by Talbot Mundy
He walked down the echoing corridor chuckling to himself, and almost ran into Colonel Goodenough, a commander of Sikhs who cherished a good soldier as he did a horse.
“Morning, Grim. Got a K.C. B. or something? What’s the good news? Share it!”
“I’m off to Ludd.”
“Good Ludd deliver us! Fleas — sand — centipedes — raw recruits — sick horses — thieves — and the man’s happy! Are there any more at home like you?”
“I need one of your men to go with me, sir.”
“So that’s the joke, is it? Well, it’s on you. You can’t have him. I’m short of men. There seem to be only two classes of people in universal demand in Jerusalem — Sikhs and jailbirds; jailbirds for the dirty work, and Sikhs to push perambulators. Every man in my regiment has two men’s work to do. I won’t spare one of them.”
“Lend me Narayan Singh, sir.”
“Why — it, he’s my best man!”
“Sure. That’s why I want him.”
“He’s priceless. If you want my private opinion he could run the regiment better than I can. Why, I use that man to teach my officers their business.”
“Reward him then,” Jim answered. “Give him a job after his own heart. Send him with me.”
“For how long?”
“Indefinite. I’m to smell out the thieves at Ludd.”
“Well — it’s true — that would be a picnic for Narayan Singh. He deserves a treat. But if you get him killed or seriously injured I’ll murder you. Why, I spent all one night in No Man’s Land at Gaza hunting for that man rather than lose him; I wouldn’t have done as much for my grandmother.”
“That how you got the V.C.?”
“ — it, yes. And Narayan Singh got nothing, although I recommended him until I was sick of writing letters. He’d done ten time what I did. If you borrow him I want him back all in one piece marker ‘perishable.’
“Watch that he doesn’t get malaria down at Ludd. Don’t overwork him. See that he gets regular meals. I tell you, that man’s precious!”
“How soon can I have him?”
“I’m on my way to the lines now. Come in my car and get him.”
* * * * *
They went down the Mount of Olives at Goodenough’s usual speed, which was not based on such considerations as the view, or the nerves either, of Jerusalem, and brought up presently in a cloud of dust in front of a marquee behind a barbed-wire fence on the outskirts of the city. Two minutes later Narayan Singh, lean, enormous, bearded, looked straight into his colonel’s eyes across the table.
“You’re to go with this officer, Narayan Singh.”
“Atcha, sahib.”
“You’re to bring him back from Ludd alive.”
“Atcha, sahib.”
“Otherwise do whatever he tells you to.”
“Atcha, colonel sahib.”
“March with your kit to the station and meet Major Grim there in time for the morning train. Dismiss.”
The Sikh saluted and fell away, but his brown eyes met Jim’s with a flare of gratitude. It was almost ferocious, like the expression of a hound unchained for sport. Jim nodded to him, but neither said a word.
Jim borrowed the colonel’s car and drove to the junior staff officer’s mess, where he went upstairs in a hurry. Finding nobody in his own room, he went on up to the attic and stooped over an enormous packing-case. Groping in it, he pulled out a black foot, followed by a small boy, whose wooly hair suggested the Sudan and a mother sold into Arab slavery. His features were certainly Arabic.
“You lucky, lucky little devil! Twelve hours’ sleep out of twenty- four — just think of it! Wake up now and pack you kit; roll it into your blanket and come with me to the station.”
“What is it, Jimgrim? Are we transferred?”
“You’ve got to learn to ask no questions when you get your marching- orders.”
“All right, Jimgrim.”
“Narayan Singh will inspect that kit when you get to the station. Better be careful.”
He left the boy sleepily arranging on a blanket all the odds and ends that had appealed to his eight-year-old imagination since Jim discovered him starving one winter night in the drafty archway of the Jaffa Gate. They were pretty much the same things that a small boy born in America would choose — a tin can, a broken knife, a mouth-organ, a picture out of a magazine, an incomplete pack of playing cards, some half-smoked cigarettes and a broken mousetrap — all frightfully important.
Jim packed into his own kit three complete changes of native costume, and was ready first.
Narayan Singh was the only one of Jim’s friends who did not object to Suliman; the only one who took it for granted that the profit of fostering a small boy might outweigh the trouble, and who was thoroughly willing to share the trouble and forego all profit.
The Sikh took charge of Suliman at the station, made him unroll his kit on the platform, rebuked him because the broken knife-blade was not clean, solemnly suggested proper ways of polishing the outside of a tine box, and invent on the spot the only moral and properly complicated way of packing such possessions in a blanket.
In the flat-wheeled train that bumped and pounded through the gorge leading down from Jerusalem Narayan Singh came forward from the third-class end of the train to find Jim.
“The butcha will make a man, sahib,” he announced.
“Why, what’s his latest?”
“I asked him what he supposes our sahib intends to do with him at Ludd.
“‘Though I could hide in your beard, Narayan Singh,’ he said, ‘and you have killed your man a dozen times, yet I shall be a soldier before you are. For though you do not know enough not know enough not to ask questions when you have had marching orders, nevertheless I know enough not to answer you.’ How is that, sahib, from a butcha hardly higher than my knee?”
“He learns. But see he doesn’t smoke too much, and when he swears beat him.”
Brigadier-General Jenkins was on the station-platform at Ludd, cutting quite a figure, what with his upstanding bulk and the number of obedient subalterns grouped all about him. The set stage was obvious at once. The administrator’s motor had evidently come faster than the train. Jenkins had been ordered to accept an apology, and for lack of any better means of showing spite had arranged to make it as public as possible.
Jim, with Narayan Singh at his heels carrying all the baggage, walked straight up to him and saluted.
“Well, Major Grim?”
“I apologize.”
Jenkins turned a little to one side in order better to include the crowd.
“What for?”
“For presuming to speak to you as a man and my equal the other day instead of as a person of higher rank. I withdraw all I said, including the imputation. Do you accept?”
Jenkins nodded. Having his orders from higher up, it was all he could do. The subalterns smirked as he turned on his heel, and two or three of them winked at Jim. Narayan Singh was the only one who spoke, growling into Jim’s ear as he once more gathered up the baggage:
“Lead on, Jimgrim, sahib. I have seen the day when stronger boars than that one bit the dust!”
CHAPTER II
“That was only an American devil. This is a Palestine one. They are much worse.”
THERE is one good thing, at any rate, about being commissioned under army regulations. It is true that you have to concede gentility to seniors sometimes ignorant of the crudest meaning of the word; but on the other hand you yourself remain a presumptive gentleman until the contrary is proven. You are liable to arrest at the whim of arrogance; but you don’t have to find bail, or sit in a cell until your case comes up for hearing.
So Jim found Catesby taking it easy in a deckchair in his tent — a pretty good tent, nicely hung with souvenirs of the East from Cairo to Bokhara, with soda-water siphons in a basket full of wet grass slung from the ridge-pole in the sun to keep them cool, and plenty to read.
“Hullo, Uncle Sam. What are yo
u doing here? Come in. Make yourself at home. I heard you were under arrest in Jeroosh.”
“No. I apologized.”
“Lucky devil. Wish an apology might fumigate my official rep. Afraid I’m damned. How on earth did you manage it? Jinks had been bragging all over the shop that he’d as good as broke you. Mother of me! D’you mean to say you’re at liberty and camping on Jinks’ trail? Oh — what was that word of Roosevelt’s — oh, bully! Jimgrim, if you get Jenkins’ number I’ll pledge myself to black your boots from now to doomsday.”
“My orders are to whitewash him.”
“Oh, damn! That means good-by me. Home for me on a troopship to what used to be Merrie England — broke.”
“Incidentally I’ve orders to clear you.”
“Can’t be done, old man; not if the impeccable Jinks is to save his face. They tell me sub rosa that he’s cooking up half a dozen extra charges to make sure of breaking me.”
“Business is business,” Jim chuckled. “All this firm asks is orders. Goods delivered while you wait.”
“But listen; we haven’t an earthly. Two tons of TNT came in a truck consigned by mistake to this brigade. The R.T.O. (railway man) shot it into a sliding and notified Jinks, who probably lost the advice or lit his pipe with it.
“Three days later the Air Force, who were expecting the stuff, began to make inquires — twisted the tail of the R.T.O. to help his memory — went to the siding — found the truck — seals broken — no TNT. Went to Jinks promptly. Jinks blustered as usual — denied all knowledge of the consignment — was shown a copy of the R.T.O’s memorandum — remembered a few stale grudges against me, and swore he had give me orders to go and take charge of the stuff the moment it came. I was sent for, and it was the first I’d heard of it.
“In less than two minutes he had me under arrest to await court martial for culpable negligence and disobedience to orders. I shall plead not guilty, of course. He’ll swear he gave me orders. I’ll deny it. His word against mine. Maalesh — feenish! — as the Arabs say.”
“What other charges can he bring against you?”
“Anything he pleases. What’s the odds? There’s so much thieving going on in this camp — no thieves caught or stuff recovered — that any sort of charge against anyone gets believed. How can you possibly checkmate a brigadier like Jenkins in the circumstances?”
“Did you ever kill a dog?” asked Jim.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Bullet. Poison. Why?”
“They say there are more ways of killing them than by choking them to death with butter; but suppose we try butter just this once.”
“Jinks’ll eat all the butter there is and yell for more.”
“Let’s try him. Tell me what you know, or guess, or think, about that TNT. You know I’ve discovered the stuff in Jerusalem? There was a Moslem plot to blow up the Dome of the Rock and blame it on the Zionists. Who’s the worst fanatic in these parts?”
“All the Hebron men are fanatics; you know that. They’re the principal thieves. They hide all over the place, and grease themselves at night, and slip past the sentries. Once in a while one gets skewered with a bayonet or shot, but the look outweighs the risk, and for one that gets napooed twenty get away with it.”
“Kettle told me it looked like organized conspiracy.”
“I don’t believe it. It’s just half-brother Ishmael with his hand against every man and every man’s hand against him.”
“You haven’t heard of any sheik or priest or trader hereabouts who’s getting rich and uppish?”
“No. It’s simply a case of flies around a jam-pot.”
“See you later,” said Jim, grinning to hide from Catesby his own appreciation of the fact that the brigadier held all the trump cards.
He continued to wear the grin by way of self-encouragement.
* * * * *
Every circumstance, condition, situation and characteristic has its advantage, only so few know how to look for them. Still, a more than normally alert man can stumble on advantage now and then; and if he has trained himself he can sometimes make the most of what turns up. Individuals seem to have special values in the eternal scheme. The especial merit of Suliman was that, being a small boy, he hero-worshiped and at the same time believed implicitly in bogies.
The merit of a Sikh is different. He, too, worships heroes, but from another point of view; and the more he happens to believe in the unseen, the more suspicious he is of the unexplainable that can be seen and touched and heard. But this both Sikhs and small boys have in common, that they love the lines and the gossip of the lines.
Narayan Singh, given no orders to the contrary, could not more have kept away from the tents where other Sikhs were idling the time away that Suliman could have done, orders to the contrary of not.
Jim went to the row of tents reserved for visiting officers, discovered his bed already made and kit unpacked, but nothing of Narayan Singh or Suliman. There was a Sikh mounting guard at either end of the short line, but they knew no more than that Narayan Singh had come and gone again, taking the butcha with him. So he set off to explore the camp on his own accord.
Ludd, which was Lystra when they wrote the Bible, is one of those places that fills the military mind with wonder at civilian complacency, and stirs civilians to murmur at the thoughtlessness of army men. The town itself is practically undefendable. Yet there has always been a town there, in a land where raid and robbery are the normal thing; and wherever Jew, Egyptian, Philistine, Syrian, Babylonian, Roman, Mongol, crusader and Turk in turn have razed the place, its inhabitants have always built it up again very much as ants rebuild a ruined hill.
It sits on a sandy plain at the foot of the Judean Hills, from which plunderers can swoop down on it at their discretion. There is practically no water except in the rainy season, when there is a lot too much. There are snakes, mosquitoes, centipedes, bed-bugs, fleas and flies. And the largest army in the Near East was camped there, drawing its drinking-water all the way from Egypt through an iron pipe made in the U.S.A.
The secret of that is that, although the surrounding hills are perfectly contrived by nature to be robbers’ fastnesses, and the plains below were manifestly meant for robbers’ meat, you can’t supply and maneuver an army readily among the hills, whereas Ludd is not only a railway junction but is an excellent pushing-off place in every direction, with ample room for store- sheds, airplanes, cavalry lines and what not. So the army, depending on mobility for its security, tolerated the climate and conditions, while the thieves descended from places in the hills, like Hebron, and grew fat.
Jim strolled about the camp enjoying himself more or less, as any man must who loves with devouring interest whatever lives. In an armed camp the very gun-mules learn a new intelligence; and the dogs, without which in dozens no British army — or American for that matter — could maintain its social self- respect, come nearer to being impudently human than in any other circumstances.
There is tidiness, even among barbed-wire and prickly-pear entanglements, and a sense of getting the very utmost out of life (which is true humor as well as sound economy) that may become monotonous to those in camp, but thrill the new arrivals. And there are all the minor innovations made by individual commanding officers for making something out of nothing for the men’s sake, to be admired, or criticized, if you are half-observant. Nothing much escaped Jim’s eye or missed its lodgment in his memory. But there was nothing that looked like a cord for hanging Jenkins.
At the end of an hour of all-observant sauntering he returned to the station to interview the R.T.O., a red-necked, overworked, opinionative despot (like the rest of them; it seems you can’t run a military railway and be tolerant of other people’s feelings). Someone in the early days of war had dug this man out from a freight-junction in a London suburb, put him in uniform, and he had done the rest. He did not mind who knew it.
“Ho! So you’re another that wants to know about that TNT? I told all
I knew the minute they asked me. Facts at my fingers’ ends. Made my report in writing. Nothing more to say!”
But there are ways of getting under the thick skin even of an R.T.O.
“How much truth is there in the story that you get commissions from the thieves who loot the railway?”
“What, me? Who says that? Hell’s bells! This gang’ud accuse their wet- nurse of selling milk! Anything missing? Blame the R.T.O.! Horse breaks away — sepoy get a dose of colic — general lose his shaving-brush? Require explanations in triplicate from the R.T.O.! Train two minutes late? Arrest the R.T.O. for mutiny! That’s the life I lead.
“Listen. That TNT arrived in a truck. None o’ my business. I ain’t the hen that laid the stuff. I wrote out an advice on the proper form and sent it up to Jenkins, ordered the truck into number nineteen siding, and says to myself, ‘There, that’s the end of that — damn it!’ and as far as I’m concerned that is the end of it. I’m busy. But if there’s a man in Palestine from general downwards who wants to swap me two piasters against all the commissions I get from thieves or anyone, walk him up to my office and we’ll make the trade. Good morning!”
There was nothing to be unearthed there. The man was obviously as honest as self-satisfied. Jim strolled back to the camp and through the mule- transport lines, where he found Narayan Singh squatting on the sand in deep converse with a dozen grooms. Six or seven tents away Suliman was smoking a cigarette and gambling with three Arab urchins of about his own age.
He caught Narayan Singh’s eye and nodded, passing on without disturbing the group to pounce on Suliman, turn him upside down and shake him until the unearthed increment of small coins fell into the sand to be fought for by the other three.
“But not all that money was won from them!” Suliman objected.
“Good. Teach you not to gamble.”
* * * * *
Suliman had to run to keep up and lost breath in the process for the sand made heavy going. But he talked all the way, remonstrating at first about the loss of all that wit-won money, and, when remonstrance failed to produce the least effect, forgetting it in an intermittent flow of gossip. That being exactly what Jim wanted, there began to be abrupt replies that brought forth more.