In a shoulder holster was a small, vicious automatic, but Wade made no attempt to draw the weapon. The fat man shifted again.
“Don’t move!” Wade said.
But the other was too terrified to obey. With a shout and a lunge he was past Wade, diving for the safety of the aisle.
The cobra’s head snapped back. Simultaneously Thunder Jim’s hand streaked up. It was a brown flash darting under his coat, emerging with flame bellowing from the automatic he clutched in it. Glass shattered behind the snake. The writhing coils whipped out frantically, but the cobra’s head was blasted into bloody shreds.
Within the open Gladstone, something moved—a black, sinuous string.
“Karait!” Wade thought, and dropped his gun.
Bullets were no protection against this tiny, deadly desert snake, which moved with incredible speed. Whoever had put the cobra into his bag had taken no chances. Wade would scarcely expect two snakes. After killing the larger one, he would be off his guard.
His unknown antagonist was certainly resourceful!
The pounding of feet clattered above the lurching rattle of the train and the fat man was yelling at the top of his voice. Wade knew that this peril was far more deadly than the cobra, and not only to himself. The car held innumerable nooks and crevices where the karait might hide, waiting its chance to strike.
The string-like reptile flashed out of the Gladstone, its tiny mouth wide. On the seat the fat man had deserted, Wade saw the riding-crop teetering on the edge. He sprang up, seizing the leather stock.
The vicious karait sped at him. Wade lashed out with the whip. It was a difficult target at best, doubly so on the swaying train. But his blow went true. The crop slashed down on the karait, breaking its back. Hissing, the snake tried to coil, striking with futile deadliness at the leather of the seat.
Wade hooked the loop of the riding-crop about its head, jerked it to the floor and crushed the small, venomous head under his heel. Only then did he look around.
The fat man was nowhere in sight. He had locked himself in the washroom. The Hadj and the sallow, gaunt man were among the crowd of passengers in the aisle, which was mostly composed of those who hadn’t yet seen the snakes. Those who had glimpsed the cause of the commotion were heading for the other end of the car.
THE conductor hurried up, a pistol in his hand.
“It’s all right,” Wade said grimly. “No danger now.”
“But—” The conductor saw the crushed karait, the headless but still writhing hamadryad. “Shaitan!”
“And Eblis.” Wade agreed. “Cute little devils, aren’t they? Mind getting a porter to clean up this mess?”
“How did these snakes get here?”
“God knows,” Wade told him. “They’re not my pets.”
He noticed that the Hadj had returned to his seat and the sallow man was heading for the smoking compartment. Pushing through the group in the aisle, Wade followed, after recovering his automatic and sliding it back into its shoulder holster.
He had realized that his unknown enemies were resourceful and that they worked fast. All this obviously was connected with the message that had summoned him to Port Said. The British army officer had presumably been trailed there by someone. That someone had learned Thunder Jim was entering the case.
All this spoke of a dangerous espionage system, an underground organization with some ruthless, mysterious purpose of its own. But what was that purpose? How was it connected with the Arab raid on the Transjordanian fort?
In the smoking compartment, Wade found his quarry, as well as a porter who presently went out, leaving them alone. The sallow man was nervously smoking a cigarette, staring out the window at the moonlit date groves. Wade took the seat opposite him.
“Quite a mess back there,” he said blandly, jerking his head toward the door.
The sallow man nodded.
“Yes. Snakes are bad business.”
WADE’S strong fingers deftly reloaded his automatic.
“You seemed rather interested,” he commented.
“I was,” the gaunt man agreed. “I recognized you. Thunder Jim Wade, eh?”
“Right.”
“Yeah. I wasn’t sure. My name’s Coyne—Jerry Coyne. Newspaper man. I’ve been covering this neck of the woods for my paper. When I saw you, I started to wonder what sort of blow-off brought you here.”
The beady, inquisitive eyes probed into Wade’s and fell away, baffled, unable to continue meeting that cool stare. Thunder Jim stowed away his automatic and lit a cigarette. He waited till Coyne spoke again.
“Somebody’s after your hide, eh?” the reporter said at last. “Well, that’s nothing new. I remember reading an AP release when you were down in the Tanganyika country a year ago. You ran afoul of cobras there, too, didn’t you?”
“Ringhals, not hamadryad,” Wade corrected. “They’re bad medicine. Lucky this wasn’t a spitting cobra, or it might have turned out differently.”
He watched Coyne’s sallow, gaunt face, the nervous tic under his eye, the quick, jerky gestures.
“Any chance of getting a scoop from you?” the newspaper man asked hopefully.
“Not just yet, I’m afraid. But maybe you can give me some information.”
“Be glad to.”
“Did you notice that Hadj?”
Coyne hesitated almost imperceptibly, then nodded.
“Chap with the green turban? Yeah. You don’t mean—”
“I don’t mean anything. I’m just curious. Do you know him?”
“As it happens, I do,” Coyne said slowly. “He’s a mysterious old coot. Been to Mecca, and so on. Nobody knows very much about him. Nesserdin, his name is. He’s a sort of traveling hermit, a district judge, in a way. Some Mohammedans almost worship him. He’ll pop up in Medina or Mosul and then trot off to make the rounds of the desert oases. A modern Peter the Hermit.”
Peter the Hermit? The name struck a chord of recognition in Wade’s mind. He was the man who had journeyed through Europe in the Middle Ages, preaching the warlike doctrine of the Crusades.
There was a good deal of unrest in Asia Minor just now. Wade remembered the furtive glances and whispers of natives in Baghdad, as well as the Arab raid that had brought him into this case.
Certain European powers, at the present time, would be glad to cause trouble for the British in these countries. Wade knew that radio propaganda was rife. A native uprising might be on the way.
Coyne broke into his thoughts.
“Know who put those snakes in your bag?”
Wade shook his head. “it might have been anyone. I haven’t opened it since Port Said and it’s been out of my hands more than once.”
“I see. You’re heading for Basra? So am I. Maybe I can be of some help to you, Wade. If I get any tips, find out anything you might want to know—”
“I’d appreciate it.”
Coyne grinned. “I’m not doing it for love. I’m after a scoop. If I can help you, I hope you’ll give me the inside track on any exclusive news.”
“It’s a bargain.” Wade rose. “I’ll be staying at the European Club. You can reach me there.”
He nodded at Coyne and went out, catching the tail-end of a surreptitious glance from the Hadj Nesserdin as he moved back to his seat. The oldster’s shriveled walnut of a face was utterly expressionless. Even if he smiled, the grimace would be difficult to discover amid the labyrinth of wrinkles.
Wade resumed his seat and waited. There was nothing else he could do until he reached Basra.
Hours later, the train puffed to a stop. Wade, hailing a taxi, was driven to the European Club, where he made several telephone calls before showering and shaving. Then, neat and immaculate in tropical whites that didn’t conceal the wiry grace of his lean body, he headed for the Basra jail.
Morning sunlight blazed down on Basra, shimmering on the turquoise slate minaret of a mosque, on the inscribed bricks of Arab houses that were built round inner courtyards, with the in
adequate windows that shielded the Muslima’s veil from prying eyes. In the bazaar, natives were haggling loudly, gay in their bright costumes. Wade noticed, however, that there was little laughter and that many of the young tribesmen were almost too well armed.
MEN clustered around the shops of barbers who, in Basra, were masseurs and physicians as well. Tiny shops exhibited gimcracks from India and Japan. In the fruit stalls were melons, pomegranates, oranges, dates and gourds. The grocers showed tea and tobacco and boxes of vari-colored sand which contained actually every kind of spice.
But Wade had not come here to see the bazaars. They were familiar enough sights to him. His destination was the city jail.
There, after pulling a few deft wires, he was left alone in a guarded room with a fat, brown-skinned man with grizzled gray hair and shrewd, piercing blue eyes. Eric Godoy took one of Wade’s cigarettes and relaxed in a chair.
Wade came to the point at once. In a few brief sentences he explained what had brought him to Basra.
“I’ve investigated you, Godoy,” he finished, “and I’m satisfied that you’ve been framed for the murder of Captain Harding. I’ve no evidence of that, but you’re a clever man. If you wanted to commit murder, you wouldn’t make a sloppy job of it.”
Godoy’s plump cheeks creased in a smile. He spoke with the trace of some indefinable accent, in a soft, velvety voice. But his eyes remained alert and piercing.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. “You are quite right. I did not kill the British officer.”
Wade nodded. “I believe you. Now about my own interest in this business—”
Godoy lifted his hand.
“You need not explain that. Your reputation has reached Basra. Besides, you did me a good turn once. Do you remember the river pirates north of Saigon?”
Wade’s eyes flickered. Wryly he touched a healed kris-scar on his temple.
“Yes,” he said. “I remember them. They were terrorizing the natives, murdering right and left.”
“I had some teak holdings in that country,” Godoy said. “Indirectly you saved my profits that year. Once the river pirates were eliminated, my boys went to work again. So, you see, I know you.”
Wade stretched his long legs.
“Good. That’ll save us some time. Now tell me just what’s behind this business.”
Godoy pursed his lips.
“I can’t be of much help. My own idea is that I blundered into something bigger than I thought. From what you’ve told me, I can guess a little more. But it’s only guesswork. Let me start at the beginning, with my pearl holdings in the Bahrein Islands.”
“Well?”
“The natives there make their living from the pearl beds. I’ve a monopoly on the pearls— Well, not exactly a monopoly, for they’re free to refuse my offers. But I pay them good prices and they’ve been satisfied. Lately a group of pirates has been raiding the islands and stealing the pearls. Probably they have their spies, for invariably they pick the natives who’ve made good hauls. The Arabs suffer. Some of them have been tortured. And my own profits are cut down.”
Godoy’s tiny mouth suddenly grew hard.
“I feel that those men are under my protection. The profits? They matter, but not as much as human lives. So I decided to investigate. Occasionally it has been necessary for me to hire men to find out what I wish to know. I sent an operative named Billings to the Bahreins. He got a message through to me, but it said little. He was on the trail of something big. Then I heard nothing from him till he was killed in that Transjordanian fort.”
Wade looked up, startled.
“That man the Arabs were chasing was Billings?”
“Exactly. What he was doing at the northern border of Saudi Arabia, I can’t say, except that he went up there to investigate the secret he found out on the Bahreins.”
“I wonder what that secret was,” Wade mused.
Godoy shrugged. “Important enough so that his dying message was sent to you. Captain Harding, the British officer, came to Basra and almost certainly got on the trail of the killers. He was eliminated and the blame placed on me.”
“Exactly how did that happen?” Wade asked.
“The obvious way. A forged message from a friend took me to a hut on the outskirts of town. I was struck on the head. When I woke up, the police were there and the body of Harding lay on the floor. He’d been shot through the back and my fingerprints were on the gun.”
“Circumstantial evidence,” Wade stated. “It can be disproved easily.”
“Two Arabs swore they saw me shoot Harding. They’d been passing outside the hut, heard a shot and ran to the window in time to see me put a second bullet into him. They were lying, of course, but they vanished after giving their evidence.”
“No way of finding them?”
“I doubt it. One of them, Ali Hassan, is a professional cutthroat. There’s a dancing girl at the Ramadan Café who might know, but she’s already been questioned.”
“What’s her name?” Wade asked.
“Tanit. That’s all—just Tanit.”
“I’ll look her up. Anything else you know that’ll help?”
Godoy thoughtfully rubbed his fat pads of cheeks.
“No, except that there’s considerable unrest among the nomad tribes. There’s even talk of a Jihad. And there’s a story going the rounds of the bazaars about a certain holy man who’s supposed to be immortal. He’s a mu’min. I don’t know much about that, but I’m part Kurd and I can sense emotional upsets among the natives. It may be that somebody’s trying to stir up a Jihad.”
Wade remembered the Hadj Nesserdin, but said nothing. Godoy went on.
“You may think I’m taking all this calmly, but”—Godoy’s smile was a little wan—“I’d rather not die just yet. If I do, it’s Kismet.” He made a queer, hopeless gesture. “I have helped develop this country and I have helped the natives. If I’m executed, many will mourn my passing.”
Unconsciously he had lapsed into the flowery, expressive Arabic.
“I’ll do my best, Godoy,” Wade said quietly and rose to go. At the door he halted. “One thing more. Before your man Billings was killed, he mentioned a man named Klett. Know anything about him?”
“Yes! Skipper Klett. I suspected him of being behind the pearl robberies at Bahrein. He’s been mixed up in more than one dirty business.”
“Where is he now?”
“He might be anywhere on the Gulf. Wait a minute!” Godoy’s eyes narrowed, “Remember what I said about Tanit, that dancing girl at the Ramadan Café? Well, Klett hangs around there a good deal when he’s in town.”
Wade left. The scattered pieces of the jigsaw were beginning to fall into place. But they were only beginning.
Chapter IV
Death of a Dancer
IN THE native quarter the Ramadan Café stood, a transformed Arab home. The interior courtyard was full of tables, with lamps strung from overhead wires. There were few patrons at this hour. Wade bought a drink and discovered that the girl, Tanit, would not arrive until evening and decided against making any inquiries about Skipper Klett. Instead he played the role of a tourist, wandering about Basra and keeping his ears open for stray bits of information.
Godoy had been right. There was an undercurrent of tension. It never appeared on the surface, but everywhere whispers drifted about—whispers in which the name of a certain mu’min was prominent. He was immortal, the tales said. He had been shot through the heart once and still lived. He preached— But there, with furtive glances, the groups broke up.
Wade felt a strong impression that the natives were waiting for something. But what? The appearance of the mu’min? Perhaps.
Twice he glimpsed a green turban in the turmoil of the bazaars and was almost certain that the Hadj Nesserdin wore it. Wade was convinced that he was being trailed, but whether the Hadj was his tracker or not, he could not be sure.
Presently he returned to the European Club, picking up a cable from Argyle and Marat
. They would arrive that night in the Thunderbug. Wade left a message for them at the desk and, as the cool winds of evening swept down on Basra, he headed for the Ramadan Café.
But he did not go as Thunder Jim Wade. Earlier that day, in the bazaar, he had bought a complete outfit of Arab clothing. The man who strolled through the streets of Basra did not resemble a European in the least. Wade’s naturally dark skin did not require any make-up and many Arabs were clean-shaven. He wore the blue burnous that betokened rank.
He attracted no attention at the Ramadan Café when he entered and found a table. The place was already filled with talking, gesticulating Arabs. There were no tourists, Wade noticed.
He ordered banana couscous and let his keen gaze drift around the crowded courtyard. Abruptly his stare fastened on a bobbing green turban, half-concealed behind a pillar.
What was the Hadj Nesserdin doing here?
The Mohammedan had apparently not seen Wade. If he had, at any rate he had not penetrated Wade’s disguise. The wrinkled, brown face was impassive. Nesserdin sat quietly at his table, waiting.
Wade’s ears caught snatches of talk. Again he sensed the undercurrents of tension. A group of natives was discussing the attack on the Transjordanian fort.
“Ya Allah! The kafir dogs could not fight the mu’min—”
“Be still!” a companion whispered.
The Arab, with a hasty glance around, obeyed. The Hadj made a sudden, angry gesture. Looking up, Wade heard a tinkling of bells, sweet and silvery, and saw a native girl run lightly into the courtyard. She was unveiled and the wearing of bells was forbidden to good Mohammedans. That was reason enough, perhaps, for Nesserdin’s scowl.
“Tanit!” low voices said, “It is Tanit!”
THE girl was slim and light-footed as a desert gazelle. She danced well, Wade admitted, and she was singularly pretty, but her eyes were strange. There was hardness in them and something else—some indefinable emotion. What was it?
Suddenly Wade knew. It was fear.
Again he looked around. Though every eye was intent on Tanit, Hadj Nesserdin drew back into the shadows with a little grimace. He had reason, for the Hadj was a holy man and the patrons of the Ramadan certainly were not.
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