Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  It was not a peaceful retreat by any means. Time and again before morning we were fired on from the rear. Our party deployed to right and left to answer — always boasting afterward of having killed at least a dozen men. I added up their figures on the fly-leaf of the pocket Bible, and the total came to two hundred and eighteen of the enemy shot dead and forever damned! I believe Anazeh actually did kill one of our pursuers.

  By the time the moon disappeared we had come too close to Anazeh’s country to make pursuit particularly safe. Who they were who pursued us, hauled off. We reached the launch, secure in its cove between the rocks, a few minutes after dawn. Anazeh ordered his six wounded men into it, with perfect assurance that the British doctors would take care of them and let them go unquestioned.

  When Grim had finished talking with Anazeh I went up to thank the old fellow for my escort, and he acknowledged the courtesy with a bow that would have graced the court of Solomon.

  “Give the old bird a present, if you’ve got one,” Grim whispered.

  So I gave him my watch and chain, and he accepted them with the same calm dignity.

  “Now he’s your friend for life!” said Grim. “Anazeh is a friend worth having. Let’s go!”

  The watch and chain was a cheap enough price to pay for that two days’ entertainment and the acquaintance of such a splendid old king of thieves. Anazeh watched us away until we were out of earshot, he and Grim exchanging the interminable Arab farewell formula of blessing and reply that have been in use unchanged for a thousand years.

  Then Abdul Ali produced his wallet again.

  “Major Grim,” he said, “please take this money. Keep it for yourself, and let me go. Surely I have been punished enough! Besides, you cannot — you dare not imprison me! I am a French subject. I have been seized outside the British sphere. I know you are a poor man — the pay of a British officer is a matter of common knowledge. Come now, you have done what you came to do. You have destroyed my influence at El-Kerak. Now benefit yourself. Avoid an international complication. Show mercy on me! Take this money. Say that I gave you the slip in the dark!”

  Grim smiled. He looked extremely comical without any eyebrows.

  The wrinkles went all the way up to the roots of his hair.

  “I’m incorruptible,” he said. “The boss, I believe, isn’t.”

  “You mean your High Commissioner? I have not enough money for him.”

  Grim laughed. “No,” he said, “he comes expensive.”

  “What then?”

  “Don’t be an ass,” said Grim. “You know what.”

  “Information?”

  “Certainly.”

  “What information?”

  “You were sent by the French,” said Grim, “to raise the devil here in Palestine — no matter why. You were trying to bring off a raid on Judaea. Who are your friends in Jerusalem who were ready to spring surprises? What surprises? Who’s your Jerusalem agent?”

  “If I tell you?”

  “I’m not the boss. But I’ll see him about it. Come on — who’s your agent?”

  “Scharnhoff.”

  Grim whistled. That he did not believe, I was almost certain, but he whistled as if totally new trains of thought had suddenly revealed themselves amid a maze of memories.

  “You shall speak to the boss,” he said after a while.

  I fell asleep then, wedged uncomfortably between two men’s legs, wakened at intervals by the noisy pleading of Mahommed ben Hamza and his men for what they called their rights in the matter of Abdul Ali’s wallet. They were still arguing the point when we ran on the beach near Jericho, where a patrol of incredulous Sikhs pounced on us and wanted to arrest Ahmed and Anazeh’s wounded men. Grim had an awful time convincing them that he was a British officer. In the end we only settled it by tramping about four miles to a guard-house, where a captain in uniform gave us breakfast and telephoned for a commisariat lorry.

  It was late in the afternoon when we reached Jerusalem and got the wounded into hospital. By the time Grim had changed into uniform and put courtplaster where his eyebrows should have been, and he, Abdul Ali and I had driven in an official Ford up the Mount of Olives to OETA, the sun was not far over the skyline.

  Grim had telephoned, so the Administrator was waiting for us. Grim went straight in. It was twenty minutes before we two were summoned into his private room, where he sat behind the desk exactly as we had left him the other morning. He looked as if he had not moved meanwhile. Everything was exactly in its place — even the vase, covering the white spot on the varnish. There was the same arrangement of too many flowers, in a vase too small to hold them.

  “Allow me to present Sheikh Abdul Ali of Damascus,” said Grim.

  The Administrator bowed rather elaborately, perhaps to hide the twinkle in his eyes. He didn’t scowl. He didn’t look tyrannical. So Abdul Ali opened on him, with all bow guns.

  “I protest! I am a French subject. I have been submitted to violence, outrage, indignity! I have been seized on foreign soil, and brought here by force against all international law! I shall claim exemplary damages! I demand apology and satisfaction!”

  Sir Louis raised his eyebrows and looked straight at Grim without even cracking a smile.

  “Is this true, Major Grim?”

  “Afraid it is, sir.”

  “Scandalous! Perfectly scandalous! And were you a witness to all this?” he asked, looking at me as if I might well be the cause of it all.

  I admitted having seen the greater part of it.

  “And you didn’t protest? What’s the world coming to? I see you’ve lost a little skin yourself. I hope you’ve not been breaking bounds and fighting?”

  “He is a most impertinent man!” said Abdul Ali, trying to take his cue, and glowering at me. “He posed as a person interested in a school for El-Kerak, and afterward helped capture me by a trick!”

  The Administrator frowned. It seemed I was going to be made the scape-goat. I did not care. I would not have taken a year of Sir Louis’ pay for those two days and nights. When he spoke again I expected something drastic addressed to me, but I was wrong.

  “An official apology is due to you, Sheikh Abdul Ali. Permit me to offer it, together with my profound regret for any slight personal inconvenience to which you may have been subjected in course of this — ah — entirely unauthorized piece of — ah — brigandage. I notice you have been bruised, too. You shall have the best medical attention at our disposal.”

  “That is not enough!” sneered Abdul Ali, throwing quite an attitude.

  “I know it isn’t. I was coming to that. An apology is also due to the French — our friends the French. I shall put it in writing, and ask you to convey it to Beirut to the French High Commissioner, with my compliments. I would send you by train, but you might be — ah — delayed at Damascus in that case. Perhaps Emir Feisal might detain you. There will be a boat going from Jaffa in two days’ time. Two days will give you a chance to recover from the outrageous experience before we escort you to the coast. A first-class passage will be reserved for you by wire, and you will be put on board with every possible courtesy. You might ask the French High Commissioner to let me know if there is anything further he would like us to do about it. Now, I’ll ring for a clerk to take you to the medical officer — under escort, so that you mayn’t be subjected to further outrage or indignity. Good evening!”

  “Anything more for me?” asked Grim, as soon as Abdul Ali had been led away.

  “Not tonight, Grim. Come and see me in the morning.” Grim saluted. The Administrator looked at me — smiled mischievously.

  “Have a good time?” he asked. “Don’t neglect those scratches.

  Good evening!”

  No more. Not another word. He never did say another word to me about it, although I met him afterwards a score of times. You couldn’t help but admire and like him.

  Grim led the way up the tower stairs again, and we took a last look at El-Kerak. The moon was beginning to rise a
bove the rim of the Moab Hills. The land beyond the Dead Sea was wrapped in utter silence. Over to the south-east you could make out one dot of yellow light, to prove that men lived and moved and had their being in that stillness. Otherwise, you couldn’t believe it was real country. It looked like a vision of the home of dreams.

  “Got anything to do tonight?” asked Grim. “Can you stay awake? I know where some Jews are going to play Beethoven in an upper room in the ancient city. Care to come?”

  Chapter Eleven

  “And the rest of the acts of Ahaziah—”

  I have no idea what Grim did during the next few days. I spent the time studying Arabic, and saw nothing of him until he walked into my room at the hotel one afternoon, sat down and came straight to the point.

  “Had enough?”

  “No.”

  “Got the hang of it?”

  “Yes, I think so,” I answered. “Allah’s peace, as they call it, depends on the French. They intend to get Damascus and all Syria. So they sent down Abdul Ali of Damascus to make trouble for the British in Palestine; the idea being to force the British to make common cause with them. That would mean total defeat for the Arabs; and Great Britain would save France scads of men and money. But you pulled that plug. I saw you do it. I heard Abdul Ali of Damascus tell you Scharnhoff’s name. Did you go after Scharnhoff?”

  “No, not yet,” he answered. “You’re no diplomat.”

  I knew that. I have never wished to be one, never having met a professional one who did not, so to speak, play poker with a cold deck and at least five aces. The more frankly they seem to be telling the truth, the more sure you may be they are lying.

  “Neither are you,” I answered. “You’re a sportsman. Are you allowing Scharnhoff weight for age, and a fair start — or what?”

  He chuckled. “You believed old Abdul-Ali of Damascus? He’s a French secret political agent. So whatever he told us is certainly not true. Or, if it is true, or partially true, then it’s the kind of truth that is deadlier deceptive than a good clean God-damned lie. Get this: such men as Abdul Ali would face torture rather than betray an associate — unless they’re sure the associate is a traitor or about to become one. A government can’t easily punish its own spies on foreign territory. But by betraying them, it can sometimes get the other government to do it. That Abdul Ali betrayed Scharnhoff to me, proves one of two things. Abdul Ali was lying, and Scharnhoff harmless — or in some way Scharnhoff has fallen foul of his French paymasters and they want him punished. Very likely he has drawn French money, for their purposes, and has misused it for his own ends. Or perhaps they have promised him money, and wish to back down. Possibly he knows too much about their agents, and they want him silenced. They propose to have us silence him. I’m going to call on Scharnhoff.”

  “You suspect him of double treachery?”

  “I suspect him of being a one-track-minded, damned old visionary.”

  I had met Hugo Scharnhoff. Long before the War he had been a professor of orientology at Vienna University. At the moment he was technically an “enemy alien.” But he had lived so many years in Jerusalem, and was reputed so studious and harmless, that the British let him stay there after Allenby captured the city. A man of moderate private means, he owned a stone house in the German Colony with its back to the Valley of Hinnom.

  “Care to come?” Grim asked me.

  “Yes.”

  “Know your Bible?” He proceeded to quote from it: “And the rest of the acts of Ahaziah which he did are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the Kings of Israel?”’

  “What of it?”

  “That was set down in Aramaic, nowadays called Hebrew, something like three thousand years ago,” said Grim. “It’s Aramaic magic. Let’s take a look at it.”

  We trudged together down the dusty Bethlehem Road, turned to the east just short of the Pool of the Sultan (where they now had a delousing station for British soldiers) and went nearly to the end of the colony of neat stone villas that the Germans built before the War, and called Rephaim. It was a prosperous colony until the Kaiser, putting two and two, made five of them and had to guess again.

  The house we sought stood back from the narrow road, at a corner, surrounded by a low stone wall and a mass of rather dense shrubs that obscured the view from the windows. The front door was a thing of solid olive-wood. We had to hammer on it for several minutes. There was no bell.

  A woman opened it at last — an Arab in native costume, gazelle- eyed, as they all are, and quite good looking, although hardly in her first youth. Her face struck me as haunted. She was either ashamed when her eyes met Grim’s or else afraid of him. But she smiled pleasantly enough and without asking our business led the way at once to a room at the other end of a long hall that was crowded with all sorts of curios. They were mostly stone bric-a- brac-fragments of Moabite pottery and that kind of thing, with a pretty liberal covering of ordinary house dust. In fact, the house had the depressing “feel” of a rarely visited museum.

  The room she showed us into was the library — three walls lined with books, mostly with German titles — a big cupboard in one corner, reaching from floor to ceiling — a big desk by the window — three armchairs and a stool. There were no pictures, and the only thing that smacked of ornament was the Persian rug on the floor.

  We waited five minutes before Scharnhoff came in, looking as if we had disturbed his nap. He was an untidy stout man with green goggles and a grayish beard, probably not yet sixty years of age, and well preserved. He kept his pants up with a belt, and his shirt bulged untidily over the top. When he sat down you could see the ends of thick combinations stuffed into his socks. He gave you the impression of not fitting into western clothes at all and of being out of sympathy with most of what they represent.

  He was cordial enough — after one swift glance around the room.

  “Brought a new acquaintance for you,” said Grim, introducing me. “I’ve told him how all the subalterns come to you for Palestinian lore—”

  “Ach! The young Lotharios! Each man a Don Juan! All they come to me for is tales of Turkish harems, of which I know no more than any one. They are not interested in subjects of real importance. ‘How many wives had Djemal Pasha? How many of them were European?’ That is what they ask me. When I discuss ancient history it is only about King Solomon’s harem that they care to know; or possibly about the modern dancing girls of El- Kerak, who are all spies. But there is no need to inform you as to that. Eh? I haven’t seen you for a long time, Major Grim. What have you been doing?”

  “Nothing much. I was at the Tomb of the Kings yesterday.”

  Scharnhoff smiled scornfully.

  “Now you must have some whiskey to take the taste of that untruth out of your mouth! How can a man of your attainments call that obviously modern fraud by such a name? The place is not nearly two thousand years old! It is probably the tomb of a Syrian queen named Adiabene and her family. Josephus mentions it. This land is full — every square metre of it — of false antiquities with real names, and real antiquities that never have been discovered! But why should a man like you, Major Grim, lend yourself to perpetuating falsity?”

  He walked over to the cupboard to get whiskey, and from where we sat we could both of us see what he was doing. The cupboard was in two parts, top and bottom, without any intervening strip of wood between the doors, which fitted tightly. When he opened the top part the lower door opened with it. He kicked it shut again at once, but I had seen inside — not that it was interesting at the moment.

  He set whiskey and tumblers on the desk, poured liberally, and went on talking.

  “Tomb of the Kings? Hah! Tomb of the Kings of Judah? Hah! If any one can find that, he will have something more important than Ludendorff’s memoirs! Something merkwurdig, believe me!”

  He stiffened suddenly, and looked at Grim through the green goggles as if he were judging an antiquity.

  “Perhaps this is not the time to make you a little s
uggestion, eh?”

  Grim’s face wrinkled into smiles.

  “This man knows enough to hang me anyhow! Fire away!”

  “Ah! But I would not like him to hang me!”

  “He’s as close as a clam. What’s your notion?”

  “Nothing serious, but — between us three, then — you and I are both foreigners in this place, Major Grim, although I have made it my home for fifteen years. You have no more interest in this government and its ridiculous rules than I have. What do you say — shall we find the Tomb of the Kings together?”

  Grim wrinkled into smiles again and glanced down at his uniform.

  “Yes, exactly!” agreed Scharnhoff. “That is the whole point. They call me an enemy alien. I am to all intents and purposes a prisoner. You are a British officer — can do what you like — go where you like. You wear red tabs; you are on the staff; nobody will dare to question you. These English have stopped all exploration until they get their mandate. After that they will take good care that only English societies have the exploration privilege. But what if we — you and I, that is to say — between us extract the best plum from the pudding before those miscalled statesmen sign the mandate — eh? It can be done! It can be done!”

  Grim chuckled:

  “I suppose you already see a picture of you and me with an ancient tomb in our trunks — say a few tons of the more artistic parts — beating it for the frontier and hawking the stuff afterward to second-hand furniture dealers? Pour me another whiskey, prof, and then we’ll go steal the Mosque of Omar!”

  “Ach! You laugh at me — you jest — you mock — you sneer. But I know what I propose. Do you know what will be found in that Tomb of the Kings of Judah when we discover it?”