We rode side by side, but it is not easy to talk from camel-back, although the beasts’ feet make hardly any noise; I’ve a notion that the habitual reticence of the desert-folk is partly due to enforced silence for long periods on the march, when the swing and sway of the camels and the cloth over the rider’s mouth make conversation next to impossible. Grim’s information came in snatches.
“Good fellow, Cohen. Clever devil. Zionist. Thinks he can provide land here for Jews by encouraging Arabs to emigrate. Money behind him. Settle ‘em on land in Arkansas and Tennessee. Kind fellow. Hot-air merchant. Good at bottom. Shrewd. Strange mixture of physical fear and impudent courage.”
“What makes you so sure you can recover the watch?”
“Experience of Hebron. I was governor there once.”
* * * * *
For an hour after that we padded along in silence through a country dotted with enormous herds of black goats in charge of patriarchal-looking shepherds. The only trees in sight were occasional ancient olives; but as we drew near Hebron the hillsides were all divided by stone walls into orchards and we passed between miles of grape-vines, interspersed with mishmish, as they call their apricots.
You don’t see Hebron until the road begins to descend into it, and then the first view is of a neat modern village with the German influence predominant; for there, as everywhere else in Palestine, the Germans had not been content with making plans; they built good stone houses. The ancient city lies beyond all that, utterly untouched by science—a chaotic jumble flaunted in the face of discipline.
We stopped in front of the Governorate, and that, of course was a German building, a neat little residence with a garden in front and a stone wall all about it, in sight of the jail which, equally of course, was Turkish. The Turks built nothing so good as their jails and the Germans strengthened them, but it took the British to clean them of vermin, and filth and untried prisoners.
The Hebron jail is outside the city for more good reasons than one. Where ninety-nine per cent of a city’s population is eligible for rigorous confinement on one ground or another and the cleverest thieves on earth are trained besides, no mere iron bars within the city limits would serve the purpose; you need open spaces all around for rifle and machine-gun fire— except of course, in famine time, when most of the population plans to be arrested and fed two square meals a day, at the foreign tax-payers’ expense.
Captain de Crespigny came out of the Governorate to greet us, smiling all over as a man should whose only dependable assistant has the tooth-ache.
“You know the wire is down behind you?” he said pleasantly.
“Since when?”
“An hour ago. I’m rather worried about a Jew named Cohen. I let him start for Jerusalem this morning. ‘Fraid now he may get scuppered on the way.”
“It’s all right; we met him. He’s on his way back.”
“Oh, did you get wind of trouble here?”
“Not a thing. Wanted Cohen here for a special reason. What’s up?”
“I tried to phone through to Jerusalem for a machine gun. There’s nobody to send. We’ve a motor-cycle, but it’s napoo. That fellow Cohen lost his watch and I arrested a local Arab on suspicion soon after Cohen had gone. He’s over there in the jail now and four thousand of his friends have sworn an oath to take him out again by force. I’ve ten policemen—one first-class man and nine with the wind up them.”
“Are you sure the wire’s down?” Grim asked him.
“Perfectly. I’d call that luck, only now you’ve come. They couldn’t exactly have blamed me for bluffing the business through without orders and I think I could have tackled it. However, I suppose you take over?”
“Not if I know it!” Grim answered. “Make over to me when you’ve had enough, but no sooner.”
“Thanks. Come in and have a drink. Who’s your friend?”
“Ramsden—a countryman of mine.”
Grim introduced me and for the hundredth time in that man’s land I experienced the unmitigated delight of being accepted as an equal, instead of as a possibly objectionable person, on the strength of his mere say-so. As a general rule you can’t get past that suave screen the British use to camouflage their real thoughts, without a guide whom they know and trust; but when you’re in, you’re in.
De Crespigny was nothing unusual; clean-shaven, almost always laughing about something, looking about twenty although really twenty-six, probably not brilliant, but capable of swift judgment and astounding impudence in tight places. Obviously one of those well-bred young gentlemen, who have kept an empire’s borders by daring and straight dealing while the politicians did the bragging and the profiteers made hay. He wore several ribbons for distinguished service, but the only thing he seemed really proud of was a mixture he called a Hebron cocktail, made without ice from a recipe of his own invention.
It was a comfortable room we entered, for the Germans had left their furniture behind them and the walls were hung besides with deadly weapons taken away from the local cut-throats by this de Crespigny child, his one assistant, the one bold native policeman and the “nine with the wind up them.”
The assistant came in while we watched the secret ritual of cocktail shaking in an ex-beer bottle; another boy, two years younger than his chief and, barring the tooth-ache, even more amused by the certainty that mass-murder was afoot. You could sum him up instantly. When a man thinks of his job first, and tooth-ache merely as a handicap, bet on him. Besides his name was Jones and that is a well-known label.
“Just come from the jail,” he announced. “Had to put Ali ben Hamza in a cell by himself; he was propaganding among the other prisoners. Perfectly friendly, though; assured me that you and I will both be dead before morning and offered to pull my tooth out with his fingers. Said he hated to see me suffer and that having your throat cut doesn’t hurt a bit.”
“Thought you were going to the doctor,” said de Crespigny.
“No time. He has his hands full anyhow. Hospital’s chock-a- block, and no one to help him operate. Any news?”
“Wire’s down.”
“Oh, good! That means Jerusalem can’t interfere and tell us not to do things. But—” glancing at Grim and me ”— are you still in charge, ‘Crep?”
“I’ve no orders to take over,” Grim assured him. “De Crespigny may pass the buck when he sees fit.”
“Pretty decent of you.”
“Suppose you fellows put me wise, though,” Grim suggested. “We’ll call it unofficial, but in case of need it might be wholesome for me to know the facts.”
“It’s all very simple,” said de Crespigny. “Aaron Cohen came here with a scheme for exporting Arabs to your country to make room for Jews. He offers to buy out their holdings for cash, to arrange their passage to the States, get passports for them and all that, and provide them with good land to settle on at the other end on easy terms. Perfectly fair and above-board if they wanted to do it, but they don’t.
“On top of that, the Jews in this place are Orthodox and hate the Zionists worse than they do pork. They made the mistake of telling the Arabs that Cohen was no good, whereas he’s quite a decent fellow really, if it weren’t for his infernal cheek. No need to tell you what the Moslems of this place are like. They stole Cohen’s watch for a joke and he said what he thought of them. They admit the truth of all he said— you know how engagingly frank they are about themselves—but take exception to criticism by any kind of Jew.
“Now they say that the Orthodox Jews put Cohen up to it and only went back on him afterwards because they were afraid. They say it’s really the Orthodox Jews of this place who are planning to get their holdings; and as most of them owe