Complete Works of Talbot Mundy
Page 694
He was evidently not a convert to the Christian faith. His grim face with the windy, deep-set eyes seemed scornful of much that he saw, and when a priest went by I thought scorn changed to anger. He would have spat, but remembered his manners. He ignored the altar and he made no genuflections; he seemed rather to stiffen himself, as if pride obliged that. Nevertheless, there was reverence in him for something that he felt, though his eyes might not see it, and one could almost share the emotion with him, it was so heartfelt, simple and intense. He showed no surprise when Grim touched his elbow.
“Hey, you, Jimgrim,” he remarked in English, “you are like the storms of these seas. There is no knowing whence you will blow next; and there are always shoals to leeward. What now?”
“Pleasant voyage?”
“Now, by Allah’s mercy, some men might have thought so — such as like tales at a fireside. But I made my landfall. I suppose you are one more difficulty. I will overcome you also.”
He strode past us, bought another candle at the church door, came back, lighted it and stuck it on the bracket near the first one.
“I will overcome you also, Jimgrim. What now?”
“Why pick on me?” Grim asked him.
“Flint picks on steel, and steel on flint,” said Haroun ben Yahudi.
Grim laughed. “Maybe I’d better buy some candles. I saw you overcome that other poor devil just now. You did that very neatly.”
“That one was afraid,” said Haroun.
“I am not afraid.”
“Then why candles?”
“Mash-allah! Jimgrim, for a wise one you ask foolish questions. For a thousand — aye, two thousand years, and longer, seamen have known the spirit of this place. Look around you. Do you think that none but Christians make vows? Wallah-hi! And are only Christian vows on record? In the Name of Names I ask you, does a compass only work for Christians? Does the North Star change its station in the sky when Moslems set their course? I know a Moslem keel or two that avoided shoals where fish are spawning in the hulks of broken Christian ships.”
“You and I were friends once,” Grim said quietly.
“Good friends. And I wonder at the way of the Almighty. He, whose Prophet wrote in plain words all the length and breadth of wisdom, leaving nothing but its depth to be plumbed by our understanding, did a strange thing, Jimgrim, when He set you on one side and me on the other. Now, were you on my side you might be a very great one, Jimgrim. And I tell you, the great in this life become greater in the next, where many, who thought they knew what greatness is, are learning otherwise — too late!”
“Who said I’m against you?” Grim asked.
“I did. As the light is against the darkness, so are you and I against each other. And God pity me, I wonder at His ways, who brought this thing to pass; because you are another whom fear is afraid of, and such men are too few.”
Then, at last, he acknowledged Jeff’s existence. Their eyes met and Jeff smiled at him, showing short teeth in an iron jaw. You can tell from a glance at Jeff that if he lets his beard grow three days it will look like chiseled bronze; the substance of a beard seems always there, although he blunts good razors on its shadow.
“What port did you clear from?” Jeff asked, for the sake of politeness. But when Jeff is trying to be polite he tries too hard. He is only lamblike when he expects to have to use his muscles presently on several times his weight of adversaries.
“Basra.” But Haroun dismissed that fact as unimportant, from which I gathered either that it had extreme significance or he was lying. “Bull ram! Born on the cusp of Aries and Taurus! How does Jimgrim ease your sheets when the gusts of anger glow, I wonder? Lo, a bull’s heart in a mountain’s hide — a ram’s eye for a distance — and a ram’s nose for an enemy! I would that you, also, were on my side. Who is this one?”
The sensation was of being suddenly stripped naked by a connoisseur in anthropology. I was conscious of every weakness I possess — and of Jeff’s tremendous loyalty — and of Grim’s mercurial alertness. It was not good.
“Excuse me,” said Grim. “Major Robert Crosby — Captain Haroun ben Yahudi.”
“One of us,” Jeff added. It was the first time he had mentioned that in my presence. I felt better.
The old sea-dog eyed me for a moment longer as if he were studying shoals and tides and changing winds. Then he turned to Grim: “I, too, have shipped such. My mate — I found him in a Baghdad brothel, drunk and sickening from hunger. And I have a seaman whom I took off the beach at Kuwait. Some do well — some otherwise. I shipped that weakling whom you saw just now scared to hell. Not that this is as that one. This one — Crosby do you say his name is? — is of the sort that terror stiffens, though it makes him stupid. Major, you said? He is young for his rank. They promote babies nowadays; and what airs they give themselves! Born, unless my eyes deceive me, under Libra. Too much judgment — ever weighing this with that and hesitating lest he put the wrong foot foremost. However; it is no light matter for two such men as you to find a third one. Were not two of you enough — aye, two too many?”
“Why did you ship that scareling?” Grim retorted.
“Why are you against me, Jimgrim? Why did you come here looking for me? Hay-yeh, when the vultures gather in the sky I know their purpose.”
“You were the last man I was thinking of,” Grim answered.
“Yeh-yeh — you were thinking of life and death; and of why we come into the world, and why we leave it. And then I came. I, also, was thinking the same thoughts. Then I saw you. And I said to myself, as doubtless you said also: The Almighty does not set two such men by chance upon the self-same threshold of the Life to Come! Therefore, before one or other of us dies—”
It was the first time I had ever seen Jeff go into action. He was quicker than a lightweight; it was incredible that he could show such speed, with all that bulk and so much Herculean muscle. The eye hardly followed him. He seized the Arab’s right wrist in his left hand, jerked it backward, and a big, broad-bladed sheath-knife clattered on the stone floor.
“Not here, Haroun — and not yet!”
“Very decent of you, Haroun, to have given warning,” Grim remarked. He picked up the knife and Jeff returned it to its owner, who thrust it back into the sheath under his blue serge jacket.
I led the way out and the three of us stood on the concrete paving below the church steps, where we could just see the two lateen-rigged masts of Haroun’s ship. Beyond it, nearly in mid-harbor, a French warship lay to her mooring — one of those old-fashioned cruisers with funnels in pairs spaced wide apart.
“You have the right of it,” said Haroun. “That was neither time nor place. Doubtless God was displeased by the sacrilege, or else the knife had struck home. That would have saved you, Jimgrim, from a worse fate. Dorje—”
“Oh, are you taking Dorje’s orders?”
“Dorje has a saying, that they are fortunate who die before the game begins.”
“You let his name slip, didn’t you?”
“It is on all men’s tongues.”
“Yours let it slip, though. What have you to do with Dorje, Haroun?”
The Arab’s answer froze on parted lips. A flash of blue-white lightning seemed to leap out of the cruiser’s hold, so vivid, that it hurt the eyes even at a distance. It was instantly followed by billowing smoke; and in the midst of that we saw a deck lift and the masts fall two ways. In less than a tenth of a second the cruiser broke in half amidships. And then thunder, as the two ends sank, their swirl obliterated by the smoke of the explosion.
“Remember the Maine,” said Jimgrim.
Almost, it seemed, before the thunder reached us boats were racing toward the scene of the disaster — motor-boats plying for hire, some filled with passengers — yachts’ launches — ships’ boats — tugs. We could see the floating debris and what looked like men’s heads.
“Come and lend ’em a hand,” said Jeff, but it would have taken us at least twenty minutes to reach the harb
or-front.
We were stormed by a swarm of loiterers and tourists asking us what had happened. Jeff answered them politely, so they backed away from him, believing he suspected them of having sunk the cruiser. I watched Grim for a hint of what he meant to do. He spoke, but I could not catch what he said because of the noise the crowd was making. However, I did hear Haroun answer him:
“Mash-allah! That was also not the time and not the place. But it was simple. To be King of the World, you, Jimgrim, it is necessary to be simple — and as one-two, one-two as the Word of God.”
CHAPTER 2. “I am an old man, Jimgrim. Help me.”
Haroun glanced at each of us in turn, then walked away.
“He will go to the women,” said Jeff. “That’s Haroun’s one weakness.”
“He has another,” Grim answered. “He can’t resist the impulse to crow before sunrise. That’s why Haroun still commands about two hundred tons of dhow instead of being rotten with money and having his own way. I suppose I must tell the Prefect of Police about him. Come on to the Prefecture.”
We descended in the funicular, to save time.
“I should think the Prefect of Police will be down near the scene of the accident,” I suggested, and Jeff answered irritably because the elevator made him nervous.
“You would think that. But French Prefects of Police know their business. The place to look for a Prefect, in a crisis, is where he can be reached instantly by everyone who has to be told what to do.”
The French police have a flair for recognizing the value of irregular procedure on occasion and we were admitted at once to the Prefect’s inner sanctum. But the Prefect — a neat man with a brown beard, who looked like a naval officer — went on listening to the telephone, giving curt answers in a quiet voice and making swift, precise notes on a sheet of foolscap paper. Three men in uniform stood at the other side of the Prefect’s desk; one of them drew near us, I suppose, to listen.
But there was an interruption. The door opened and two detectives entered, escorting Haroun, looking sheepish.
“Eh-h, you, Jimgrim!” remarked Haroun. There were no handcuffs on him. One could not guess whether he had been arrested or merely “invited” to call on the Prefect, who glanced at him once, swiftly, and made one more pencilled note between abrupt communications over the phone.
“Quick work,” said Grim.
Then Haroun spoke in Arabic: “You, Jimgrim, you and I were friends once.”
Grim nodded.
“And a knife is merciful. By Allah, they would have slain me, had I slain you, and the account would have been fair between us. But is it merciful to throw a man such as me into prison, where there is neither sun nor sea nor wind? May the All-merciful deal with me as being guilty of if, if I would have thrown you into prison — though I would have slain you — yea, and why not? You, who lay in wait to trap me, should I not strike? Would you not have drawn steel, had I trapped you?”
“What do you ask of me?” Grim demanded. “Pardon?”
“Nay. Insh’allah, I will die needing no man’s pardon. May Allah pardon me, in case I need it. But a bargain, Jimgrim, is another matter.”
Then Grim made one of his characteristic bold strokes, that his friends sometimes recognized as bluff, but that his enemies mistook as a rule for a sign of omniscience.
“There is no midway between us two,” he answered. “You are either friend or enemy. Which is it?”
“Wallah! Do you bid me choose now?”
“Now or never. Choose between me and Dorje.”
Haroun hesitated. Grim — and he must have been guessing — probed for the source of hesitation.
“Is forgiveness one of Dorje’s habits? Will it please him to hear of that cruiser — blown up — in the wrong place, at the wrong time?”
“Who shall protect me from his anger, Jimgrim?”
“Not I, at any rate, unless you tell the whole truth. Who am I that I should try to sail in two ships? And can you do that?”
Mash-allah! One ship is enough for me. But which one? If I had known, Jimgrim, that you were in league against Dorje, I would not have done his errand.”
“Nevertheless, you did his errand.”
“Haida sahah. Truly had I slain you, all might have been well yet, Jimgrim. But that big ape Ram-is-den perceived my knife. And now I begin to perceive in all this the hand of Allah. None can fight against Him. Nevertheless, if God wills, and I tell the truth, will you put me in prison, Jimgrim?”
“This is not my country. I am no keeper of prisons in this place,” he said.
“Nay, I know it. But for what did they arrest me, save for drawing steel at you? So if you, and those others, say I did not draw steel — ?”
“There will then remain only that cruiser to account for! Surely that is nothing!” Grim suggested.
“Min jadd! Jimgrim, as God is my witness, I did not do that; nor was it of my contriving, or by my will that it was done.”
“Will they believe that? Or will Dorje believe it?”
“As Allah is my witness. I perceive I have no chance at all, unless you believe it, Jimgrim.”
Grim thrust home then: “Chance? What is it? If you say you see the hand of Allah, how can you talk of chances in the same breath? Can you trim your sails to two winds?”
“This has been an ill wind, Jimgrim.”
“No,” Grim answered, “but a wrong course. Haroun, when a wise man sees the shoals, does he change his course or carry on?”
“You will have me on your side? But at what price? I am a man of honor, Jimgrim. Death is no great matter.”
Grim shrugged his shoulders. “It is no affair of mine,” he answered; and there was silence, for possibly sixty seconds. It was so noticeable that the Prefect looked up from his writing-paper.
“Send for an interpreter,” he commanded.
A man left the room and Haroun tried to hide his nervousness; but he betrayed it by shifting his feet. Then he began to strike his colors, gradually.
“What did he say, Jimgrim?”
No answer. Grim began to speak to Jeff in undertones. “You have missed your tide,” Jeff answered. “Lie to your own anchor.”
“Nay, I will not! Tell him I need help. In the name of Allah, tell him I demand help.”
“What about your bargain? You spoke of a bargain,” Jeff retorted.
“Say then, I will tell him all I know. But he must save me from the prison.”
Grim, without moving his head, spoke to the Prefect quietly, in French:
“He will talk. He will tell all he knows.”
The Prefect seemed to speak into the telephone. It probably needed more civilized eyes than Haroun’s to detect that his beard interfered with the mouthpiece.
“So I gathered,” said the Prefect. “I learned Arabic in Aden.”
“May I promise him liberty?”
“Yes, yes. He can easily be shadowed, and he might commit illuminating indiscretions.”
Haroun almost shouted: “Jimgrim! In the Name of Names—”
The Prefect interrupted, laying the receiver on its hook: “I’ll give you the latest information, gentlemen. Seventeen survivors, all in hospital or on the way there — thirty-seven dead recovered — three hundred and eleven missing. Divers are already on the scene. A terrible disaster. Or an unspeakable atrocity. It remains to be revealed, which.”
Grim faced Haroun. “What was that you said?”
“I am an old man, Jimgrim. Help me.”
“Truth helps him who speaks it. Will you tell all you know?”
“I will tell you, face to face, as one friend to another. To these others I will not speak. What am I to them, or they to me? And they would twist my words against me.”
Grim caught the Prefect’s eye. He nodded. “Very well,” said Grim, “if you will tell me all you know, and answer questions, I will make no charge against you in the matter of that stabbing.”
“But this other matter, Jimgrim? It was not my doing.”
“But the prison, Jimgrim?”
“For the present, if you tell all you know, you shall go free.”
“All? But I will only speak in your ear, Jimgrim. No spies! No listeners! Your word on that?”
Grim caught the Prefect’s eye again. He nodded. Grim spoke in English. “All right, Haroun. We will talk where nobody can overhear.”
The Prefect ordered a man in uniform to lead Haroun and Grim into the next room, “where there have been many tales told that newspapers will never print and judges will never hear,” he added dryly.
CHAPTER 3. “I am always Baltis.”
It was as clear as daylight that the Prefect did not suspect Haroun of having sunk the cruiser. He had on his desk the cargo manifest of Haroun’s dhow — dates, hides and scrap-brass. All except the scrap-brass was consigned to reputable merchants; but the latter was invoiced to Haroun himself, marked on consignment for sale at local market price. As scrap it had been entered by the Customs duty free, and no one seemed to know after that what happened to it; however, Grim might elicit the information, and if not Grim, then someone else. Meanwhile, it was probably unimportant — merely something to be checked up on the principle of examining every minute detail.
A list of Haroun’s crew was also on the desk, and all except one were accounted for. Two were in jail for a midnight brawl in the red-light district. The cook had shipped east as a deck-hand on an Italian brig engaged in coral-fishing. Two men were in the seamen’s hospital with boils described as serious. The remainder were reported standing by the ship, and, having spent their pay, offering themselves “without enthusiasm” for ‘long-shore jobs on any terms whatever. The one man unaccounted for was an Italian-Greek-Frenchman, on the manifest as Guido Georges Marie de la Tournée, rating carpenter and super-cargo, wages two pounds ten a month, a cabin to himself and “captain’s rations.”