by Talbot Mundy
“What’s new?” asked Jim.
“Bad news for you. The iblis pretty nearly brained Narayan Singh with a piece of coping-stone, and scooted God knows where. I had to take Narayan Singh back to camp to have his head dressed, and the doctor ordered him to bed. What are you looking happy about?”
“The prospect of breakfast and sleep. Did you see Jinks?”
“Yes, looking as pompously pleased as a ripe tomato. The brute didn’t acknowledge my salute.”
“Never mind. Jinks is his sure-enough name, old man. You’ll be out from under arrest almost before you know it. Too bad about the iblis, but we’ll get him yet. Meanwhile, there’s this critter.
“Now you understand, Charkas, this officer is going to stay here and watch you until the provost-marshal’s men come, and you’ll go with them under arrest. Take my advice and say nothing. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t answer questions.
“Let General Jenkins say what he pleases and do what he pleases. Hold your tongue until you see me again. So long, Catesby.”
He left the shop and strolled up-street toward the camp as leisurely as if the heritage of all Allah were sleeping in his veins. Presently Suliman tagged along after him, grinning with contentment for a five-piaster note.
CHAPTER XII
“Good sunny night to you! Sweet dreams!”
HAVING faced the iblis in the dark and slept at frequent intervals afterward, Suliman considered the lid on gambling lifted and set forth to stake the five piasters against the capital of certain small boys of the lines, in a mysterious card game that did not call for a complete pack, and of which only he knew the rules.
Jim got into uniform, found the provost-marshal and then went straight to Jenkins’ office. The brigadier was radiant and red-faced in the center of flattering juniors, pouting his lips as he made little of the morning’s work.
“Very simple. Obvious to anyone with eyes in his head. I gave Ticknor his instructions, and there you are. Oh, hullo, Grim: Wiped your eyes for you. Didn’t need you after all. I told you we’d find Zionists at the bottom of this. What have you been doing?”
“Very little, I’m afraid. I arrested Ibrahim Charkas, though, this morning. Left him in charge of Captain Catesby until the provost’s men could come and get him.”
Jenkins changed colors, flushing redder than ever, so that his ears and the back of his neck resembled rare roast beef.
“Catesby is under arrest himself,” he snapped.
“His parole was lifted, sir, to give him opportunity to gather evidence in his own case.”
“I know that. It was my doing. I wanted to give him every chance. I signed the order releasing him; but that doesn’t give him authority to arrest people and hold prisoners. I shall have to look into this.”
Jim hoped he would look into it, and held his tongue. Jenkins began to grow more obviously nervous every minute. The flatterers only irritated now, and he turned on them savagely.
“What are we all loafing here for? Is there nothing to do — no orders? You wait here a minute, Major Grim; I want to speak with you.”
The juniors remembered urgent business suddenly, and left in different directions. Jenkins, jerking at his buffalo-horn mustache, turned and faced Jim.
“What did you arrest Charkas for?”
“On his own confession of his part in stealing the TNT.”
“Um-m-m!”
The brigadier paced up and down the narrow room.
“What did he say?”
“That this is a full list of the thieves he has been employing.”
Jenkins seized the sheet of paper.
“Excellent! Excellent! We can seize all these men and they’ll be implicating one another within ten minutes. But you ought to have brought Charkas here to me before the provost interviews him. If this list is correct Charkas ought to be treated as a king’s witness and released after the trail. However, I’ll send this list to the provost with my compliments; it’ll make him wince. Did you get the iblis?”
“No.”
“Pouff!” sneered Jenkins.
Jim deliberately fed the fires of scorn, judging the man nicely.
“I thought I’d get some sleep, sir, and then go after him again.”
“Sleep! Sleep! ‘Pon my soul! Is that an American habit, to sleep while your hunted man runs? All right, go to sleep then! I’ll attend to the rest of this myself. Good sunny night to you! Sweet dreams!”
But Jim did not sleep yet a while. He went first to Narayan Singh in the great hot hospital marquee. The Sikh was fretting in impotent fury at being out of action, lying down because that had been ordered, but tossing like a fritter on a pan.
“I am all right, sahib. My head hurts, but that is nothing. I was stunned for a few minutes by a stone from the paw of that black ape that calls himself an iblis; but it would take ten such stones all striking in the same place to make me give up the hunt. Catesby sahib, who is a precaution-wallah, ordered me in there and I obeyed.
“You let me out again, Jimgrim sahib, and turn me loose with a rifle and bayonet. I will bring back that iblis for you like a beetle on a pin.”
Jim had seen the doctor’s memorandum of the case.
“Do you want to go after him?”
“When was I ever chicken-hearted, Jimgrim sahib, that you ask me that?”
“All right, go to sleep them. When it stands written on your report card that you’ve had five hours’ sleep I’ll fetch you out of here and we’ll see.”
The Sikh promptly shut his eyes and lay down flat on the cot. But Jim had hardly turned his back before he signaled the Jat orderly.
“Oh, brother,” he said, “the doctor sahib will ask if I have slept, in order to write the report of it on a card. You know what the answer will be?”
“Always from me a truthful answer. So and so long you were sleeping — so and so long restless — so and so long talkative — so and so many drinks of water — temperature this and that. I am seeking promotion.”
“Ah! Do they promote cripples, these dakitars?”
“Nay. A man needs strength to lift great carcasses like thine.”
“If that dakitar learns I have not slept for five hours straight on end, you will be an orderly too badly crippled for promotion. This is my word. I have said it — I, Narayan Singh.”
The orderly returned to his stool by the door, grumbling about the trials of a man who seeks to rise in his profession, and Narayan Singh, with his mind at least quite relieved, dropped off into the land of dreams, from which he was awakened at intervals by the sound of Suliman’s voice behind the tent quarreling with two other urchins about the ever changing rules of chance.
At the end of an hour or two, when all the money in sight had found its way into Suliman’s pocket, the three boys sat back against the tent to smoke stale cigar butts and gossip. It was in that way that Narayan Singh picked up some information that he put to good use later on.
* * * * *
Jim meanwhile met Catesby coming into camp ahead of Ibrahim Charkas, who was in charge of the provost’s men.
“There’s one thing for you to do now,” he said. “Get conclusive proof of where you were on the afternoon of the third between four and five o’clock. The buffalo is going to blunder. I can see it coming.”
“That’s easy.”
“Get your proof then, and keep it absolutely to yourself.”
Jim still had one small errand before he could go to sleep himself. He went to General Anthony’s marquee, and found to his delight that Jenkins was there ahead of him. The Zionist-journalist Aaronsohn was in there too, looking horribly uncomfortable in a thin-lipped, calm and collected way. Jenkins was still holding forth.
“The evidence is all in. I’ve asked the provost-marshal to exert himself in rounding up that list of Charkas’ men. Charkas himself will swear that he was paid by the Zionists to steal rifles for them. The rifles were found in the Zionists’ store. What more do you want?”
General Anthon
y uncrossed his legs and recrossed them, tapping on his desk with a pencil. He said nothing — not at all a rare habit of his.
“I’ve one thing more to add,” said Jenkins. “I saw Charkas fifteen minutes ago. He tells me Major Grim has found the original memorandum from the R.T.O to me about the TNT that was stolen — found it in Charkas’ desk. Charkas proposes to turn king’s witness, and he vows he had the memorandum from Captain Catesby, to whom he paid money for it.”
Anthony looked visible distressed. Jim tried hard to do the same.
“Don’t you think we’d better cancel that parole altogether and order Catesby under close arrest?” said Jenkins stiffly.
Butter would not have melted in his mouth. You could tell at a glance how he hated to be mixed up, even in a judicial way, with such abominable misconduct in an officer.
“Yes,” said Anthony. “Yes, yes, I’m afraid so.”
He took pen and paper.
“One moment, sir,” Jim interposed. “May I ask a question?”
“Fire away, Grim.”
“Not you, sir; General Jenkins.”
“Well?”
There was fire in Jinks’ eyes, by way of reminder that he who can break captains can break majors just as easily. But Jim’s first words disarmed suspicion.
“About Charkas. He told me a long-winded story. I didn’t write it down, but from memory I should say it bears out certain points of which you’ve just said.”
Jenkins almost purred aloud. This was the handsome way to make amends. He there and then forgave Jim even that left-handed apology on the railway- station platform.
“Charkas told me among other things how he came to know about the existence of that railway memorandum. If what he said is true it may help cinch the case.
“He says you were down on the afternoon of the third; that he followed you up, because he wanted to ask some sort of favor; that you and he reached your office at about the same time; and that he saw you receive and open the memorandum. He says you laid it down for a minute, but he didn’t have time to more than glance at it. So he formed the idea of getting hold of it somehow in order to learn the exact details. Does that correspond with your recollection of that afternoon?”
“Yes, I think it does. Yes, I did meet the train that day. Yes, I remember Charkas came to the office to bother me about something.”
“About five o’clock, he said.”
“Must have been almost exactly five o’clock.”
Anthony began scribbling on a pad.
“Are you definite on that point, General Jenkins?”
“Certainly. My memory’s exact. Charkas must have gone straight to Catesby and got the memorandum from him, because I gave Catesby his orders — as I explained at the time when the theft was discovered — within twenty minutes of receiving the memorandum.”
Anthony drew out a file of papers from a drawer of his desk, and turned them over slowly.
“I see you say in your original complaint against Catesby — made while I was away in Egypt — that you were not sure of the exact time when you gave him the memorandum and orders to take over the TNT.”
“I remember now, though. Grim’s question brought the facts to mind.”
“You’re ready to swear to it now at the court martial?”
“Certainly.”
“Very well. Have Catesby rearrested. Is there anything else, Grim?”
“The iblis, sir. I interviewed him last night.”
“The deuce you did!”
“I’ve evidence enough against him to call for his arrest on military grounds.”
“All right. I’ll sign a warrant. Do you know where he is?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Are you sure we can convict him?”
“Perfectly.”
Without more ado Anthony began to fill out a regulation form.
“Better describe him as ‘a person unknown — colored — believed to be a leper — accused of plotting to loot the military camp.’ There.”
He handed it to Jim. The printed portion was couched in the customary legal verbiage intended to convey the meaning without too formal crudity, that the prisoner should be caught, brought in and delivered alive or dead.
Jim put it in his pocket and went to his tent to sleep until late afternoon. Brigadier-General Jenkins, on the other hand, after restating his opinion of the Zionists for Aaronsohn’s benefit, marched down to the place where they confined civilian prisoners, to see Charkas alone and drill him on his part. A very cautious, forehanded brigadier was Albert Jenkins, although given to expressing triumph rather sooner than was wise.
He had the ill taste to laugh aloud on his way back, as he passed Catesby in his tent, this time with two armed sentries standing on guard in front of it.
CHAPTER XIII
“The chain’s complete.”
IT was growing dark when Jim emerged from his tent feeling less at ease than he cared to admit to himself. A note had come from Catesby, who was now to all intents and purposes incommunicado, to the effect that from five until six on the evening of the third he had been inquiring, at Jenkins’ verbal request, into an accident that had taken place several days previously. A civilian had had his leg broken by a gun-wheel, and civilian witnesses had been difficult to find; but he had unearthed one, and was questioning him at the time when Jenkins pretended he had given the order about the TNT. Now he could not find the man again to prove the fact.
Jim had the note in his hand. As Catesby’s next friend he had the right to visit him in any circumstances, just as a lawyer may go to his client in jail.
Things looked pretty bad at the moment. Bull-buffalo Jenkins was caught in a net of lies, certainly; but like many another buffalo before him he was going to be able to blunder out of it by brute force unless the unexpected happened. But it always does.
There seems to be a natural law that when chicanery has reached a certain stage of ripeness, and the elements of decency begin to rebel, all the clues required to link the crimes with the criminal appear on the surface one by one, almost exactly as when two chemicals are mixed and one of them disintegrates. Examination of the career of any criminal or of any public scandal will confirm the phenomenon.
It is easy to talk airily of luck and coincidence. Luck is an element of crime and loose thinking. The fact is that honest persistency sets natural laws to working, with the result, for instance, that an inventor on the trail of one idea discovers an entirely different one that he never dreamed of; a general, wholly bent on a definite, ably worked-out line of strategy discovers an unexpected flaw in the enemy’s design that he would have missed if his own arrangements had been careless. There is no luck about it. It is law.
So, although Jim was surprised and rather annoyed at the moment, he stumbled that minute on a clue. Aaronsohn, the vitriolic journalist in gold- rimmed glasses, was sitting outside the tent on a camp-stool, a hand on either knee in an attitude of suppressed impatience. He got to his feet the instant Jim appeared.
“You are Major Grim, I think. I would like to talk to you.”
“I’m in a hurry,” Jim warned him.
“I am not. Why not do your errand and I will wait here for you? I have waited already two hours. You were asleep and I did not care to disturb you.”
“Something important, eh?”
“To me, yes. To you, perhaps not.”
“All right. Wait in my tent. Help yourself to cigarettes, and I’ll be right back.”
Instead of going to Catesby as he had intended, Jim went straight to the hospital tent, where he found Narayan Singh sitting at the end of the cot in glowering impatience.
“Have you slept?” he asked him.
“Ask the orderly, sahib.”
Jim beckoned the orderly and put the question.
“Hah! Never was such a sleeper! He has snored so for five hours on end that the very tent-poles shook, and I had to wake him twice lest the other patients get out of bed to murder him.”
Jim laughed and went to find the doctor.
“Is Narayan Singh fit to be discharged?” he asked.
“No, but I’ll discharge him like a shot. Most Sikhs enjoy a short spell in hospital, but that man has more excuses for discharging him than a porcupine has bristles. He’s an interesting specimen, and not badly hurt; three days would see him as right as a trivet. I’ve talked with him on and off for about three hours just for the fun of it.”
“Hasn’t he slept at all?”
“Not much. But you know what Sikhs are; they can go without sleep for a tremendous time, and make it up afterwards. The last excuse he tried on me was a story that his father died of hydrophobia because he couldn’t stand hospital environment at night, and he suggested the disease might be hereditary.
“Sure, I’ll let him out — a liar like that deserves anything. Tell him to come back and have his head dressed again after he has seen the lady.”
Outside between the tents Jim gave Narayan Singh his warrant to arrest the iblis.
“Have you any idea where to look for him?” he asked.
“Surely, sahib. That Suliman played a game with other young sprouts of wickedness outside the place where I lay. Afterwards they talked until Suliman grew sleepy and went off with all their money.
“They told the gossip of the lines: how certain men had seen the iblis cross the railway line this morning, but were afraid to interfere with him. He was heading due east. I think, sahib, he will dance again tonight to summon thieves and learn from them how much has happened. If he does — !”
“You’d better take some men with you.”
“Aye, sahib — four men if I may choose them.”
“Will you go in disguise?”
“Not I! We will take rifles with bayonets, wear our uniforms and bring back that iblis in the name of a Sikh, whose head is no proper target for roof-stones. There is honor involved.”
“All right.”
Jim made arrangements for Narayan Singh to have the selection of four volunteers, and got written permits for them all to leave camp after dark. Then he returned to Aaronsohn.