Jenkins was no exception. Taking advantage of the long-drawn interim between the armistice and the issuing of mandates, he had made of that camp at Ludd a very breeding-ground of politics.
As a fighter he had obtained distinction by stealing the credit for other men’s successes for himself and by contriving to blame others for his failures. And he had no use for credit except as a means for making profit. So of course he had jackals tugging his heels impatiently, men who admired his disrespect for all the accepted rules of fair play and who would have outdone his methods if they had dared. One of them was Captain Aloysius Ticknor.
Ticknor likewise had ambitions, and was perfectly ready to sacrifice Jenkins at any moment for their attainment. But for the present Ticknor saw more immediate profit in working for his chief’s advancement, like a man who rears a ladder to climb by, meaning to kick it down afterward or leave it leaning, just as suits him.
They were not in each other’s secrets, because Jenkins never trusted anyone if he could help it. He preferred to make hints and innuendoes, on the strength of which a subordinate made good, then Jenkins got the credit; if the subordinate failed there was only one more victim on the long list of ruined youngsters “Jinks” had left behind him.
So Aloysius Ticknor, who would lose money to Jenkins at cards, for instance, and generally win it back with something added from junior subalterns, was exactly in the position of a jackal craving meat who did not know the tiger’s real intentions although sure of the tiger’s hunger. Jackal fashion he diagnosed the brigadier’s nervous restlessness and offered the sort of advice he felt sure would be acceptable.
He was another pro-Arab, anti-Zionist, of course. You had to be that if you hoped to stay in Jenkins’ good books for a minute.
“Why don’t you send me into town, sir, to look things over.”
“Might fall foul of the provost-marshal,” Jenkins answered. “He’s one of those stuffy shits who resent what they call interference.”
“If you show him up as incompetent by finding a cache of rifles under his very nose—” suggested Ticknor.
“Hm-m-m! Be a joke, wouldn’t it? Not difficult either. The fool has his eye on Arabs all the time. There isn’t an Arab store or dwelling that he hasn’t searched. If the Arabs had one rifle hidden he’d have found it. He seems to think Jews are gentle angels who wouldn’t do anything secretive if you paid them money for it.”
“Suppose I look the Zionist quarters over, sir?”
“I’m not going to give you orders over the provost-marshal’s head, if that’s what you’re driving at. If you can think of another excuse—”
“Oh, easily. You remember those three condemned huts? They’re to be advertised for sale. I could go and inquire whether the Zionists would like to have them—promise nothing, of course, but offer to use influence.”
“Yes, you might do that. But be sure you promise nothing. I shan’t need you this morning. You can go for a stroll if you like,” he added. “Buy yourself some souvenirs.”
And he made a note in his diary there and then that he had given Ticknor personal leave of absence. He did it in pencil to be inked in later, so that he might change “personal” to “particular” if he should see fit.
* * * * *
So Captain Aloysius Ticknor, with nice red tables on his collar and the glow of astuteness radiating from him till he looked like light personified, started out with two dogs at his heels, swinging his service cane. Half an hour later, sweating rather more than he liked, because it offset his studied air of omniscient aloofness, he arrived in front of the Zionist store-shed on the far end of the town.
The door was locked, but a short, broad-shouldered, sweaty little Jew in black New York-made pants and a gray shirt was busy nailing scrap tin over a broken window-pane.
“Are you in charge here?” Ticknor asked him.
The Jew laid down the hammer and eyed his suspiciously. It was no more than hereditary mistrust of uniform because officialdom has always meant oppression for the Jew; but it was enough in itself to stir the lees of Ticknor’s racial arrogance.
“Can’t you answer? I asked, are you in charge here?”
“In charge of this hammer, yes. It is not my hammer. I make repairs—see?”
“Where’s the key of the place?”
“I have it.”
“Open the door then.”
The Jew did not cringe, having left that uningratiating voice behind him in Moscow when he emigrated to America, but he obeyed with alacrity that might have disarmed Ticknor’s suspicion. But Ticknor was feeling jubilant. He had come prepared to hide his real mission under a cloak of friendly interest and was naturally relieved to find that he could lay aside the hypocrisy. There might have been someone there who would have resented intrusion—some Zionist official on his dignity; and of all things in the world that he hated, he worst was having to be polite to people he disliked.
He walked straight into the great musty-smelling shed the instant the door opened, seeing in imagination a sort of pirates’ stronghold piled full of contraband. But when his eyes grew used to the dim light he saw only very ordinary stores—spare hospital supplies, flour in barrels, clothing in bundles, tar, tools and calico in bales—extremely disappointing.
However, Jews are secretive and cunning. Doubtless there were rifles hidden in the bales—ammunition in the barrels. He nosed about all over the place, pushing things aside to see what lay behind or underneath them. Presently he found a bale that had been opened and wired up again.
“Come here, you!” he called. “Here, open this!”
The overstepped the limit of forbearance even of the individual in black pants. He came in, scratched the back of his head, rubbed his nose and went through the motions with his other hand suggestive of deference and blunt refusal that fought one with the other. A slight shrug of the shoulders indication absence of responsibility; but he said nothing.
“D’you hear me? Open it!”
“But why?”
The answer aroused suspicion to the danger-point. Where prejudice is strong judgment is always weak. Ticknor set to work to do the job himself, twisting at the wires with impatient fingers under the eyes of the bewildered Jew. He had got one wire undone when someone else darkened the doorway.
* * * * *
“What is this?”
Ticknor turned impatiently to see a Jew of another type altogether watching him from the door through gold-rimmed pince-nez—the very man he did not want to meet that morning, but for whose benefit he had come prepared with the plausible excuse about the condemned huts. Aaronsohn was one of the intellectuals, a man of considerable private means, journalist and poet, who had thrown his whole fortune and energy into the Zionist movement.
Caught in the act of trespass without authority, and with dust clinging to the sweat on his face and neck, he felt at a disadvantage that Aaronsohn appreciated fully. There seemed nothing for it but to bluff the thing through.
“Acting on information received,” he said, “I am searching for stolen Government property.”
“Acting on circumstantial evidence, I am now on my way to General Anthony to lodge a complaint against you,” Aaronsohn answered with a grim smile. “But perhaps you have something in writing?”
“No need of it,” Ticknor answered.
“No?