Dimoussi looked at the signs engraved one above the other on the barrel. There was a crown, and a strange letter, and a lion. He had long wondered what those signs meant. He was very glad now that he understood.
“But I will not buy lead bullets,” said Dimoussi wisely. “The pistol may be enchanted so that it cannot miss, but there are also enchantments against lead bullets so that they cannot hurt.”
So Dimoussi walked away, and begged a lump of rock salt from another booth instead. He cut down the lump until it fitted roughly into the hexagonal barrel of his pistol. Then he loaded the pistol, and hiding the weapon in the wide sleeve of his jellaba, sauntered to the great square before the Renegade’s Gate. There were groups of people standing about watching the tents, and the inevitable ring of sentries. But while Dimoussi was still loitering—he would have loitered for a fortnight if need be, for there were no limits to Dimoussi’s patience—Arden came out of the tent with his camera, and Challoner followed with a tripod stand.
The two consools passed the line of guards and set up the camera in front of the Renegade’s Gate. Dimoussi was quite impartial which of the two should be sacrificed to begin the djehad, but again an ironical fate laid its hand upon him. It was Arden who was to work the camera. It was Arden, therefore, who was surrounded by the idlers, and was safe. Challoner, on the other hand, had to stand quite apart, so as to screen the lens from the direct rays of the sun.
“A little more to the right, Challoner,” said Arden. “That’ll do.”
He put his head under the focussing cloth, and the next instant he heard a loud report, followed by shouts and screams and the rush of feet; and when he tore the focussing cloth away he saw Challoner lying upon the ground, the sentries agitatedly rushing this way and that, and the bystanders to a man in full flight.
Dimoussi had chosen his opportunity well. He stood between two men, and rather behind them, and exactly opposite Challoner. All eyes were fixed upon the camera, even Challoner’s. It was true that he did see the sun glitter suddenly upon something bright, that he did turn, that he did realise that the bright thing was the brass barrel of a big flintlock pistol. But before he could move or shout, the pistol was fired, and a heavy blow like a blow from a cudgel struck him full on the chest.
Challoner spoke no more than a few words afterwards. The lump of rock salt had done the work of an explosive bullet. He was just able to answer a question of Arden’s.
“Did you see who fired?”
“The boy who came from Mulai Idris,” whispered Challoner. “He shot me with a brass-barrelled pistol.” That seemed to have made a most vivid impression upon his mind, for more than once he repeated it.
But Dimoussi was by this time out of the Renegade’s Gate, and running with all his might through the olive grove towards the open, lawless country south of Mequinez. By the evening he was safe from capture, and lifted up with pride.
Certainly no djehad had followed upon the murder, and that was disappointing. But it was not Dimoussi’s fault. He had done his best according to his lights. Meanwhile, it seemed prudent to him to settle down quietly at Agurai. He was nearly sixteen now. Dimoussi thought that he would settle down and marry.
Here the episode would have ended but for two circumstances. In the first place Dimoussi carried back with him from Mequinez the brass-barrelled pistol; and in the second place Arden, two years later, acted upon a long-cherished desire to penetrate the unmapped country south of Mequinez.
He travelled with a mule as a Jew pedlar, knowing that such a man, for the sake of his wares, may go where a Moor may not. Of his troubles during his six months’ wanderings now is not the time to speak. It is enough that at the end of the six months he set up his canvas shelter one evening by the village of Agurai.
The men came at once and squatted, chattering, about his shelter.
“Is there a woman in the village,” asked Arden, “who will wash some clothes for me?”
And the sheikh of the village rose up and replied:
“Yes; the Frenchwoman. I will send her to you.”
Arden was perplexed. It seemed extraordinary that in a little village in a remote and unusually lawless district of Morocco there should be a French blanchisseuse. But he made no comment, and spread out his wares upon the ground. In a few moments a woman appeared. She had the Arab face, the Arab colour. But she stood unconcernedly before Arden, and said in Arabic:
“I am the Frenchwoman. Give me the clothes you want washing.”
Arden reached behind him for the bundle. He addressed her in French, but she shook her head and carried the bundle away. Her place was taken by another, a very old, dark woman, who was accompanied by a youth carrying a closed basket.
“Pigeons,” said the old woman. “Good, fat, live pigeons.”
Arden was fairly tired of that national food by this time, and waved her away.
“Very well,” said she. She took the basket from the youth, placed it on the ground, and opened the lid. Then she clapped her hands and the pigeons flew out. As they rose into the air she laughed, and cried out in English—“One, two, three, and away!”
Arden was fairly startled.
“What words are those?” he exclaimed.
“English,” the old woman replied in Arabic. “I am the Englishwoman.”
And the men of the village who were clustered round the shelter agreed, as though nothing could be more natural:
“Yes, she is the Englishwoman.”
“And what do the words mean?”
The old woman shrugged her shoulders.
“My father used them just as I did,” she said. She spoke with a certain pride in the possession of those five uncomprehended words. “He learned them from his father. I do not know what they mean.”
It was mystifying enough to Arden that, in a country where hardly a Moor of a foreign tribe, and certainly no Europeans, had ever been known to penetrate, there should be a Frenchwoman who knew no French, and an Englishwoman with five words of English she did not understand.
But there was more than this to startle Arden. He had heard those same words spoken once before, by a Moorish boy who had declared himself to be an Englishman, and that Moorish boy had murdered his friend Challoner.
Arden glanced carelessly at the youth who stood by the old woman’s side.
“That is your son?” said he.
“Yes. That is Dimoussi.”
Dimoussi’s cheeks wore the shadow of a beard. He had grown.
Arden could not pretend to himself that he recognised the boy who had sprung up from the asphodel-bushes a few miles from Mulai Idris.
He bethought himself of a way to test his suspicions. He took from his wares an old rusty pistol and began to polish it. A firearm he knew to be a lure to any Moor. Dimoussi drew nearer. Arden paid no attention, but continued to polish his pistol. A keen excitement was gaining on him, but he gave no sign. At last Dimoussi reached out his hand. Arden placed the pistol in it. Dimoussi turned the pistol over, and gave it back.
“It is no good.”
Arden laughed.
“There is no better pistol in Agurai,” said he contemptuously. In his ears there was the sound of Challoner’s voice repeating and repeating: “He shot me with a brass-barrelled pistol—a brass-barrelled pistol.”
The contempt in his tone stung Dimoussi.
“I have a better,” said he, and at that the old woman touched him warningly on the arm. Dimoussi