Aaronsohn obliged him. And because the bale stood wedged between others, which made it awkward to unbind, he and the man in black pants dragged it out to the middle of the floor between them. There proved to be nothing in it but gray flannel shirts, each marked at the neck with the name of a New York manufacturer.
Aaronsohn chose to be sarcastic, twenty-five years’ use of an acid pen having left that habit on the surface.
“I will leave you in charge of the plunder,” he said, smiling with thin lips. “Stay here, and let me ask General Anthony to send you assistance.”
Conscious of the strength of his position, and too old a hand at reprisals to waste invective on a man he could annihilate by much more concrete means, he walked straight out at that, leaving the door wide open.
Ticknor swore under his breath, reviewing his own position without getting any comfort from it. He knew he might depend on Jenkins to let him down completely, for he was under no delusion as to the brigadier’s method of self- preservation.
It occurred to him presently that his one meager chance lay in still discovering what he came to find. It might be after all that Aaronsohn’s indignation was a well-acted bluff.
What had brought the Jew there at that critical moment? What could possibly have brought him there but nervousness? What could have sent him hurrying off to Anthony but the hope of stopping the search before the secret was uncovered.
Thinking thus, his eye fell on the twelve square feet of floor where the bale had stood before they dragged it clear. He saw hinges—the butt-ends of long strap hinges passing under the next bale on the left.
“What’s under the floor?” he demanded.
“Nothing,” said the man in black pants.
“Drag that next bale away.”
He helped him do it, and uncovered a trapdoor.
Hope ran ace-high again. He was the same alert, astute Aloysius Ticknor who had started forth that morning dreaming of high politics. Even his two dogs, sniffing for rats in a corner, seemed to appreciate the change, for they left their pressing business to come and wag their tails at him.
“Open her up!” he ordered.
Might as well be broke for burglary as trespass. Besides, all successful men take chances.
But the trapdoor would not raise. It was fastened down with one long nail driven in to the head. The man in black pants produced a crowbar from a corner and lent the strength of his stocky shoulders.
“I’ll remember that in your favor,” said Ticknor, not supposing that the Jew’s readiness to help might be due to anything but the instinct of self- preservation.
Some men can convince themselves of anything they want to believe. Ticknor would have betted a year’s pay that minute on there being loot under the floor, and another year’s pay on top of that that both Aaronsohn and this man knew it.
So he was not surprised, he was merely elated and self-complacent when the nail came splintering out of the wood and the door creaked back at last. He did not stop to consider why the hinges should have yielded so reluctantly, or to study the rust on the ancient nail. There was too much down below to interest him—rifles, cartridges, revolvers, bayonets—the plunder of months from Ludd encampment!
That was a minute of triumph, worth ten times the sting of Aaronsohn’s sarcastic insolence. Lord, wouldn’t Jenkins be pleased! And think of Aaronsohn’s chagrin! And the provost-marshal’s, who had had his eye well wiped!
He jumped down into the cellar, struck a match and looked about him, but did not trouble to go as far as the end wall because there was hardly headroom and he had to stoop. Beside there might be snakes and vermin. So he did not notice a door at the end, communicating with the smaller shed next door, nor see the print of footsteps leading from it.
He climbed out again, sweating and dusty but almost busting with pleasure at his good luck. The Jew in black pants, peering down into the hole beside him, felt it incumbent to translate his thoughts into speech that might be understood.
“Well, I never! Those Arabs, mister, there is nothing they stop at! As a snake in the grass so is an Arab!”
“Lies about Arabs won’t help you, my lad! You’d better stay here. Understand me?”
“Sure I stay here.”
Ticknor laughed.
“You’re a strange race. I never saw such perfectly acted conscious innocence. Talk of Chinamen—they’re not in it with you.”
He went to the door and looked up and down the street, hoping to catch sight of a soldier or policeman—anyone at all who might be sent to bring the provost-marshal’s men; or better yet, sent running with a note to Jenkins.
There was no one in uniform in sight. He scribbled a note on the back of a private letter, replaced it in its envelope, readdressed it to the brigadier, contrived to seal it after a fashion by relicking the old gum, and beckoned a small boy who was sitting smoking outside a shop on the opposite side of the street fifty yards away.
Preferring not to advertise his find too widely for the moment, he judge it better to do his talking inside the building. So the small boy got a good view of the trapdoor, and a glimpse of what lay underneath.
“Listen. Do you know General Jenkins?”
The small boy nodded. There were few things he ever forgot, once he had rubbed acquaintance with them.
“Do you know how to find him?”
He nodded again.
“Take this letter to him, but don’t show it to anybody else. If you come back quickly with an answer I’ll give you five piasters.”
The bribe was enormous. The small boy took the envelope and started off at a run. Ticknor returned to the trapdoor to gloat over his discovery and smoke a cigarette of triumph.
So again he missed something that might have given him thought. The boy stopped at the shop near which he had been sitting, and called through the open door.
“Oh, Jimgrim!”
A man in Arab costume came and stood in the shadow between the door- posts.
“Over there in the big shed there is a trapdoor. It is open. Underneath are rifles. An officer gave me this.”
“Who is it for?”
“General Jenkins.”
“All right. Run with it.”
Suliman sat and pulled his boots off, for they were a concession to convention, not adjunct to speed. Stringing them around his neck by the laces he set off as fast as youth would let him.
Jimgrim turned back into the shop, smiling with tired eyes, to resume his conversation with a real Arab where it had broken off.
“Now, Ibrahim Charkas. Let’s have that over again. No lies this time or I’ll wring your neck.
CHAPTER XI
“There is money…take it and go away.”
When Jim received the hundred-piaster note from Suliman he went at once into Mahommed Kaftar’s coffee-shop and steamed it over the kettle until it fell into the original three pieces—two ragged halves and a strip of gummed paper. Then he drank coffee leisurely until the paper dried, turning it over on his knee and chuckling to himself.
“Mustn’t say a word against Jenkins—um-m-m!”
Sir Henry Kettle’s and General Anthony’s