, betraying writing on both sides.
And because of the fact that Arabs write from right to left and, like some careless Westerners, reverse the sheet by turning it end over end, the name of the man to whom the document had originally been addressed and of the man who wrote it were both on the cut-off strip of paper. The fist name—that on the gummed side—was Brigadier-General Jenkins. The other name was “your honor’s humble servant, Ibrahim Charkas.”
Having spelled out the information, Catesby returned the note to his pocket and hurried forward, for Suliman was just entering the town street. He was not going to be fool enough to trust Suliman with the hundred piasters to pass along to Jim, having considerable less than Jim’s high opinion of the boy. That was reciprocated.
Catesby’s specialty was Sikhs. Being an Arab, Suliman’s gift lay in personal devotion to whoever fed, clothed and favored him. It is not a bad gift, that personal loyalty, but there is nothing in it of the Sikh’s wider idealism that attaches him to persons only because those persons stand for honorable service. Catesby lacked Jim’s ability, which is wholly American, to ferret out the strong points of any breed whatever and play those sky-high.
The result was unfortunate. Suliman followed the party of thirteen to a small shed that stood beside a big one near the farther limit of the town. Into that they disappeared, donkey and all.
Suliman lurked in the doorway a hundred yards off, and Catesby watched him from a point of vantage behind the awning of a fruit-seller’s shop. From where he stood he could read the name of the Zionist Commission on the door of the big shed.
At the end of about twenty minutes the donkey and the thirteen men emerged, Jim last again. The twelve went about their business separate ways, but Jim sat down to warm himself, Arab-fashion, in the early sun and lighted a cigarette.
When the last of the twelve was out of sight Suliman approached Jim with the beggar’s whine again. They talked for about two minutes, and a coin changed hands for appearance’s sake. Then Suliman came up-street to beg from Catesby. There was no one to overhear them—no need to beat about the bush.
“Jimgrim says you are to go back to Narayan Singh and tell him not to kill the iblis, who is in that place he is watching. He says you should stay with Narayan Singh, so that when Jimgrim wants you he can find you.”
* * * * *
Now if a Sikh had brought that message Catesby would have accepted it without demur. Moreover, he would have given that hundred-piaster note to a Sikh to give to Jim. But the eight-year-old Arab was different.
“Go back and say I have something for him. Ask him whether I shall go to him, or will he come to me. Say it’s important.”
“Give me whatever it is. He told me to come back to him.”
“Do as I say.”
There followed a considerable waste of time. Suliman did not dare to go running back with the message, knowing well enough that inquisitive observers might draw conclusions. He had the practical common sense to enter a shop and buy two native cigarettes “for the khawaja sitting yonder in the sun,” as he was careful to explain.
The shopman was inquisitive, and had to be lied to in extenso, which took up more time. Finally Jim received the cigarettes and returned one to the messenger as gratuity. Thanks to Suliman there was nothing to call for comment.
But Jim had to sit and smoke the cigarette in order to complete the innocent picture, and it was several minutes before he strolled up the street to where Catesby waiting and went through the forms of pleased surprise and the lengthy Arab greeting of an unexpected friend. After that they strolled side by side, very slowly as befitted Arabs in the circumstances, and that entailed further delay.
Catesby gave him the hundred-piaster note. Jim examined it and whistled softly—a thing no Arab ever does; but the revelation startled him, and there was no one to overhear. Catesby explained briefly how he came by it; and then they went through the formula of leave-taking for the benefit of onlookers, which consumed another minute or two.
At last, however, Catesby went off alone to share Narayan Singh’s vigil, and took his time on the way because no Arab ever hurries if that can possibly be helped. So it was twenty minutes more before he reached the deserted village and another five minutes after than before he discovered Narayan Singh.
The Sikh was lying in a dead man’s tortured posture on the ground, and just beginning to recover consciousness. A stone the size of a coconut lay beside his head. It was ten more minutes before Catesby could get a word out of him.
“The door opened, sahib, and the iblis showed his head. I ordered him in again. He shut the door, and I watched it. A few minutes after that he showed himself over the top of the wall, and I, having orders not to shoot him, merely observed. Then he threw three stones at me, and the third one struck my head.
“How long ago did this happen? Soon after I left?”
“Nay. A long time after you left. I have been stunned—how should I know how long? But I think it happened just a very little while ago.”
Catesby tried the door, but it was locked. So he set a charred beam against the wall and climbed, to peer in through the window. As far as he could see the place was empty; and presently, scouting about, he found the imprints of two enormous naked feet in the dust. They were pointed away from the door, and he hardly could doubt they were those of the escaping iblis.
CHAPTER X