But one must take precautions lest he trip too many others with the rope before the end comes. He made up his mind to see Ibrahim Charkas at once, not that there would be any obvious advantage to the community in saving that evasive rascal from the consequence of dallying with Jinks’ spider web; but he did have instructions to discover who stole that TNT, and if one thing should lead to another, and that to Jinks’ downfall, he would still be obeying orders.
Ibrahim Charkas ran one of those nondescript Arab stores in which everything was sold from sewing thread to tinned biscuits and souvenir photographs. He had even sold whisky until the provost-marshal interfered. Loss of the surreptitious liquor trade had cost him the custom of Sikhs and Gurkhas in addition to a staggering fine, so that business was not what it used to be and the stock in trade looked the part.
Dogged at a little distance by Suliman, who would not have traded his employment just then for a promise of paradise, Jim strolled up-street looking like an Arab whose wives were attending to business for him, lord of the earth and of leisure. There were plenty of other Arabs in the street and he had to be careful, but he watched his chance outside Charkas’ shop to toss Suliman a coin in which to buy breakfast and tell him to wait until call. Then he went in ostensibly for cigarettes.
Charkas came out obsequiously from a little room in the rear to greet him, for the day was past when the store would support an assistant, except for a mere fetch-and-carry nonentity, who could hardly be trusted to sweep the place out least he steal whatever he could reach. Just then the nonentity was away on some kind of errand.
“Shu bitrid, ya khawaja?” (“What do you want, sir?”)
Jim countered in English, and opened with his heaviest gun, laying down the two portions of the bank-note on a table at the back of the shop.
“Just take a look at those. When did you see them last?”
Charkas did not seem to know which to be surprised at more—the question or being addressed in English.
“Who are you that prefer a foreign language to your own?”
“None of your business! This is your business—this note—it’s important—when did you see it last?”
“How should I know? I never saw it. I don’t accept torn money.”
“Look again. It was pasted together when you saw it last. I know where you had it from, but how did you get rid of it?”
“To whom should I pay a hundred piasters? Tee-hee-hee! Absurd! The business of this store is no longer that much in a week.”
“Did you ever see this?” Jim asked him, turning over the strip of paper in both hands so as to show first the signature of Charkas on one side and then Jenkins’ name on the other. “It came of the back of that note.”
Charkas began to look like a cornered rat. The pupils of his eyes became pin-points, and narrow teeth showed prominently between his thin, parted lips. He made a quick motion with his hand, but Jim was quicker and seized him by both arms. Jim put his foot on it, and then picked up the strip of paper he had had to let fall.
“Better not try to make a hanging matter of it. Better use your head. It’s fairly easy to make sense out of this writing. It’s a letter from you to General Jenkins describing what certain men are doing, what they intend to do, and stating why you need more money. Jenkins gave you that hundred piasters. What did you do with it?”
There naturally flashed across Charkas’ mind his recent interview with Jenkins, of which Jim knew nothing, any more that Jim knew that the man from whom the hundred-piaster note had been taken did not come by it from someone else, who in turn might have had it from a third man. Charkas decided that Jenkins must have betrayed him, more than making good the threat not come to his aid if needed. But he was still cautious.
“Who are you?” he asked again.
In strategy there is no sounder rule that to follow up one surprise with another one, the second if possible more unexpected than the first. The first one destroys confidence; the second promotes hysteria.
“I’m a man who found in Jerusalem the TNT that was stolen from the railway here.”
Charkas turned to look about wildly for a weapon. Swift murder and sudden flight were all he could think of. He looked twice longingly toward a desk in the dingy back office.
“Come in here,” he said mysteriously.
Jim kicked the knife into the corner and followed him so quickly that he reached the desk abreast of him. Their hands closed on the lid simultaneously. Jim’s right hand forced Charkas into a chair. With his left he raised the lid.
“Thought so!”
“There was a revolver and a dagger with a wavy edge.
“Which would you have used? Um-m-m! I guess you’re scared enough to have fired and alarmed the town. Let’s see what else is in here—sit still, now! Don’t move or I’ll get a rope out of the store and tie you.”
He put his foot on the Arab’s lap to keep him from bolting while he searched through a litter of papers at random. They were mostly bills, receipts and private letters. Nothing of obvious importance.
“There is money at the back,” said Charkas. “Take it and go away.”
Jim whistled. Charkas shuddered. There is nothing in the world some Arabs hate so much as that. They say only the devil whistles. One can never know beforehand for certain, of course, but Charkas was hardly the kind of man one would expect to believe in that superstition.
Adding the shudder to the offer of the bribe; Jim drew a false conclusion that led nevertheless to discovery. Supposing that Charkas’ anxiety was for the papers in the desk, he went on searching; whereas the man actually was past fear on that account, thinking now of nothing but how to escape; and his nerves were in such a state that the whistle tortured him.
Jim found the money, glanced at it and tossed it aside. Then he turned over the papers again, stacking them one on top of the other, and presently whistled again.
“What in thunder did you keep this for?” he asked, removing his foot from Charkas’ lap as he turned his back to the desk and laughed. “Are you the ringleader of thieves here, and keep the proof of it to show like a Government certificate?”
Suddenly a fragment of Charkas’ native wit returned and he remembered why he had kept it.
“That is the memorandum informing General Jenkins that two tons of TNT were in a truck in the siding.”
“So I see. Well?”
“General Jenkins gave it to me—into my hand!”
If Jenkins proposed to betray him, then two could play at that game. All the bitterness and venom that the Arab mind inherited from Ishmael and cultivated under Turkish rule came to the surface. Revenge looked sweeter at that minute than safety. Thoughts of flight vanished.
“General Jenkins gave me that hundred-piaster note. He has given me other sums from time to time. I will swear to it in court. He has been paying me to organize the thieving.”
“Why?”
“In order to blame it on the Zionists. He hates Zionists. He is pro- Arab.”
“And he gave you that memorandum so that you could steal the TNT?”
“So that my men could steal it, yes.”
Jim tried not to look incredulous. It would take more than Charkas’ word to convince him that Jenkins would be such a fool as that.
“When did he give it to you?”
“On the third, I think it was. Yes, on the evening of the third.”
“At what time?”
“Five o’clock.”
“Are you sure?”