“Did you ever see a forest fire in the States checked by setting another one?”
Grim answered. “Sit tight, Cohen; we’ll be back for dinner.”
But we did not start out in the Arab clothes we were still wearing. Upstairs in de Crespigny’s bedroom Grim got into his major’s uniform and I changed into flannels—it was hot enough for a bathing suit. The room was full of curios de Crespigny had picked up in the course of eight years’ foreign service and Grim used up a minute or two studying a picture of Japanese Shintoist priests performing the “Hi-Watterai” stunt of walking barefooted on a bed of burning charcoal.
“Who was it said that about the world being full of a number of things?” he remarked. “Are you ready? Come on.”
In the street he began to let fall little scraps of information in that aggravating way he has, that starts you conjecturing and guessing until you realize that you know less than you thought you did before.
“This old Ali Baba ben Hamza that de Crespigny has put in jail is the very man I left Jerusalem to come and see. He’s the father of Mahommed ben Hamza, who helped us at El-Kerak you remember, and again to some extent at Ludd. The old boy has sixteen sons and grandsons, and they’re about the toughest gang this side of Chicago. If they’ve got Cohen’s watch we ought to be able to stave off a holy war.”
“I never heard anything sound more like a complete non sequitur,“ said I.
“Thieving has been a poor trade in Hebron lately,” he answered. “When professional thieves come on hard times, Ramsden, they pray for trouble as a rule and usually help to start it, with a view to loot. There’ve been strange doings by night in this town of late. Let’s hope Doc Cameron has plenty of chemicals.”
“What on earth for?”
“We’ve got to stage a bluff or go fluey.”
It was not far to the jail and there were not many people in the street to see us pass; but those who did see us recognized Grim and were respectful, if not exactly obviously glad to know he was in town. I saw one man go running off in the direction of the city to carry the news.
The jail was a long stone structure with a stone roof and iron-barred windows, looking not altogether unlike an American armory on a small scale. The two dark-gray-uniformed policemen on guard outside it became suddenly possessed by a new spirit at sight of Grim and beamed at him as they presented arms. He stopped for a minute to address each of them by name and make some familiar joke in Arabic.
“Nothing to be afraid of,” he assured them.
They laughed, shrugged their shoulders and seemed to revert at once to their former state of gloom.
“If only there were Sikhs here! Our two officers are very young and there are only ten of us! The men in the city are calling us traitors, being Moslems born in this place yet taking the pay and obeying the orders of the British, who are foreigners! And now come these tales from Jerusalem! We are willing to die like men but, in the name of God, Jimgrim, this is no joking matter!”
“Who am I, that you should think I joke about it?” Grim answered. “I am a foreigner. I take the pay and obey the orders of the British. They and you and I are here to keep the peace, that is all. Our honor is concerned in the matter. There is more honor in being ten than ten thousand, when the ten are right and the others wrong. As for the youth of your officers —which would you prefer, young capables or old fools?”
“True—true, Jimgrim! We will stand! Depend on us!”
“Those fellows’ property would be the first to be looted, if looting should begin,” said Grim as we entered the jail. “It’s a Hell of a test for men who were fighting for the Turks two years ago! The rest of us think we’re men of principle and all that, but we don’t know what temptation is! I’d like to know I was as brave as one of those policemen.”
The jail was as clean as the proverbial new pin, divided up on the Turkish system into stone-floored cells, with room in each for twenty or thirty miserables on occasion, although now there were only two or three men clad in coarse jail suits who peered through each barred door curiously. They looked fat and on the whole not dissatisfied.
The cell we sought was at the far end, and it seemed empty; but the Arab jailer who had followed us unlocked it and slammed the iron door shut again in a hurry behind us, as if afraid some wild beast might escape. Yet all we found inside was a meek-looking old patriarch with a long blue-gray beard, who sat in a corner telling amber beads so piously that he could hardly spare us attention. They had not dressed him in a jail suit; he was arrayed in all the full-flowing Arab dignity that is very far from being a mere mask. It is the outward and visible sign of an inner quality that makes those who know the Arab well prefer to condone his roguery.
”Mar’haba, Ali Baba!”
”Allah y’afik, Jimgrim! It is time! Behold the indignity to which that young whelp of an Englishman has put me! I have grandsons older than him! Yet he put me in this cell, laughing when I cursed him, as if an old man’s curse had no weight. When I threatened him, he offered me tobacco—the young spawn of an adder! Tell the jailer to bring in two chairs, Jimgrim, and some tea, so that I can offer you hospitality! You and your friends will all be dead by midnight, but what of it? There is no malice between me and thee. Speak through the door to the jailer.”
CHAPTER III.
“But we be honest men!”
Grim sat down on one of the clean stone floor-slabs and leaned his back against the wall.
“It is not good, Ali Baba, to see you in this place,” he said.
”Mashallah! It is easy to spare your feelings, Jimgrim. Say the word to the jailer and you shall see me in the street in a minute!”
I sat down opposite and watched. Grim’s expression was wholly of good humor, but under the old Arab’s mask of friendly dignity I thought I could detect suppressed excitement. His eyes—soft-brown as a doe’s—had fire behind them and he kept on telling his beads automatically, flicking each one forward with his thumb, as if in some way that relieved internal pressure.
“Have you been searched?” Grim asked him unexpectedly.
“No. I have suffered all indignities but that. Inshallah (If God wills), I shall be spared the searching and the prison bath.”
“Suppose you give me Aaron Cohen’s watch, then.”
Grim held his hand out. The Arab shook his head.
“The Jew’s watch? To the Devil with the Jew and the watch as well! I know nothing of either of them.”
“I suppose,” said Grim considerately, “when a man gets to your age, Ali Baba, his memory usually fails. Well, never mind; here is a nice clean cell, where you can sit and refresh your memory. Meditation may bring recollection. There is no hurry.”
“Truly no hurry! Before dawn I shall be free. If the Jew still needs a watch by that time, the thing can be buried with him.”
“You think the crowd is coming to release you, eh?”
The old man nodded.
“You are wrong,” said Grim.
“If not tonight, then tomorrow night.”
“That would bring sure eventual disaster on themselves, if they try to take you out of here by force.”
“Am I not Ali Baba? They will come.”
“Ali Baba, the thief!”
“Ali Baba ben Hamza, the captain