I dare say the lot of them weighed a ton and a half, and if you had boiled them down for fat you might have harvested a dozen pounds; but excepting that one characteristic of hard condition the only strong family resemblance that they all shared was a certain plastic serenity of forehead and breadth between the eyes.
“Show your respect to the gentlemen,” Ali Baba ordered sternly, whereat they formed in double line across the hall and bowed with great dignity.
“Your father Ali Baba has a word to say to you all,” announced Grim.
“We listen when he speaks,” said the big man.
“Go on, Ali Baba.”
“The Jews are not to die tonight. Jimgrim has spoken. Between us and Jimgrim is a covenant of blood. See ye to it that our honor is whole in this matter.”
“Then the fire-gift? What of that?” asked the giant.
“Use ye the fire-gift as before. Use it this night. I come too, for Jimgrim has done me honor and set me free. But let it be known that it is not written for tonight. Perhaps tomorrow night, but not tonight by any means may Jews be killed.”
There was a murmur of half-rebellion along both ranks, and an exchange of quick glances.
“Jimgrim is our brother,” said the big man, “but who will listen now? They will smite us in the teeth and throw stones if we say now that what we said before was false! Moreover, they will draw their swords in spite of us.”
I rather expected Grim would join in the argument at that point, but nothing of the kind.
“This is your gang, Ali Baba,” was all he said, and sat well back, rather ostentatiously at ease. And the old man took the cue from him.
Never have I seen such fury—such sudden change from patriarchal dignity to blazing wrath; nor ever more surprising meekness in the face of it.
The old man raised both clenched fists and the very hairs of his beard seemed to stand apart and stiffen with the intensity of his frenzy.
“Shall I curse my sons?” he screamed. “Are these the men I got—the children of my loins that sneer in my face like idiots and answer Nay to my Yea? Is my old age a mockery that sixteen louts should dare know better than I? Leave me! I will marry wives and God will give me other sons! I will find me better sons in the suk! Is it not enough to be jailed by an infidel for the sake of a heretic Jew, that my own sons must come and mock my face and my gray hairs? Truly is Allah great and his judgment past discerning! All these years have I nurtured snakes, believing I was blessed in them. And so at last Allah clears my old eyes and shows me the poison in their teeth! Go! Go! I am a childless man! Better the dogs of the street than sons who mock their father! Go, I order you!”
But they did not go. Nor did they take his terrific reproof other than abjectly. They closed up and fawned on him, more than ever like hound-pups, looking more enormous than ever because of his age and comparative frailty —begging, imploring, coaxing him, calling him respectful names, making him promises that would have made Aladdin’s eyes start, even after his experience with the wondrous lamp. Finally the biggest of them put their arms about him and bore him off in the midst of the sixteen, they still fawning and he protesting.
“So that settles that,” said Grim, getting off the bench.
“Call that a settlement?” asked Cohen. “All you’ve done, as far as I can see, is to turn a lot of knifers loose on the town and nothin’ gained but their own admission that they can’t do a thing! They’ll talk that old rooster over as soon as they get outside. Here it is dark already and a pogrom slated for tonight! Seems to me you’re—Say, what do you figure you’ve done, anyway?”
But Grim is not given to explaining things much; he told me more than once he has a notion that discussing half-formed plans “lets off the pressure and drowns the spark.” He looked at Cohen critically, but with that gleam of tolerant amusement that always takes the sting out of a remark:
“We’ve still got Aaron Cohen to fall back on,” he answered quietly. “I’ll bet with you, Aaron—my silver watch against your gold one that there won’t be a throat cut in Hebron as long as you play the game!”
“Me? What game? Call this a game? Here, take the watch! I’ll have no use for it this time tomorrow!”
“I’ll trade with you. There, take mine. Now I’ll bet with you the other way about. My gold watch against your silver one that you daren’t play my game and pull this fat out of the fire!”
“May as well play your game as any man’s!” laughed Cohen. “Are you thinkin’ of issuing rain checks in case the knifing’s put off till tomorrow?”
“I’ve offered to bet you that you daren’t.”
“Daren’t what?”
“Play my game.”
“Blind? All right, it’s a bet! You show me the thing I daren’t do!”
“I’ll try!” Grim answered. “But I’d take ten cents for my option on your watch!”
De Crespigny and Jones came in together just then, laughing about some incident in the city; and the servant began laying the table for dinner with a brave effort to seem cheerful too, as if he hoped we might live to eat it. He was a wizened old city Arab, deeply pitted with smallpox marks, who had seen his share of trouble in Hebron and retained little except poverty and a huge capacity to doubt.
“The city’s quiet,” announced de Crespigny, as we started on the soup. “Either they’re waiting for the men on the camels to bring back a report, or they’ve made up their minds to cut loose at midnight. There’s no knowing which. I acted Dutch uncle to the head-men in the mejliss hall.”
“How old was the youngest of them?” I asked him.
“Lord knows. Why? What difference does his age make? I told them they are responsible for good order in the city and that I’ll hold their noses to it. The Jews made the most fuss; they’re naturally scared. They demanded a curfew rule—everybody to be within doors after eight o’clock.”
“Did you agree to that?” Grim asked—a shade sharply it seemed to me. He left off eating soup and waited for the answer.
“Didn’t dare. Couldn’t enforce it with ten policemen. So I pretended to give the idea a minute’s consideration and then told ‘em the head-men might make any ruling they liked and that at the first sign of disorder the head-men will be the ones who’ll catch it! On top of that I told ‘em I’ve decided not to send for troops as long as they behave themselves; thought that might explain away the fact that we can’t get troops!”
“Good boy!” said Grim.
“I feel like Pontius Pilate!” laughed de Crespigny.
“He was better off; he had about a hundred men,” said Jones. “All the same, you’ve done what he did. I was all through the city. You’ve jolly well got P. Pilate Esquire looking like a silver-plater cantering behind the crowd at the end of a season.”
“Thanks!”
“What I mean is, I think you’ve kept on top. You were so jolly cool they think you’ve got a red ace up your sleeve.”
“I’m hoping Grim has,” said de Crespigny.
“Sure—I’ve got Cohen,” answered Grim.
Cohen laid his spoon down and looked about him.
“Red ace? Me? Up anybody’s sleeve? Say, quit your kiddin’!”
“All right. You’re to do the kidding from now on.”
“Kid myself, I suppose? Kid myself