Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  But that other is a devil of a laugh, mostly made of chuckles that seem to bubble off a hell-brew of disillusionment, and you get the impression that he is laughing at himself — cynically laying bare the vanity and fallibility of his own mental processes — and forecasting self- discipline.

  There is no mirth in it, although there is amusement; no anger, although immeasurable scorn. I should say it’s a good safe laugh to indulge in, for I think it is based on ability to see himself and his own mistakes more clearly than anybody else can, and there is no note of defeat in it. But it is full of a cruel irony that brings to mind a vision of one of those old medieval flagellant priests reviewing his sins before thrashing his own body with a wire whip.

  “So that ends that,” he said at last, with the gesture of a man who sweeps the pieces from a board, to set them up anew and start again. “Luckily we’re not the only fools in Asia. Those six rascals know now that Mabel and we are one party.”

  “Pooh!” sneered Jeremy. “What can the devils do?”

  “Not much this side of the border at Deraa,” Grim answered. “After Deraa pretty well what they’re minded. They could have us pinched on some trumped-up charge, in which case we’d be searched, Mabel included. No. We’ve played too long on the defensive. Deraa is the danger-point. The telegraph line is cut there, and all messages going north or south have to be carried by hand across the border. The French have an agent there who censors everything. He’s the boy we’ve got to fool. If they appeal to him this train will go on without us.

  “Ramsden, you and Narayan Singh go and sit with Mabel in her compartment. Jeremy, you go forward and bring Yussuf Dakmar back here to me; we’ll let him have that fake letter just before we reach Deraa, taking care somehow to let the other five know he has it. They won’t discover it’s a fake until after leaving Deraa—”

  “Why not?” I interrupted. “What’s to prevent their opening it at once?”

  “Two good reasons: for one, we’ll have Narayan Singh keep a careful eye on them, and they’ll keep it hidden as long as he snoops around; for another, they’ll be delighted not to have to let the French agent at Deraa into the secret, because of the higher price they hope to get by holding on. They’ll smuggle it over the border and not open it until they feel safe.”

  “Yes, but when they do look at it ...” said I.

  “We’ll be over the border, and they can’t send telegrams to anywhere.”

  “Why not?”

  “An Arab government precaution. If station agents all along the line were allowed to send telegrams every seditious upstart would take advantage of it and they’d have more trouble than they’ve got now. But I warn you fellows, after Deraa — somewhere between the border and Damascus — there’ll be a fight. The minute they discover that the letter is a fake they’ll come for the real one like cats after a canary.”

  “Let ’em come!” smiled Jeremy, but Grim shook his head. “I’ve been making that mistake too long,” he answered. “No defensive tactics after we leave Deraa! We’ll start the trouble ourselves. You watch, after Deraa the train crew will play cards in the caboose and leave Allah to care for the passengers.”

  “There’s only one thing troubles me,” said Jeremy.

  “What’s that?”

  “Narayan Singh got Yussuf Dakmar’s shirt night before last. I’ve had it in for Yussuf ever since we Anzacs went hungry on account of him. Anyone who scuppers him has got me to beat to him. He’s my meat, and I give you all notice!”

  It isn’t good to stand between an Anzac and the punishment he thinks an enemy deserves.

  “All the same,” Grim answered, smiling, “I’ll bet you don’t get him, Jeremy.”

  “I’ll bet you. How much?”

  “Mind you, when the game begins, you have a free hand,” Grim went on.

  “All right,” answered Jeremy, who loves freak bets, “if I get him you quit the Army soon as this job’s done, and join up with Rammy and me: if I don’t I’ll stay and help you on the next job.”

  “That’s a bet,” said Grim promptly.

  So Jeremy went forward to play at being traitor, while Narayan Singh and I kept Mabel company. She fired questions at us right and left for twenty minutes, which we had to answer in detail instead of straining our cars to catch what Grim and Jeremy might be saying to Yussuf Dakmar in the next compartment.

  Whatever they did say, they managed to prolong the interview until within ten minutes of Deraa, when the Syrian returned to his companions smiling smugly and Narayan Singh strode after him, to stand in the corridor and by ostentatiously watching them prevent their examining the letter.

  Grim and Jeremy, all grins, joined us at once in Mabel’s compartment.

  “Did you see the devil smirk as he went off with it?” asked Jeremy. “Golly, he thinks we’re fools! The theory is that we two had betrayed you, Rammy, and swapped the letter against his bare promise to pay us in Damascus. He chucked in a little blackmail about sicking his mates on to murder us if we didn’t come across, and I tell you we fairly love him! Lordy, here’s Deraa! If they open the thing before the train leaves, Grim says the lot of us are to bolt back across the border, send Mabel home to her husband, and continue the journey by camel. That right, Grim?”

  Grim nodded. It was Mabel who objected.

  “I’m going to see this through,” she answered. “Guess again, boys! My hair’s gone gray. You owe me a real adventure now, and I won’t give up the letter till you’ve paid!”

  We had one first-class scare when the train drew up in the squalid station, where the branch line to Haifa meets the main Hedjaz railway and the two together touch a mean town at a tangent; for a French officer in uniform boarded the train and stalked down the corridors staring hard at everyone. He asked me for a passport, which was sheer bluff, so I asked him in turn for his own authority. He smiled and produced a rubber stamp, saying that if I wished to visit Beirut or Aleppo I must get a visa from him.

  “Je m’en bien garderai!” I answered. “I’m going to see my aunt at Damascus.”

  “And this lady? Is she your wife?”

  I laughed aloud — couldn’t help it. All the Old Testament stories keep forcing themselves on your memory in that land, and the legend of Abraham trying to pass his wife off as his sister and the three-cornered drama that came of it cropped up as fresh as yesterday. There was no need that I could see to repeat the patriarch’s mistake, any more than there was reasonable basis for the Frenchman’s impertinence.

  “Is that your business?” I asked him.

  “Because,” he went on, smiling meanly, “you speak with an American accent. It is against the law to carry gold across the border, and Americans have to submit to personal search, because they always carry it.”

  “Show me your authority!” I retorted angrily.

  “Oh, as for that, there is a customs official here who has full authority. He is a Syrian. It occurred to me that you might prefer to be searched by a European.”

  “Call his bluff!” Grim whispered behind his sleeve, but I intended to do that, anyway.

  “Bring along your Syrian,” said I, and off he went to do it, treating me to a backward glance over his shoulder that conveyed more than words could have done.

  “He’ll bluff sky-high,” said Grim, “but keep on calling him.”

  “I’ve been searched at six frontiers,” said Mabel. “If it’s a Syrian I don’t much mind; you boys all come along, and he’ll behave himself. They’re much worse in France and Italy. Hadn’t one of you better take the letter, though? No! I was forgetting already! I won’t part with it. I’ll take my chance with the Syrian; he’ll only ask me to empty my pockets and prove that I haven’t a bag full of gold under my skirt. Sit tight, all, here he comes!”

  The Frenchman returned with a smiling, olive-complexioned Syrian in tow — a round-faced fellow with blue jaws as dark as his serge uniform. The Frenchman stood aside and the Syrian announced rather awkwardly that regulations compelled hi
m to submit Mabel and me to the inconvenience of search.

  “For what?” said I.

  “For gold,” he answered. “It is against the law to smuggle it across the border.”

  “I’ve only one gold coin,” I said, showing him a U.S. twenty-dollar piece, and his yellow eyes shone at sight of it. “If it will save trouble you may have it.”

  I put it into his open palm with the Frenchman looking on, and it was immediately clear that that particular Syrian official was no longer amenable to international intrigue. He was bought and sold — oozy with gratitude — incapable of anything but wild enthusiasm for the U.S.A. for several hours to come.

  “I have searched them!” said he to the French officer. “They have no gold, and they are all right.”

  The French have faults like the rest of us, but they are quicker than most men to recognize logic. The man with crimson pants and saber grinned cynically, shrugged his shoulders, and passed on to annoy somebody easier.

  CHAPTER 12. “Start something before they’re ready for it!”

  Just before the train started, a handsome fellow with short black beard trimmed into a point and wearing a well-cut European blue serge suit, but none the less obviously an Arab, came to the door of our compartment and stared steadily at Grim. He stood like a fighting man, as if every muscle of his body was under command, and the suggestion was strengthened by what might be a bullet scar over one eye.

  If that fellow had asked me for a loan on the spot, or for help against his enemies, he would have received both or either. Moreover, if he had never paid me back I would still believe in him, and would bet on him again.

  However, after one swift glance at him, Grim took no notice until the train was under way — not even then in fact, until the man in blue serge spoke first.

  “Oh, Jimgrim!” he said suddenly in a voice like a tenor bell.

  “Come in, Hadad,” Grim answered, hardly glancing at him. “Make yourself at home.”

  He tossed a valise into the rack, and I gave up the corner seat so that he might sit facing Grim, he acknowledging the courtesy with a smile like the whicker of a sword-blade, wasting no time on foolish protest. He knew what he wanted — knew enough to take it when invited — understood me, and expected me to understand him — a first-class fellow. He sat leaning a little forward, his back not touching the cushion, with the palms of both hands resting on his knees and strong fingers motionless. He eyed Mabel Ticknor, not exactly nervously but with caution.

  “Any news?” asked Grim.

  “Jimgrim, the world is full of it!” he answered in English with a laugh. “But who are these?”

  “My friends.”

  “Your intimate friends?” Grim nodded.

  “The lady as well?” Grim nodded again.

  “That is very strong recommendation, Jimgrim!”

  Grim introduced us, giving Jeremy’s name as Jmil Ras.

  “Hah! I have heard of you,” said Hadad, staring at him. “The Australian who wandered all over Arabia? I am probably the only Arab who knew what you really were. Do you recall that time at Wady Hafiz when a local priest denounced you and a Sheik in a yellow keffiyeh told the crowd that he knew you for a prophet? I am the same Sheik. I liked your pluck. I often wondered what became of you.”

  “Put it here!” said Jeremy, and they shook hands.

  For twenty minutes after that Hadad and Jeremy swapped reminiscences in quick staccato time. It was like two Gatling guns playing a duet, and the score was about equally intelligible to anyone unfamiliar with Arabia’s hinterland — which is to say to all except about one person in ten million. It was most of it Greek to me, but Grim listened like an operator to the ticking of the Morse code. It was Hadad who cut it short; Jeremy would have talked all the way to Damascus.

  “And so, Jimgrim, do the kites forgather? Or are we a forlorn hope? Do we go to bury Faisal or to crown him king?”

  “How much do you know?” Grim answered.

  “Hah! More than you, my friend! I come from Europe — London — Paris — Rome. I stopped off in Deraa to listen a while, where the tide of rumor flows back and forth across the border. The English are in favor of Faisal, and would help him if they could. The French are against him and would rather have him a dead saint than a living nuisance. The most disturbing rumor I have heard was here in Deraa, to the effect that Faisal sent a letter to Jerusalem calling on all Moslems to rise and massacre the Jews. That does not sound like Faisal, but the French agent in Deraa assured me that he will have the original letter in his hands within a day or two.”

  Grim smiled over at Mabel.

  “You might show him the letter?” he suggested.

  So Mabel dug down into the mysteries beneath her shirtwaist and produced the document wrapped in a medical bandage of oiled silk. Hadad unwrapped it, read it carefully, and handed it to Grim.

  “Are you deceived by that?” he asked. “Does Faisal speak like that, or write like that? Since when has he turned coward that he should sign his name with a number?”

  “What do you make of it?” asked Grim.

  “Hah! It is as plain as the ink on the paper. It is intended for use against Faisal, first by making the British suspicious of him, second by providing the French with an excuse to attack him, third by convicting him of treachery, for which he can be jailed or executed after he is caught. What do you propose to do with it, Jimgrim?”

  “I’m going to show it to Faisal.”

  “Good! I, too, am on my way to see Faisal. Perhaps the two of us together can convince him what is best.”

  “If we two first agree,” Grim answered with a dry smile.

  “Do you agree that two and two make four? This is just as simple, Jimgrim. Faisal cannot contend with the French. The financiers have spread their net for Syria, Faisal has no artillery worth speaking of — no gas — no masks against gas, and the French have plenty of everything except money. Syria has been undermined by propaganda and corruption. Let Faisal go to British territory and thence to Europe, where his friends may have a chance to work for him. The British will give him Mesopotamia, and after that it will be up to us Arabs to prove we are a nation. That is my argument. Are we agreed?”

  “If that’s your plan, Hadad, I’m with you!” Grim answered.

  “Then I also am with you! Let us shake hands.”

  “Shwai-ya shwai-ya!” said Grim. “Better join up with me in Damascus. There are six men in the car ahead who’ll try to murder us all presently. They’ve got a letter that they think is that one. The minute they find out we’ve fooled them there’ll be ructions.”

  “I am good at ructions!” Hadad answered.

  “My friend Narayan Singh is forward watching them,” said Grim. “What they’ll probably try when they make the discovery will be to have the lot of us arrested at some wayside station. I propose to forestall them.”

  “I am good at forestalling!” said Hadad.

  “Then don’t you forestall me!” laughed Jeremy. “The fellow with a face like a pig’s stern is Yussuf Dakmar, and he’s my special preserve.”

  “I am a good Moslem. I refuse to lay hand on pig,” said Hadad, smiling.

  We discussed Faisal and the Arab cause.

  “Oh, if we had Lawrence with us!” exclaimed Hadad excitedly at last. “A little, little man — hardly any larger than Mrs. Ticknor — but a David against Goliath! And would you believe it? — there is an idiotic rumor that Lawrence has returned and is hiding in Damascus! The French are really disturbed about it. They have cabled their Foreign Office and received an official denial of the rumor; but official denials carry no weight nowadays. Out of ten Frenchmen in Syria, five believe that Lawrence is with Faisal and if they can catch him he will get short shrift. But, oh, Jimgrim — oh, if it were true! W’Allah!”

  Grim didn’t answer, but I saw him look long at Jeremy, and then for about thirty seconds steadily at Mabel Ticknor. After that he stared out of the window for a long time, not even moving his head when a
crowd of Bedouins galloped to within fifty yards of the train and volleyed at it from horseback “merely out of devilment,” as Hadad hastened to assure us.

  We were winding up the Lebanon Valley by that time. Carpets of flowers; green grass; waterfalls; a thatched hut to the twenty square miles, with a scattering of mean black tents between; every stone building in ruins; goats where fat kine ought to be; and a more or less modern railway screeching across the landscape, short of fuel and oil. That’s Lebanon.

  We grew depressed. Then silent. Our meditations were interrupted by the sudden arrival of Narayan Singh in the door of the compartment, grinning full of news.

  “They have opened the letter, sahib! They accuse Yussuf Dakmar of deceiving them. They threaten him with death. Shall I interfere?”

  “Any sign of the train crew?” Grim asked.

  “Nay, they are gambling in the brake-van.”

  Grim looked sharply at Hadad.

  “What authority have you got?”

  “None. I am a personal friend of Faisal, that is all.”

  “Well, we’ll pretend you’ve power to arrest them. Ramsden, you’ve suddenly missed your letter. You’ve accused Jeremy of stealing it. He has confessed to selling it to Yussuf Dakmar. Go forward in a rage and demand the letter back. Start something before they’re ready for it! We’ll be just behind you.”

  “Leave Yussuf Dakmar to me!” insisted Jeremy. “I pay the debt of an Anzac division!”

  I hope I’ve never hurt a man who didn’t deserve it, or who wasn’t fit to fight; but I have to admit that Grim didn’t need to repeat the invitation. I started forward in a hurry, and Jeremy elbowed Narayan Singh aside in order to follow next, Australians being notoriously unlady-like performers when anybody’s hat is in the ring.

  By the time I reached the car ahead the train had entered a wild gorge circle by one of those astonishing hairpin curves with which engineers defeat Nature. The panting engine slowed almost to a snail’s pace, having only a scant fuel ration with which to negotiate curve and grade combined. To our right there was a nearly sheer drop of four hundred feet, with a stream at the bottom boiling among limestone boulders.