by Talbot Mundy
The idea crossed his mind all right. He hesitated. Fortunately Narayan Singh and I were seated just a foot or so behind him, one on either side, in a line at right angles to the Avenger’s seat and facing the suspicious staff. The Avenger himself wasn’t looking, and none else could have seen the pistol that I thrust into Ibrahim’s ribs under cover of my cloak, nor the revolver that touched a corresponding ticklish spot on the Sikh’s side. It may be possible to mistake the feel of a pistol muzzle on a dark night, but he didn’t. He went straight ahead with the plan as Grim had outlined it, omitting nothing and introducing no personal vendettas.
“They belong to Jimgrim’s force,” he said in a hurry. “Jimgrim sent them as his representatives.”
“Jimgrim?” exclaimed the Avenger, startled. “Where is the man? I had news of him from the southward; it was definite.”
“He is this side of those fires,” Ibrahim answered.
The Avenger glanced at me incredulously, but I confirmed the statement. If our plan was going forward, it was true.
“Why doesn’t Jimgrim come and see me, instead of keeping company with such a dog as Ali Higg?” the Avenger asked suddenly. “I have nothing against Jimgrim. Why does he consort with my enemy?”
“He doesn’t,” I answered.
“Where is the Lion of Petra then? — as the upstart calls himself.”
“Possibly Jimgrim knows, but we don’t,” I answered.
“Then is that army not marching against me?”
“At present it stands still,” said I. “Jimgrim is doing his best to prevent hostilities.”
“Why doesn’t he come and see me?”
“He has not been invited; nor has he a safe-conduct.”
“One of you go back and bring him! Let that day not come that shall see me refusing to confer with Jimgrim! He shall have fifty men to escort him safely through my lines, and if we do not agree together he shall depart in peace at dawn.”
“Jimgrim has the task of restraining Ali Higg’s army,” I answered. “There is only one condition on which he will come.”
“Name it.”
“That you agree beforehand to make peace with Ali Higg, not on Ali Higg’s terms, but on Jimgrim’s.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then,” said I, “your honor must deal with that army on your own responsibility. It will not be possible for Jimgrim to keep them waiting there many hours. It was only with difficulty that they were restrained from pursuing your honor’s men a while ago. Hitherto they have listened to him, but he will only dare to leave them on the condition I have named. If your honor will put in writing an agreement to make peace on Jimgrim’s terms, then he will come forward.”
“But if he is on this side of the fires, how will that army know that I have yielded that point?” he asked suspiciously.
“If your honor will set it down in writing, and hand the writing over to Ibrahim ben Ah, then it has been arranged that I shall make a signal that will be understood by all.”
He sat gloomy in meditation for about five minutes before answering.
“What if I hold you three as hostages, and retire from Abu Lissan?” he asked suddenly.
That being a poser, it was my turn to meditate. None of us had an answer ready. I could have told him it would be a breach of faith to treat messengers in that way, but there isn’t much to be gained, as a rule, by imputing bad faith in advance of the occurrence.
“That would not prevent pursuit,” I said at last, “but it would lose you the good offices of Jimgrim.”
“You mean he would —
“I mean,” I interrupted, “you would have to make what terms you could with your enemies, instead of signing peace on a friend’s conditions.”
“Conditions? What conditions will he make?”
“Who am I that I should answer that?” I replied. “You, who know Jimgrim, should be able to judge whether he will be fair with you or not.”
“Jimgrim and I are brothers. He did me a favor once,” he muttered half- aloud; then relapsed again into silence, and was silent for so long a time that I began to be nervous about the hour. We had only until dawn to succeed; sunlight would show the skeleton on which our glittering display was spread.
“Try Jimgrim again,” I suggested at last; and for answer he clapped his hands together.
One of the staff brought him paper and pen, and at Ibrahim ben Ah’s dictation he signed a statement “in the name of Allah, the all-merciful, the compassionate,” that he would agree to Jimgrim’s terms if Jimgrim would come and hold the balance squarely between himself and Ali Higg.
He did not whine, squeal, wriggle, swear, seek to excuse himself, equivocate, or make any fuss at all, but acted throughout manfully, ordering coffee to be brought as soon as he had signed the paper, and behaving generally like a gentleman, making the most of temporary failure. I was right glad to know he was being restrained from conquest that would inevitably bring him up against British artillery sooner or later.
I took the lantern off the chair and swung it in a circle round my head for several minutes, until five shots from a pistol cracked out much nearer at hand than I had expected — so near, in fact, that I went on signaling, believing it could not be Grim.
But Grim, too, had been growing nervous about the hour, and had crept close in order to waste as little time as possible. The Avenger sent two of his staff to meet him and prevent accidents, and inside ten minutes Grim came up the stairs, not alone, but followed, of all improbable people, by Ayisha. She hadn’t been included in the plan as far as I knew, but Lord! how she was enjoying herself. What with her rifle and bandolier, Amazon smile and blazing eyes, she looked as picturesque by lantern-light as any woman I have ever seen.
Grim stood smiling at the stair-head for thirty seconds, until the Avenger called out a sonorous greeting and rose to his feet to receive him. They seized each other’s hands, and then embraced in the Arab style, which is Biblical.
“Once before, O Jimgrim, you came to my aid in a tight place. Do you bring peace now?”
“If you are swift,” Grim answered, turning so as to face the undulating lines of fires. “I can hold those men there until dawn — no longer!”
“Let us talk then. I am in no shape just now to fight an army such as that. Mashallah, what locusts! They have eaten up in one night a year’s supply of wood!”
Grim turned from admiring our illuminations and sat down in front of him. Ben Saoud the Avenger set both elbows on his thighs, and sat still, resting his jaws on the heels of both hands.
“Do you remember, at the time when I sent you those camels in the tight place you speak of, how I tricked you?” Grim asked him.
“Wallah! Yes. Ha-ha! I never will forget it! It called for a cunning fox indeed to play that trick on me — and a wise one! I would have plundered Feisul’s baggage but for you; and the Turks would have caught me in the bargain! That was a true Jimgrim trick; there is no other name for it.”
“I’m going to trick you again,” announced Grim.
“By Allah, I will take the chance!” the Avenger answered laughing. “Go ahead.”
“I’m not joking. I want it clearly understood that I’m going to trick you. I shall take your word, Ben Saoud, and hold you to it.”
“I am no longer afraid of your tricks. I will pass my word as soon as we agree. It is several hours since I had the first inkling of this trick; there came a message from the southward, saying that Jimgrim waited in a fiumara twenty miles away, and begged the immediate loan of four hundred men.”
“What did you do about it?” Grim asked. He did not look particularly interested, but Ayisha, standing upright in the dark behind Grim, leaned forward on her rifle with parted lips.
“Wallahi!” swore the Avenger. “It sounded like a strange request to come from Jimgrim. It sounded to me like a trap of some kind. So I sent fifty men, whom I could ill spare, and a man in charge of them who should have been commanding my right wing. Had he been with the r
ight wing, there might have been another tale to tell about tonight’s affair. My brother Achmet. You know him? Like a rifle bullet is Achmet for quick thinking. I said to Achmet, if the sender of that message truly is Jimgrim, then stay and serve him with your fifty. But if he is not Jimgrim, catch him and bring him hither, or else feed him to the jackals; but better to bring him alive, for the amusement we may have with him.”
“It was very good of you, when you needed men so badly, to send your best wing-commander and fifty on the half-chance of helping me,” Grim answered gravely. “Let us call the account even between us, and begin all over anew.”
“Taib — since you suggest it.” [ All right]
I began to feel horribly uneasy, and I know Narayan Singh did, for he was holding his breath and letting it out between his teeth sibilantly. I knew Grim was playing a hunch by the way he smiled, and spoke slowly with his eyes not quite wide open; you learn to recognize a man’s game after you have played with him a while and watched him in the climaxes. But hunches are fickle friends. If the Lion of Petra should have been killed by the Avenger’s brother, all our plan was worth nothing; and if he had been made prisoner, it looked like worse than nothing.
But Grim had to be quick. Before so very long now those fires of ours would begin paling in the dawn.
“Well then,” Grim said slowly, “do you wish me to act arbiter in this dispute between you and Ali Higg?”
“Yes; for he seems too strong for me.”
There was a long pause at that moment. Several shots were fired in the near distance towards the south. Shouting followed for two or three minutes; and then silence. I judged by the slow movement of his hands that Grim was horribly excited, but he had his voice under command.
“If I can call off that army, then, will you agree to retire from Abu Lissan at once, and not to invade Ali Higg’s territory for a period of three years?”
“Three years is a long time, Jimgrim.”
“Nevertheless, my condition is three years.”
There was another pause — the sound of a camel coming full pelt through the narrow streets — and then a disturbance in front of the door below.
“Make it one year, Jimgrim. I am a man of my word.”
“Three years; or I wash my hands of the whole business!”
The Avenger hesitated — stared at our fires for several seconds — seemed to review in his mind his own immediate resources — and was about to speak, when a brown-cloaked rifleman was ushered in a hurry up the stairs and advanced to deliver his message with hardly the form of salutation. He was out of breath, and brushed Ayisha aside as if he did not see her.
He was from the Avenger’s brother. He reported that the person representing himself to be Jimgrim had tried to decoy him and his fifty men farther afield, but had been cornered, because he and his handful of men were mounted on dead-weary camels. At the moment of the messenger’s dispatch the man, whoever he was, was parleying for terms, offering to surrender if his life was guaranteed him. So the Avenger’s brother had decided to grant that condition in order to save time; but there would be delay, because of those tired camels, which were, nevertheless, too good to leave behind. He hoped to bring in his prisoners before dawn, in time to take part in the offensive.
“Taib,” said the Avenger, and dismissed him with a wave of the hand.
Ayisha went and sat down in the circle of lamplight, with an air that I mistook for resignation. Her face wore that fatalistic expression that you read about and very seldom see. Ibrahim ben Ah, looking rather triumphant and decidedly shrewd, whispered to Grim, who shook his head. If you had asked me to play Grim’s hand that minute, I would have thrown the cards down, for the arrival of Ali Higg on the scene as a prisoner of war would be a joker that would upset every calculation. Yet Grim looked uncommonly contented, and the Avenger, whose turn it was to deal, dealt the joker into Grim’s hand.
“Inshallah, we shall have amusement, Jimgrim, when we confront you with the imposter!”
“Business before amusement, ben Saoud!” Grim answered. “Will you agree to the three-year term of peace?”
“But if I agree, how shall Ali Higg be held to it? Will he give hostages? What proof will the scoundrel give that he intends to keep his word?”
Ayisha’s eyes, that had been half-closed dreamily, opened wide at that, and the suspicion of a smile began to hover on her lips.
“Would a wife and fifty men do?” Grim inquired.
“The loss of fifty men would weaken him,” said the Avenger.
“And the wife knows his affairs, knows his strength and weakness, and moreover involves his personal honor,” answered Grim. “Do you not remember how the Prophet Mahommed required his follower Ali’s wife as a token of allegiance? Would even Ali Higg dare to make himself a by-word through all this land by breaking an agreement to confirm which he had given his wife before witnesses? If a man should lose his wife in battle, his honor would require him to seek revenge; but can he give his wife, and break faith afterwards?”
“And what does he require of me?”
“Three years’ peace.”
“And at the end of that?”
“A lot can happen in three years,” said Grim. “Let us plan for those, and leave the fourth in Allah’s lap.”
“Is the wife good-looking?”
“Judge for yourself,” Grim answered; and Ayisha rose to her feet. She looked less like a part of a bargain than the clever driver of one — dignified, alert, triumphant.
“Wallah! And you say she has a following of fifty men?”
“There are fifty who are willing to change sides along with her and bring their camels.”
“Taib! I agree!”
“To what?” demanded Grim.
“To a three-year truce.”
“Does that include personal immunity for Ali Higg? Do you undertake to lift no hand against him, and to take him at no disadvantage at any time during the next three years, beginning now, in return for a similar promise from him to you?”
“By Allah, why not? He marked my face, but I have his wife, and shall have fifty men! Yes, I agree. I promise. Why doesn’t the dog show himself and sign the bargain?”
“He shall,” said Grim.
“But when? Let my men go and bring him.”
“Men have gone for him already,” answered Grim. “He will be here presently. So you have passed your word? Between you and me, as man to man, in good faith? I may count on you to keep it?”
“In the name of Allah. By my beard and by the honor of my race,” the Avenger answered.
CHAPTER XI. “I see no sin in holding to my given word. Let Allah judge me!”
Dawn was just breaking when they brought in Ali Higg. Our beautiful row of fires was dwindling into dots of smokiness. I went through the farce of waving a lantern to a phantom thousand men, although another twenty minutes was going to prove their nonexistence; and we got in a row, staff-officers and all, to receive the prisoner.
I can’t say which was most astonished — Ali Higg at sight of Grim, Ayisha and Ibrahim ben Ah, or the Avenger at discovering the prisoner’s identity.
“By the Prophet’s beard and my feet, this is a worse trick than I thought!” growled the Avenger. And he glared at Ali Higg for several minutes, while his brother Achmet gave an account of the capture, and what preceded it.
“He left a man in wait for us, by Allah, who swore that Jimgrim waited at a place ahead, whence he would lead us to Ali Higg’s flank in such manner that his capture would be easy. But it sounded like strange talk to me, so I kept the man with me, and rode hard. We overtook this person who pretended he was Jimgrim. I passed my word not to kill him, and he surrendered. Lo! It was Ali Higg, who had thrown himself on my protection. He has not told me why Ali Higg should offer to betray Ali Higg by leading us on to Ali Higg’s flank that we might capture Ali Higg — nor why he should call himself Jimgrim! Now make him tell. I promised him his life, but said nothing about torture. Moreover, there wa
s nothing said about his men; if they were bastinadoed—”
“He only had a little private difference with me,” said Grim. “I have the key to his private fortune in my pocket. As long as I have that, he can’t make war without losing fifty thousand pounds. I suppose his wife Jael persuaded him. It seemed simple to her to use the Avenger’s men to waylay me. But Allah doesn’t make all things easy for everyone. Jael suggested, but the Lion of Petra bungled.”
No one else spoke for several minutes. Ali Higg hardly resembled Grim any longer, for he was too dejected, besides being utterly fagged from the pain in his neck, his prodigious ride, and want of sleep. It would have been an act of charity to tell him to sit down, but the Avenger wasn’t feeling charitable just then.
His face was black with anger, and the blackness deepened as he glared at the distant hills and began to realize the extent of the whole trick that Grim had played on him. There was smoke there now, and nothing else. The men had all disappeared behind the sugar-loaf hill, whence they could scoot for Petra at the first alarm.
Grim leaned forward at last, and took a cigarette from the Avenger’s silver box. He lit it casually before breaking the silence, and then it was to Ali Higg that he spoke, not to the Avenger.
“O Ali Higg,” he said, “I’ve made a bargain for you with Ben Saoud the Avenger, who is a man of his word, although he doesn’t like the bargain. There is to be peace between you two for three years. It extends to persons. His person is to be inviolable, so is yours. To bind the bargain, and in token of good faith, I have told him that you will give him your wife Ayisha, along with any fifty men who care to follow her fortune, camels and all. He undertakes not to invade your territory; you undertake not to invade his. This place Abu Lissan as far as both water-holes to the northward is to be neutral ground. Are you ready to sign?”
Ali Higg nodded. I think he was afraid that if he spoke he might wake up and find the good luck only a dream. He glanced once sharply at Ayisha, but made no sign to her — gave her no nod of recognition, although she met his eyes boldly.