by Roger Bax
Presently he saw with relief that he was leaving the mountains and entering the long, flat coastal plain. The road ran straighter now and faster between hedges of prickly pear and carefully tended orange and lemon groves.
His thoughts swung back to his last few days in Jerusalem. Days and nights—they had been mixed up together in awful confusion. He had really found out a great deal, yet nothing concrete. He sorted out dates in his mind. Yes, Mahomet’s birthday was to-morrow. That left the whole of to-day—as it was nearly 2 A.M. he could certainly talk of “to-day”—and one night. If the Arabs were going to carry out their “coup” they would have to take advantage of the next period of darkness. He would have to be back in Jerusalem for that—just in case it happened. If they had only known, they would have been wiser to have started the revolt at this very moment. The explosion in Tel Aviv was attracting all the attention of the police and military. The prospect of riots there would keep the authorities busy. It was a heaven-sent opportunity—if they had only known.
Suddenly Garve’s pulse gave a leap and the car swerved dangerously. If they had only known! Was it possible that they did know? What other purpose could they have in staging this piece of violence at Tel Aviv? Martial law was bound to follow it, and their liberty of movement would be enormously curtailed. Indeed, if the Tel Aviv explosion was not intended as a blind, a smoke-screen, it was simply an appalling piece of clumsiness on the Arabs’ part. Or was it the work of independent terrorists? Perhaps —but lately the Arabs had certainly given the impression of a new discipline and corporate purpose. And this explosion right in the middle of Jewish territory must have taken a lot of planning by a considerable number of conspirators.
The longer Garve considered the matter the greater his uneasiness grew. He had been so keen on this story that he had lost sight of the bigger problem. Perhaps at this very moment the Arabs were rising in Jerusalem, breaking into the arms dump, slaughtering the Jews, building defences against counter-attack.
The city had been so quiet when he left it—surely, with a general revolt due in an hour or two, there would have been indications—restiveness. No civil population could be as disciplined as that. Or, perhaps, the civil population did not know—perhaps they were still waiting for a signal they could recognize. In that case, who was in charge?—who was the leader?—where was Kemal?
Looking back when it was all over, Garve could never understand how he could have been so blind, when the answer should have been so patent to him. Primarily, inevitably, he blamed himself, but he always regarded his succession of tiring days and nights, his personal fears for Esther, and the small opportunity he had had for hard thinking, as contributory causes.
Thoughts of Esther had closed his eyes to the truth—the obvious, only possible, explanation—for days, but it was thinking of Esther which brought him to it in the end. If there was any substance in his sudden fear that he was leaving the biggest story of all behind him, Esther was in the very gravest danger. He stopped the car by the roadside, lighted his pipe, and considered the situation all over again.
That hold-up on the Dead Sea road, for instance—what were its implications? That Hayson had tried to kill him once again. Why? To secure Esther for himself. He had instructed his cutthroats not to shoot her—that had been clear. Suppose the attempt had succeeded, though. Garve’s body would have been lying, no doubt, at the bottom of the hillside, finally and irrevocably disposed of. But what of Esther! Would the Arabs have left her there to make her own way home? Or would they have taken her with them? And if so, where to?
There seemed insuperable difficulties from Hayson’s point of view. He must have realized that Garve would have told her the truth about the quarries and about his threat of an ambush. Hayson would never have dared to let her go back alone, for she would inevitably have told her father everything—and the weight of evidence was growing. Hayson would know that she would denounce him—that his own hopes of securing her as his wife would be ruined. What, then, was the point of it all?
The ambush only made sense, indeed, if the idea was to kidnap Esther and take her by force to Hayson in some place where he could have his will of her. But surely, even in Palestine, Hayson could not hope to get away with an outrage like that. Not if conditions remained normal —not unless the whole of Palestine went up in a flame of civil war and utter disorder. But that was just what was going to happen. Good God, perhaps he had known. Perhaps he had been in with the conspirators. Perhaps he was one of them—one of the leaders—the leader. The Leader Hayson! Hayson! It was Hayson! Not Kemal, but Hayson! Thus gropingly, belatedly, Garve came to the truth, and as each little bit of the jig-saw of his knowledge fitted in, he exclaimed aloud at his own obtuseness.
He had thought the man his personal enemy—that was where he had erred. When Hayson had tried to murder him, he had put the attempt down to jealousy. In all his relations with Hayson the future of Esther had been uppermost in his mind. From that personal aspect he had never been able to detach his feelings. From the first he had accepted Hayson as an adversary without having to seek a cause for his enmity. All the suspicion of his curious movements which normally he might have entertained had been canalized into personal suspicion. Now, perhaps too late, he could see why Hayson had been so anxious to kill him. As a journalist he had known too much. His inquisitive investigations had been a constant menace to the plot that was hatching. He had to be got rid of, and in a way which would throw no suspicion on Hayson, until the plot was ripe.
Quickly Garve ran over the events of the past few days in his mind. There was that curious business of the first arms dump. Garve realized now how slow he had been not to associate its precipitate removal with Hayson. He recalled the circumstances in which he had announced the find. He had been discussing it with Willoughby while Hayson and Esther were out, and Esther had asked, “What’s all this about machine-guns?” Only Hayson could have passed on the information so quickly to the Arabs. Yet Garve had suspected a police leakage. Hayson had seemed too much a member of the family; Willoughby had spoken well of him; Garve’s only suspicions had been that he had designs on Esther. That partly explained—heaven knew it did not excuse—his blindness.
It was astonishing how the fellow had wormed his way into the Willoughby confidence—and yet, perhaps, not so astonishing, for his self-confidence was immense, and he rang true enough until you knew him by his actions. No doubt his past record as an archaeologist would bear full examination. The simple fact was that all along the line Hayson had been too clever for them. That affair of Hezekiah’s Tunnel, for instance—Garve had gone out of his way to get Hayson’s assistance, and Hayson had tried so hard—so it had seemed—to dissuade him from the enterprise. Naturally, for he must have known that if Garve explored the tunnel he might stumble upon the newly cut passage to the quarries, and begin to suspect Arab activity there. When he had found that Garve was insistent, he had recommended one of his own terrorists as a guide. Garve had fallen completely into the trap. Where Hayson had erred was in underrating the tenacity with which, in a crisis, Garve would cling to life. The fight in the tunnel had gone the wrong way, and instead of Jameel coming out to report his task executed, Garve had emerged to report a struggle. Yes, it all fitted in. Hayson would wait, expecting Jameel to come and account for his failure, and presently would send an Arab search party through the tunnel, and they would remove Jameel’s body. Again Garve cursed himself for his crass blindness. Hayson was the only man, except Baird, who knew even that there had been a fight in the tunnel. But his attitude after the event had been so disarming—his, “Well, after all, I told you not to go” tone, so irritating and yet so natural to an innocent man who had done all he could, first to dissuade and then to help. All the same, Garve remembered now that Hayson had seemed surprised to see him after the episode in the tunnel. No wonder.
Quite apart from the damning way in which the two disappearances and Hayson’s special knowledge of the circumstances were connected, his very mo
vements in Jerusalem had been suspicious enough. Everyone had accepted his own story of archaeological investigation in the quarries, and that he had antiquarian knowledge Garve did not doubt. All the same, he had produced no evidence of his activities in any concrete or convincing form. He had talked a lot about new hieroglyphics, but he had been very careful not to show them to Garve when they were in the quarries together. On the other hand, if he were the leader of a vast conspiracy, the quarries were the ideal meeting-place, particularly now they had two entrances. And—why, of course, it was as clear as daylight—a man with Hayson’s detailed knowledge of the quarries could not have failed to be aware of the existence of that great ammunition dump. He had simply lied about it—he must have known. And if he had known, and said nothing to the authorities, that was adequate and conclusive proof of his guilt.
Now that the mask of antiquarian virtue was torn away, Hayson’s every act convicted him. He might, as an individual with a personal spite against Garve, have bribed Jameel to kill him—that was conceivable—but it was not conceivable that in any private capacity he could have sent fifty mounted Arabs to hold up a single man. That action, which by all the rules should have ended in Garve’s death, implied a relationship with the Arabs of an intimate and authoritative nature. And what was it that Francis Willoughby had said?—“He speaks Arabic like a native.” No proof, perhaps, for Garve spoke it excellently himself, but it fitted in with all the rest and Garve was satisfied. The truth was incredible, but it was still the truth.
What, then, did all this mean? It meant that Hayson, a British citizen, was leading and planning a vast revolt against the rule of his own country. If his plot succeeded, it would result in the deaths of thousands of his fellow-countrymen and in a deadly blow to British prestige throughout the East. The conspiracy on his part was an act of treachery. What was he getting out of the affair? Money, perhaps—he might be just a mercenary, bought by the Arabs for his qualities of leadership. Somehow that seemed unlikely. He did not give the appearance of a mercenary, even with the mask off. There was a light in his eyes which spoke of fanaticism rather than cupidity. He might have a grievance against Britain—some personal affront might have made him unbalanced, and turned him to a spectacular revenge. But even if he had a grievance, that did not explain why the Arabs should trust him, and follow him with the implicit faith and almost perfect discipline which had been features of their conspiracy. The Arab leaders were no fools—a man like Ali Kemal would want more than verbal guarantees of good faith before he would place his arms and his people at the disposal of a stranger—and a renegade Britisher at that. But then—was Hayson a Britisher? Who was he, after all? Who were his people? Garve cast his mind back to try and recall what Willoughby had told him about Hayson. Nothing of substance, really, and what he knew had no doubt come from Hayson. The man had been to Oxford and had done well, but that was no guarantee of patriotism. Garve recalled the features that he had come to hate so much. There was nothing particularly English about them—in fact, it would not be at all surprising to know that Hayson had southern blood in him. That would explain his confident, possessive, too swift approach to Esther. That would explain his fierce jealousy of Garve. It all fitted in. It was quite possible that he owed allegiance to, and was an agent of, some other country than Britain.
Strangely mixed with a growing fear in his mind, and a realization that now at last action, urgent and swift, was called for, Garve felt a sense of relief that the puzzle was almost elucidated. But now that he knew the facts, he knew the desperate nature of the situation too. Clearly that last arranged ambush had been Hayson’s final throw before the revolt broke. It had been designed to make absolutely certain that Garve would not be in a position to explode the mine himself before zero hour. It would put him safely and finally out of the way. Worse, it was designed to put Esther entirely at Hayson’s mercy. It had failed in its first objective—had it failed in its second?
Garve crashed his foot on the self-starter button and swung the car round in the silent road. Why, fool that he was, the danger was as great as ever for Esther. Hayson would have been informed long ago that the hold-up had failed. His spies, who must be everywhere, would probably have seen the procession of police from the city. They would chuckle at the exodus and make haste to complete and carry out their plans at once. And Hayson’s plan, Garve was absolutely certain, involved Esther. Wherever he went, if his plot succeeded, he would undoubtedly see that she went too. Her father might easily be killed—Willoughby trusted Hayson, would be influenced by him. Garve hoped, as his throttle opened wide, that perhaps Esther had told her father something of the ambush and of Hayson before she retired—something to put him on the alert.
Once or twice doubts assailed him as he raced back to Jerusalem. Perhaps, after all, he had let his imagination take control too strongly—perhaps he had constructed a fabric of sheer speculation with no solidity in fact. In that case, he would find it difficult to explain to his paper why he had abandoned the biggest story that Palestine had known since the trouble started. Difficult—but not impossible—and, anyway, the story was no longer the first consideration. Esther had proved Hayson’s chief weakness as a conspirator; she was proving, Garve thought, his own undoing as a reporter!
He had no plan in his mind, short of getting to Jerusalem and finding Esther. The first thing was to satisfy himself that she was safe, and to leave her in safe hands, as he should have done before. The next thing was to find Hayson, the very keystone of the revolt, the man upon whose brain and authority depended success or failure, and by violence or cunning get him under lock and key. Garve hoped that he would still be early enough to reach Hayson before the signal of revolt was given. If the signal, whatever it was, could be arrested at the source, the revolt might never happen. Without leadership, without co-ordination, rebellions nearly always fizzled out.
The Ford was back in the mountains again, cutting corners, skidding and sliding, shrieking protest from its tyres, and roaring exultation from its engine. Garve had never driven more ruthlessly, but the road might be expected to be clear at this hour, and seconds counted. Already in the eastern sky there was the faintest glow of the dawn to come. The new suburbs echoed to his exhaust and dropped back into their sleep. No city in the world had ever looked less like a rebellion, and all Garve’s doubts returned. Perhaps at this minute Hayson was sleeping peacefully in his house, dreaming, at the worst, of ancient hieroglyphics. But perhaps …
15. Esther Refuses an Offer
The kidnapping of Esther had been completed by Hayson himself. It was his own hands which grasped her slim body as it was passed in the dark over his threshold. Judging by the silence of the house, indeed, he seemed to have the place to himself. Still keeping the cloth over her mouth, he carried her into his lounge and deposited her on a cushioned divan.
Very cautiously he raised the gag. “I’m sure you’re not going to be so foolish as to scream,” he said softly. “It wouldn’t have any effect except to give us both a headache, and this is a really filthy piece of rag.”
Esther sat quietly staring at him with a white face. She was still too jarred by the sudden and unexpected assault, too uncertain of what was to come, to find speech easily. Hayson seemed cool enough. He offered her a cigarette, which she declined with a shake of the head.
Hayson stood over her. “I’m afraid I owe you a very big apology,” he said smoothly. “I shall always regret that it was necessary to subject you to this violence, but”—he shrugged his shoulders—“it was the only way.”
Esther struggled for words, her cheeks flushed now with two hectic spots of anger. “You’ve behaved outrageously,” she cried, her breasts heaving with the emotion which still strangled her speech. “You must be insane—you—you murderer.”
“Whom have I murdered?” he asked quickly.
“You tried to kill Garve to-night.”
“Ah, tried. Do you know, for a moment you quite raised my hopes—I thought that after all I had
been misinformed about his escape. I’m afraid I have only myself to blame for his survival. I was unwise enough to warn him in a moment of anger that he might encounter difficulty. I regretted it at once, and contemplated abandoning my arrangements, but time was getting very short, and I could not know that his precautions would run to an armoured car. I begin to think he has a charmed life. However, this little affair at Tel Aviv seems to have disposed of him just as effectively. He reminds me of a little boy running after a fire-engine. So enthusiastic.”
Esther made no attempt to hide her horror. As his meticulously chosen words fell on her ears she shrank away from him in loathing.
Hayson changed his tone. “You think I’m mad, don’t you, Esther? That’s not surprising, but you’re wrong. I’m as sane as you are, and when I’ve told you all I’ve got to tell you, you’ll understand.” He glanced at his watch. “I can spare precisely one hour—not a second more. A great deal has to be done before the morning, and everything is timed. I think I’d better do most of the talking to start with, but I want you to listen very carefully—because it concerns your father.”