“Nice way to bring a feller back to this place!” he said at last. “I went to the hotel and they wouldn’t let me in. Said they’d trouble enough in store without me. Gave me a fine talk, they did. Pogrom—that’s the name of it! Down at that hotel they’re saying all the Jews in Hebron will be dead before morning and they’re blaming me for it. What have I done?” He faced Grim and glared at him. “D’you call that acting on the level, to bring me back to this place when you knew what was in the air?”
“You’d never have reached Jerusalem alive,” said de Crespigny.
“Has that young feller been knifed?” asked Cohen, pointing at Jones on the couch. He was still spitting blood at intervals, so the question was excusable.
“Sit down, Cohen,” Grim answered. “You’re as safe here as anywhere at present. Will you have his bag brought in, de Crespigny? Now, Cohen, you didn’t start this trouble, but your talk brought it to a head. It’s up to us to smooth the thing out if we can, but it’s going to be no joking matter. I’m asking you to keep quiet and to help us if there’s an opportunity. Will you?”
“Sure, I’ll help,” said Cohen. “But what can I do?”
“Dunno yet,” Grim answered. “Captain de Crespigny’s in charge. We’ll see.”
CHAPTER II.
“These are two good boys.”
The Scots doctor’s prognostications were proven accurate sooner than expected. Rumor travels on swallow’s wings in that land and almost as soon as Cohen’s bag had been carried in there came a native policeman looking pallid under the bronze, who saluted precisely and then talked to de Crespigny and Jones with the familiarity of an old nurse to children.
“Word has come that the Jews in Jerusalem are massacring Moslems! Shall ten of us prevent the Moslems here from turning the tables on the Jews? Better let it be known at once that we intend to stand aside. Then let them get the business over with. Afterward will be the proper time to make arrests.”
He looked like a perfectly good policeman, but there had not been time enough yet to educate out of him Turkish notions of convenience.
“Who brought the news?” asked de Crespigny.
“He is outside.”
“Bring him in.”
A burly-looking ruffian with more white to his eye than sheer straightforwardness begets, clad in a smelly sheepskin coat and with a long knife tucked into his sash, was ushered in and stood uncomfortably in the middle of the room.
“Are you from Jerusalem?” de Crespigny asked him.
“Yes.”
“Since when?”
“I have just come.”
“And you left Hebron after seven o’clock this morning to my knowledge! Have you got so virtuous and truthful that you’ve suddenly grown wings?”
“I went half-way and met three men, who said the Jews of Jerusalem have risen and have already killed three thousand Moslems. So I came back.”
“To talk about it, eh? Well, if I hear of your repeating such a lie in Hebron I’ll clap you in the jail, d’ you understand me? Go home and hold your tongue.”
”Taib (All right).”
The man slouched out again, but three more reports arrived by way of the back door within the next ten minutes, the last one giving the total of slain at exactly four thousand eight hundred and one Moslems, adding that the Jews were parading through Jerusalem in triumph.
“All of which probably means that a Jew has been killed and the Moslems are looting,” Grim commented quietly.
The next alarm was a message from the Arab jailer to say that his prisoners were getting out of hand and that a crowd was collecting outside the jail.
Jones volunteered to go and investigate, but before he could leave the room two policemen came running in with word that the crowd was swarming up- street toward the Governorate. We could hear them a moment later. They were taking their time about it, singing as they came, pausing at intervals to dance a few steps in measure and then surging on. The song was like the Carmagnole of the Terror. De Crespigny got up from his chair—thought better of it —sat down again and lighted a cigarette. After that he passed the case around and we each took one, Cohen included.
“What’s going to happen?” asked Cohen. “Those guys coming to kill us?” He looked less afraid than I felt. “Well, I guess it’s up to you fellers to fix this.”
“I’ll go out and talk to them,” said de Crespigny.
“Take your time,” Grim advised him. “Let them wait for you.”
It was obvious that de Crespigny and Jones felt better for Grim’s being there, although to my mind he was stretching his policy of non- interference to absurd limits. I had seen enough of his influence with Arabs at one time and another to convince me that he could do nearly what he liked with them and I itched to tell him to take charge and use his resourceful wits. He made no move whatever, but sat like a wooden Indian in front of a tobacco store, blowing out the cigarette-smoke through his nose.
The crowd—there must have been two or three thousand of them —came thundering up-street, chanting over and over again a rape-and- murder chorus in response to the stanzas of a solo sung by a man who was carried shoulder-high in their midst waving a sword. I could see his sword through the window, over the top of the shrubs and the stone wall. They halted in front of the gate and the song ceased. In the silence that followed when the shuffling of feet had died down you could hear them breathe.
“I suppose they’ll swipe our camels?” I suggested.
“Not yet,” Grim answered. “They’ll do nothing much yet unless they think we’re rattled. Take your time, de Crespigny.”
The Governor of Hebron got out of his chair again with all the stately dignity of twenty-six amusing years, and lighted another cigarette with a deliberately steady hand.
“Do I look as if I’d got the wind up me, or any rot like that?” he asked.
“You look good,” Grim assured him. “Be sure you smile, though. You’ll pull it off all right.”
“Shall I come with you?” asked Jones.
“No. Better not. They might think we were scared, if two of us went. So long.”
De Crespigny walked out, doing the most difficult thing in the world perfectly, which is to act exactly like your normal self when fear is prompting you to bluster and look preternaturally clever. Jones began talking in a matter-of-fact voice to Cohen about his emigration scheme.
“Care to come with me?” asked Grim; and he and I went upstairs to watch from a bedroom window, screening ourselves carefully behind the curtains.
“These are two good boys,” said Grim. “More depends on them than you guess. If they can hold Hebron quiet for two days, all’s well. If not, the next thing will be a march on Jerusalem, and every Moslem in the country is likely to follow suit.”
“Couldn’t the British machine guns deal with that?”
“Of course. But who wants to slaughter ‘em?”
“Pity the wire’s down,” said I.
“Uh-uh! Wouldn’t be any good. All the troops Jerusalem could spare would only whet these fellows’ appetites for blood. Judging by the symptoms before we came away I should say Jerusalem will have its hands full for the next forty-eight hours or so. But watch de