“Ah! That is wisest, Jimgrim. To spoil this good jail were a pity. And there are mean rascals in here whom they would release, but who ought to remain for the hangman. It is best to let me go; you were always a man of discernment.”
“Who mentioned letting you go?” Grim retorted, letting his face grow suggestively harder. “There is a less troublesome way than that.”
“Allah! Shi muhal? (What does this talk mean?) You would hang me? You?”
“Not necessarily—at least, not yet. Do you think you know me?”
“As a father his son; as a farmer knows the weather; as a fox the hunter! Were you not once governor here?”
“Am I a liar?”
“Nay. A deceiver. A cunning and most bold contriver and twister of surprises. A man who smothers knowledge under smiles. A follower of dark ways. A danger, because of great subtlety and daring. But no liar. When you say a thing, Jimgrim, whoever has good sense believes it.”
“Believe me now, then. You shall hang before you are rescued. Neither your sixteen sons and grandsons, nor any mob incited by them, shall get you alive out of our hands.”
“Allah! You talk boldly, Jimgrim!”
“I have pledged my word.”
”Shu halalk! (What talk is this!) I know the situation. Jerusalem can spare no troops. There is going to be short shrift in El-Kalil, and none can prevent it. Nevertheless, you shall have the Jew’s watch, if that is all you want of me.”
“It is not all.”
“Then what else?”
“Give me the watch first.”
“It is not here. On my honor, Jimgrim, in the name of the Most High God and of his Prophet, it is not here!”
“I thought not. Let me feel under your girdle. Not there? Under your arm? No. In the leg of your pantaloons then? Ah! I knew I’d heard it ticking.”
Grim drew up the old man’s cotton trousers and exposed the hairy leg. The watch was suspended by its gold chain just below the knee.
“So that’s attended to. Now we’ll go out of here and make you more comfortable at the Governorate. Cohen is there. You may give him the watch yourself if you’d rather.”
“You will take me to the Governorate? Taib! (All right!) They will burn that place down instead of this!”
“All right, they’d better. Cost less. Come along.”
Grim called the jailer, who let us out in a hurry and seemed more glad to be rid of that mild-looking old gentleman than if he had horns and a tail; but he took care to have Grim make the necessary entries in the prison book, and returned to Ali Baba the sweetest, silvery, long, gold-handled dagger in an ivory sheath that ever I set eyes on. I offered to buy it from him right away, but he saw only humor in that.
“You shall have it in your belly before morning!” he assured me. “Keep your money until then!”
Take him on the whole, he was the most delightful rascal I had met in Palestine. It was a sheer pleasure to walk the street in his company, Grim on one side and I on the other, lest he take it into that old splendid head of his to make a break for liberty. The very stride of the man was poetry; every gesture was romance. He was inconvertible to modern ways and incorruptible by modern thought—past history incarnate and unwilling to depart from ancient manners; as conventional in his own way as any of the ancient kings who once made war on Abraham.
You would have thought he owned the Governorate by the way he entered it and the lecture he gave Aaron Cohen before returning his watch might have been taken out of the Book of Genesis.
“A rash man and his goods are like the wheat and the chaff,” he told him. “A wind blows and they are separated. Yet there is compassion even for fools, and the heart of the wise discerns it. I am not willing to be enriched with your goods, lest you should meditate envy and bring evil into the world; for the little are envious and only the great have understanding. I give you back your watch.”
“Is he to have the fifty dollars for it?” Cohen asked. “A feller with a nerve like him don’t need money, but I’ll stand by what I said to you.”
“Does he speak of money? Tell him to think rather on damnation that awaits him after death!” said Ali Baba, turning his back. “I offered you tea in the jail, Jimgrim.”
Grim chuckled.
“Shall I order tea? It’s too bad the Koran forbids wine.”
“Whisky is not wine. I have read the Koran through two hundred times and never found the word whisky mentioned in it.”
Grim set a whisky bottle down on the table in front of him and the old man helped himself to a tumblerful.
“Now,” said Grim, “we’ll send for your sixteen sons and grandsons. Write them an invitation.” He set paper and ink in front of him and looked on, smiling like the Sphinx.
“No, that won’t do. Try again. Take another sheet. Nothing about politics this time. Tell them you’re out of jail and quite comfortable in the Governorate as my guest. Say you’ve some advice to give them and that they can come without fear, all sixteen of them.”
“But they will be busy. They are preparing certain matters.”
“I know it. I won’t interfere. They may go away afterward and make all the preparations they like.”
Ali Baba wrote painstakingly and passed the finished note to Grim, who studied it for half a minute before calling a servant.
“To Mahommed ben Hamza in the suk. Come straight back here. Don’t wait for an answer or stop to answer questions.”
The man went off at a run and Grim sat down in the window-seat.
“Come and sit by me, Ali Baba. Now, you infernal old scoundrel, let’s understand each other. I’m going to watch you like a fox stalking a bird, and I warn you not to make one signal to your gang. If you want to know what I’ll do if you disobey me, just make one signal to your gang and see! These boys here made a mistake, didn’t they, when they clapped you in jail? That gave you a chance to stir ructions, didn’t it? And get rescued and fill your caves with loot after the rioting. Well, you’ll tell that gang of yours that you’re out of jail now, so that part of the program that called for an attack on the jail is off— absolutely off—you understand?”
Ali Baba nodded. His eyes were watching Grim’s intently, trying to read the plan behind the spoken word.
“They’ll ask you whether you’re free yet. You’ll answer what?”
“I am not free—yet!“
“No. That’s the wrong answer. By the time they get here you will be free.”
”Taib! I am willing! I will go with them.”
“Yes. But you and I will have a private understanding first.”
What struck me most as I watched the faces of the two men was a difference less of nationality and thirty years or so than of a couple of dozen centuries. And in spite of cunning and cocksureness won by half a century of practically unpunished and profitable crime; in spite of the fact, clear enough by now, that the Arab could count confidently on thousands of his fanatical friends to use direct force against us, who were an insignificant handful, for the moment out of reach of help, the impersonation of past history looked helpless against the young American.
I suspected Grim of being up to his old game of spotting the spark of elemental decency that is always hidden somewhere and fanning it into flame for his own use. Cohen, who knew Arabic better than I did, seemed equally aware of re-enforcements not yet seen. The expression