by Talbot Mundy
“Bones. Dry bones. A few gold ornaments perhaps. A stale smell certainly.”
“The Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel! Think of it! A parchment roll — perhaps two or three rolls — not too big to go into a valise — worth more than all the other ancient manuscripts in the world all put together! Himmel! What a find that would be! What a record! What a refutation of all the historians and the fools who set themselves up for authorities nowadays! What a price it would bring! What would your Metropolitan Museum in New York not pay for it! What would the Jews not pay for it! They would raise millions among them and pay any price we cared to ask! The Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel — only think!”
“But why the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel in the tomb of the Kings of Judah?” Grim asked, more by way of keeping up the conversation, I think, than because he could not guess the answer. He is an omnivorous reader, and there is not much recorded of the Near East that he does not know.
“Don’t you know your history? You know, of course, that after King Solomon died the Jews divided into two kingdoms. The latter-day Jews speak of themselves as Israelites, but they are nothing of the kind; they are Judah-ites. The tribe of Judah remained in Jerusalem, forming one small kingdom; their descendants are the Jews of today. Part of the tribe of Benjamin stayed with them. The other seceding ten tribes called themselves the kingdom of Israel.”
“Everybody knows that,” said Grim. “What of it?”
“Well, the Assyrians came down and conquered the kingdom of Israel — marched all the Israelites away into captivity — and they vanished out of history. From that day to this their Book of Chronicles, so often referred to in the Old Testament, has never been seen nor heard of.”
“Of course not,” said Grim. “The King of Assyria used it to wipe his razor on when he was through shaving every morning.”
“Ach! You joke again; but I tell you I am not joking. Such people as those Hebrews are naturally secretive and so proud that they wrote down for posterity all the doings of their puny kings, would never have let their records fall into the hands of the Assyrians. They themselves were marched away in slave-gangs, but they left their Book behind them, safely hidden. Be sure of it! Ten years ago I found a manuscript in the place they now call Nablus, which in those days was Schechem. Schechem was the capital of the Kingdom of Israel, just as Jerusalem was the capital of the Kingdom of Judah, or the Jews. I sold that manuscript for a good price after I had photographed it. The idiots to whom I sold it — historians they call themselves! — value it only as a relic of antiquity. I made a digest of it — analyzed it — studied it — compared it with other authentic facts in my possession — and came to the definite conclusion that I hold the clue to the whereabouts of that lost Book of Chronicles.”
“Let’s see the photograph,” Grim suggested.
“It has been impounded with other so-called ‘enemy property’ by your friends the British. I suppose they thought the German General Staff might get hold of it and conquer the Suez Canal! But what good would the sight of it do? You couldn’t understand a word of it. It convinced me, after months of study, that when the Ten Tribes were carried away into captivity by the Assyrians they sent their records secretly to Jerusalem. Ever since the secession the Israelites and Jews had been jealous enemies. But they were relatives after all, boasting a common ancestor, proud of the same history, more or less observing the same religion. And Schechem was only about thirty miles from Jerusalem, which was considered an impregnable fortress until the Babylonians took it later on. So they sent their records to Jerusalem, and the Jews hid them. Where? Where do you suppose?”
“The likeliest place would be Solomon’s Temple.”
“You think so? Then you think superficially, my young friend. Let us return to that Tomb of the Kings again for a moment. That place that you visited is such an obvious fake that even the guide-books make light of it. The one all-important thing in Palestine that never yet has been discovered is the real Tomb of the Kings. Yet Jerusalem, where it certainly must be, has been searched and looted a hundred times from end to end. Therefore — you follow me? — the Jews must have concealed it very cunningly. Answer me, then: would the Jews, who were always a practical people and not corpse-worshippers like the Egyptians, have taken all that trouble to hide the tomb of their kings unless there were important treasure in it? Answer me!”
“So you expect to find treasure in addition to the lost Book of
Chronicles?”
“Certainly I do! The treasure will make the whole proceeding safe. Let the British have it! The fools will be so blinded by the glamour of gold, that I shall easily extract the things of real value — the invaluable manuscripts! Then let the men who call themselves historians take a back seat!”
He rubbed his hands together in anticipation.
“Were you looking for the Tomb of the Kings, then, before the
War?” Grim asked him.
“Not exactly. Under the Turks it was difficult. The Turks were beautifully corrupt. By paying for it I could get permission to excavate on any property owned by Christians. But the minute I touched Moslem places the Turks became fanatical. The Arabs, now, are different — fanatics, too, but with a new sort of fanaticism — new to them, I mean — the kind that made the French revolutionists destroy everything their ancestors had set value on. There are plenty of Arabs so full of this disease of Bolshevism that they would make it easy for me to desecrate what others believe is holy ground. But these idiots of English are worse than the Turks! They have stopped all excavation. They are so afraid of Bolshevism that, if they could, they would imitate Joshua and make the sun stand still!”
“Well, what’s the idea?” asked Grim, finishing his whiskey.
Scharnhoff shrugged his shoulders.
“You know my position. I am helpless — here on suffrance — obliged by idiotic regulations to sit in idleness. But if I could find a British officer with brains — surely there must be one somewhere! — one with some authority, who is considered above suspicion, I could show him, perhaps, how to get rich without committing any crime he need feel ashamed of.”
I could not see Grim’s eyes from where I sat, and he did not make any nervous movement that could have given him away. Yet I was conscious of a new alertness, and I think Scharnhoff detected it, too, for he changed his tactics on the instant.
“Hah! Hah! I was joking! Nobody who is fool enough to be a professional soldier would be clever enough to find the Tomb of the Kings and keep the secret for ten minutes! Hah! Hah! But I have a favour I would like to beg of you, Major Grim.”
“I’ve no particular authority, you know.”
“Ach! The Administrator listens to you; I am assured of that.”
“He listens sometimes, yes, then usually does the other thing.
Well, what’s the request?”
“A simple one. There is a risk — not much, but just a little risk that some fool might stumble on that secret of the Tomb of the Kings and get away with the treasure. Now, did you ever set a thief to catch a thief? Hah! Hah! I would be a better watch-dog than any you could find. I know Jerusalem from end to end. I know all the likely places. Why don’t you get permission for me to wander about Jerusalem undisturbed and keep my eye open for tomb-robbers? If I am not to have the privilege of discovering that Book of Chronicles, at least I would like to see that no common plunderer gets it. Surely I am known by now to be harmless! Surely they don’t suspect me any longer of being an agent of the Kaiser, or any such nonsense as that! Why not make use of me? Get me a permit, please, Major Grim, to go where I please by day or night without interference. Tomb-robbers usually work at night, you know.”
“All right,” said Grim. “I’ll try to do that.”
“Ah! I always knew you were a man of good sense! Have more whiskey? A cigar then?”
“Can’t promise anything, of course,” said Grim, “but you shall have an answer within twenty-four hours.”
Outside, as we turned our faces toward Jerusalem’s gray wall, Grim opened up a little and gave me a suggestion of something in the wind.
“Did you see what he has in that cupboard?”
“Yes. Two Arab costumes. Two short crow-bars.”
“Did you notice the grayish dust on the rug — three or four footprints at the corner near the cupboard?”
“Can’t say I did.”
“No. You wouldn’t be looking for it. These men who pose as intellectuals never believe that any one else has brains. They fool themselves. There’s one thing no man can afford to do, East of the sun or West of the moon. You can steal, slay, intrigue, burn — break all the Ten Commandments except one, and have a chance to get away with it. There’s just one thing you can’t do, and succeed. He’s done it!”
“And the thing is?”
“Cheat a woman!”
“You mean his house keeper? She who answered the door?”
Grim nodded.
Chapter Twelve
“You know you’ll get scuppered if you’re found out!”
Two days passed again without my seeing Grim, although I called on him repeatedly at the “Junior Staff Officers’ Mess” below the Zionist Hospital. Suliman, the eight-year-old imp of Arab mischief, who did duty as page-boy met me on each occasion at the door and took grinning delight in disappointing me.
He was about three and a half feet high — coal-black, with a tarboosh worn at an angle on his kinky hair and a flashing white grin across his snub-nosed face that would have made an archangel count the change out of two piastres twice. Suliman and cool cheek were as obvious team-mates as the Gemini, and I was one of a good number, that included every single member of that unofficial mess, who could never quite see what Grim found so admirable in him. Grim never explained.
Taking the cue from his master, neither did Suliman ever explain anything to any one but Grim, who seemed to understand him perfectly.
“Jimgrim not here. No, not coming back. Much business.
Good-bye!”
Somehow you couldn’t suspect that kid of telling the truth. However, there was nothing for it but to go away, with a conviction in the small of your back that he was grinning mischievously after you.
Grim had found him one day starving and lousy in the archway of the Jaffa Gate, warming his fingers at a guttering candle-end preparatory to making a meal off the wax. He took him home and made Martha, the old Russian maid-of-all-work, clean him with kerosene and soft soap — gave him a big packing-case to sleep in along with Julius Caesar the near-bull-dog mascot — and thereafter broke him in and taught him things seldom included in a school curriculum.
In the result, Suliman adored Grim with all the concentrated zeal of hero-worship of which almost any small boy is capable; but under the shadow of Grim’s protection he feared not even “brass- hats” nor regarded civilians, although he was dreadfully afraid of devils. The devil-fear was a relic of his negroid ancestry. Some Arab Sheikh probably captured his great-grandmother on a slave-raid. Superstition lingers in dark veins longer than any other human failing.
I think I called five times before he confessed at last reluctantly that Grim was in. That was in the morning after breakfast, and I was shown into the room with the fireplace and the deep armchairs. Grim was reading but seemed to me more than usually reserved, as if the book had been no more than a screen to think behind, that left him in a manner unprotected when he laid it down. I talked at random, and he hardly seemed to be listening.
“Say,” he said, suddenly interrupting me, “you came out of that El-Kerak affair pretty creditably. Suppose I let you see something else from the inside. Will you promise not to shout it all over Jerusalem?”
“Use your own judgment,” I answered.
“You mustn’t ask questions.”
“All right.”
“If any one in the Administration pounces on you in the course of it, you’ll have to drop out and know nothing.”
“Agreed.”
“It may prove a bit more risky than the El-Kerak business.”
“Couldn’t be,” I answered.
“You can’t talk enough Arabic to get away with. But could you act deaf and dumb?”
“Sure — in three languages.”
“You understand — I’ve no authority to let you in on this. I might catch hell if I were found out doing it. But I need help, of a certain sort. I want a man who isn’t likely to be spotted by the gang I’m after. Get behind that screen — quick!”
It was a screen that hid a door leading to the pantry and the servants’ quarters. There was a Windsor chair behind it, and it is much easier to keep absolutely still when you are fairly comfortable. I had hardly sat down when a man wearing spurs, who trod heavily, entered the room and I heard Grim get up to greet him.
“Are we alone?” a voice asked gruffly.
Instead of answering Grim came and looked behind the screen, opened the door leading to the pantry, closed it again, locked it, and without as much as a glance at me returned to face his visitor.
“Well, general, what is it?”
“This is strictly secret.”
“I’ll bet it isn’t,” said Grim. “If it’s about missing explosives I know more than you do.”
“My God! It’s out? Two tons of TNT intended for the air force gone without a trace? The story’s out?”
“I know it. Catesby sent me word by messenger last night from
Ludd, after you put him under arrest.”
“Damn the man! Well, that’s what’s happened. Catesby’s fault. They’ll blame me. The truck containing the stuff was run into a siding three days ago. Through young Catesby’s negligence it was left there without a guard. Catesby will be broke for that as sure as my name is Jenkins. But, by the knell of hell’s bells, Grim, more than Catesby will lose their jobs unless we find the stuff! Two tons. Half enough to blow up Palestine!”
“Too bad about Catesby,” said Grim.
“Never mind, Catesby. Damn him! Consider my predicament! How can I go to the Administrator with a lame-duck story about missing TNT and nothing done about it?”
“Nothing done? You’ve passed the buck, haven’t you? Catesby is under arrest, you say.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know Catesby,” Grim retorted quietly. “He made that fine stand at Beersheba — when the Arabs rushed the camp, and you weren’t looking. He took the blame for your carelessness, and never squealed. You took the credit for his presence of mind, and have treated him like a dog ever since. You expect me to try to save your bacon and forget Catesby’s?”
“Nonsense, Grim! You’re talking without your book. Here’s what happened: the stuff arrived at Ludd in a truck attached to the end of a mixed train. The R.T.O.* sent me a memorandum and stalled the truck on a siding. I gave the memorandum to Catesby.” [*Railway Traffic Officer.]
“He tells me in the note I received last night that you did nothing of the kind.”
“Then he’s a liar. He forgot all about it and did nothing. When the Air Force sent to get the stuff the truck was empty.”
“And you want me to find it, I suppose?”
“Yes. The quicker the better!”
“And be a party to breaking Catesby? I like my job, but not that much!”
“You refuse then to hunt for the TNT?”
“I take my orders straight from the Administrator. He expects me in half an hour. You want me to smooth the way for you with Sir Louis. I’m much more interested in Catesby, who would face a firing party sooner than soak another fellow for his own fault. Catesby assures me in writing that the first he ever heard of that TNT was when you ordered him arrested after discovery of the loss. His word goes, as far as I’m concerned. If you want me to help you, find another goat than Catesby. That’s my answer.”
There followed quite a long pause. Perhaps Brigadier-General Jenkins was wondering what chance he would stand in a show-down. Whoever had heard the mess and canteen go
ssip knew that Jenkins’ career had been one long string of miracles by which he had attained promotion without in any way deserving it, and a parallel series of even greater ones by which he had saved himself from ruin by contriving to blame some one else.
“You want me to white-wash Catesby?” he said at last. “If you pounce quickly on the TNT, no one need know it was lost.”
“If you court-martial Catesby, the public shall know who lost it, and who didn’t, even if it costs me my commission!”
“Blast you! Insubordination!”
“Is your car outside?” Grim answered. “Why don’t you drive me up to the Administrator and charge me with it?”
“Don’t be an idiot! I came to you to avoid a scandal. If this news gets out there’ll be a panic. Things are touchy enough as it is.”
“Yes.”
“Well — if I drop the charge against Catesby — ?”
“Then I shall not have to fight for him.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Be definite!”
“Damn and blast you! All right, I’ll clear Catesby.”
In that ominous minute, like the devil in an old-time drama,
Suliman knocked at the door leading from the outer hall. Grim
opened it, and I heard the boy’s voice piping up in Arabic. The
Administrator was in his car outside, waiting to know whether
Major Grim was indoors.
“Where’s your car?” I heard Grim ask.
“I sent the man to get a tire changed,” Jenkins answered.
“Then Sir Louis needn’t know you’re here. Do you want to see him?”
“Of course not.”
“You can get behind that screen if you like.”
I thought Jenkins would explode when he found me sitting there. He was a big, florid-faced man with a black moustache waxed into points, and a neck the color of rare roast beef — a man not given to self-restraint in any shape or form. But he had to make a quick decision. Sir Louis’ footsteps were approaching. He glared at me, made a sign to me to sit still, twisted his moustache savagely, and listened, breathing through his mouth to avoid the tell-tale whistle of his hairy nostrils. I heard Grim start toward the hall, but Sir Louis turned him back and came straight in.