by Harold Lamb
"See,” a voice proclaimed in broken English, "how the American imperialist has changed his shape!”
Glancing from his new suit to the speaker, a square-shouldered individual with a white sport shirt and the blunted features of a pugilist, Din decided to make no retort, courteous or otherwise. He had heard that line of abuse often. The gendarmes tried to enforce the law, such as it was. Hence the Americans who coached the gendarmes were not popular with the faction trying to break down the government.
But very soon he found that the party for him had also gone off the beam, in spite of it being Mary’s party. In spite of the candy cake and sherbet she had made, and the prized American motion-picture magazines he brought her, Mary did not seem to be her usual irresistible self, and Din put it down to his civilian suit, coupled with the stickiness of the other, Ramadan-keeping guests.
Mary, as he called her, was really Miriam Rudbar, the young wife of Lt. Col. Yussuf Rudbar, also very young and second in command of the Isfahan regiment of gendarmes. Mary possessed the full power of Iranian loveliness—more than Rita Hayworth’s in Din’s opinion—and two small boy children. She also had a way of doing the thinking, unbeknownst to others, for her officer-husband, who was honest, but slow on the uptake. Together, Yussuf—"Joe” to Din—and Mary took pride in being Din’s especial friends. Yet that evening Mary was distrait, and Joe, when at last he appeared, explained, "When making inspection round, time one o’clock and a half, Colonel Isfandiyar was shot at riot by bazaar and dead by same.” He did not know English as well as Mary.
"Who shot him?” Din asked, startled.
Helplessly, Joe looked at Mary. He did not know. Starting to ask if they had arrested any leaders of the disturbance, Din bit off the words. It was no longer his responsibility. True, Joe, who would now command the regiment, had little experience. The Americans had promoted him because they wanted somebody honest to be second to Isfandiyar, a fine soldier, but a very unreliable man.
Mary seemed to share the conviction that her husband should not be left alone in command. Her magnificent brown eyes dwelt beseechingly on Din. "Oh, Din, it is a calamity for us that you are going away!”
"Tomorrow night,” nodded Din, "I am. It’s my calamity, Mary, to have to leave you.”
She brushed that aside. "Then tell us what to do about the murder, Din!” And her eyes registered trust in him.
Din refused to take that bait. It always troubled him that his nickname meant "faith” in Iranian, at least as Mary pronounced it. Hitherto murders, to his knowledge, had been open and aboveboard, committed in Oriental religious frenzy or personal rage. Before he could answer, the other guest of honor arrived hurriedly.
Doctor Yeats, the only European physician in Isfahan, was, in the opinion of the three young people, a Scottish fossil of the Victorian Age who quoted the Psalms. He had taken time from his mission hospital to examine Isfandiyar’s body. "Indeed, Alford,” he announced with faint hostility, "it was the work of one of your high-powered rifles. Ay, the bullet passed through the body under the heart.”
So the bullet had disappeared. "Not my rifles, Doctor Yeats,” protested Din. "This country’s lous—— it’s chuck full of surplus army rifles; English Enfields and German Mausers mostly. But you won’t find any American pieces in the hands of bandits.”
"Umph.” The physician shook his head. "No rioters did this. Colonel Isandiyar, for his sins, was covered with the shadow of death. He was shot in the back.” His wizened face creased in a smile. " Well, Alford, the best of luck. I understand you will soon be off to your native land of milk and honey and motion pictures.”
After the doctor left, Din realized, with misgivings, that Joe was having a fit of nerves. The boy had functioned well enough under Isfandiyar with Din coaching him. But now Joe had to face the stubborn fact that the commanding officer of the regiment had been shot by no excited rioter, but by a marksman firing from the almost empty square at his back.
"How must we find out who did it?” demanded the practical Mary.
"Well,” he suggested, "you might find out who had a motive to kill Isfandiyar.”
"A mo-tive?” queried Joe.
"A reason for killing him. Find the motive,” explained Din vaguely and rapidly, "and you’ve got your man.”
"Ha!” Joe grasped the idea. Mary was silent.
At nine o’clock that night when Din Was packing his Springfield for shipment, he heard their excited voices again, and his hope that they had come to pay a farewell call was dispelled at once. From the open door Joe Rudbar waved a sheet of official-looking paper.
"We have many mo-tives,” he announced. "First mo-tive, Number One, is Lali, daughter of Rabban, the coppersmith. Colonel Isfandiyar— well——" He hesitated.
"Seduced her,” Mary interpreted, fading over his shoulder. "But he didn’t really. Her mother told me he gave her a fine gold necklace, and now she is weeping with all her heart because of his untimely death.”
"Um,” said Din dubiously. "Mo-tive Second,” went on Joe, "is the debt of twelve thousand tomans which he never paid Sidi Brothers, Inc. Mo-tive Third is Kaf, opium smoker, stepped on by his horse. Mo-tive Fourth, Arslan Khan, the Gashghai chieftain, who took oath to kill him dead and was among those present at bazaar——”
"Hold on,” exclaimed Din. "I’ve gone hunting with Arslan Khan in his hills. He wouldn’t shoot a man in the back.”
"But do you think, Din,” demanded Mary, "that the little Lali would shoot off a rifle like that?” And she pointed dramatically to the heavy Springfield.
"Well, no,” Din admitted. He glanced at the long list in Joe’s muscular hand. "How many motives have you there?” Conscientiously, Joe counted them. "Twenty-three,” he announced, and added thoughtfully, "Then, too, many gendarmes said they would shoot the colonel, but I do not believe them.” Expectantly the young Iranians waited for Din’s reaction. He realized only too well that his suggestion had borne no fruit. "It’s a fine list,” he admitted, "but it doesn’t help us to find the one person who fired that rifle, does it?”
"There!” exclaimed Mary. She did not say she’d told him so. "It’s silly—writing down motives. Din, shouldn’t we hurry to find the people who saw what happened?”
After considering that a moment, Din nodded. In Isfahan you couldn’t tie your shoe without a dozen pairs of eyes taking note. How, then, could you fire off a rifle in the Maidan unobserved by the inevitable eyes? Regretfully he gave up hope of a good sleep before his departure. Until dusk the next day, he was still adviser to the regiment of which Joe, his protégé, was now acting commander. "We’ll look for the camera eye,” he decided, "in Sulaiman, the antique dealer.” If anyone knew anything about the shooting, the bazaar would know that much by now, and Sulaiman would have found it out.
In his parlor ornamented with weapons, Sulaiman, the bearded and poker-faced, brightened at sight of Din. Unobtrusively the old dealer moved the khanjar with the ivory hilt into better view upon his table. This Din pretended not to see, while Joe explained the object of their visit.
After a moment of cogitation, Sulaiman gave his judgment: "Before the shooting, there was a disturbance; before the disturbance, there was a hadji inciting the cotton sellers.”
By hadji he meant a pilgrim, usually identified by green worn upon the head. So Sulaiman in his wisdom conceived that this pilgrim might have started the trouble to facilitate the murder. Din estimated that Sulaiman had much more to tell than that.
"What hadji?” he demanded.
"The one who wore a robe, and under the robe European shoes.”
"All right. Can you find him for us?” Regretfully, Sulaiman glanced at his dagger. "Alas, except for the shoes, he was like a thousand others.”
Having said that, he said no more. And Din reflected ruefully that there would be, as he said, a thousand real or pseudo pilgrims asleep even then in the corners of the cavernous buildings of devout Isfahan or wandering far away through the darkness. Meanwhile Joe waited trustfull
y for more advice.
Din ransacked his memory for other tactics in solving murders. "Well,” he ventured, "we can try a reconnaissance mission. Have the bazaar gate watched at the same hour, noon tomorrow. Have Sulaiman with you. The fellow might show up again.”
"You mean,” Mary cried, "that you will be there, Din, to watch the bazaar entrance?”
Like a woman, she had trapped him illogically but inexorably. She knew that he had never before sent a mission where he would not go himself. Din sighed and gave in, against his better judgment.
"All right, Mary,” he said in English that Sulaiman could not follow. "I’ll be there, until sunset. . . not after that.”
By half after twelve the next day the Virginian realized that he might as well have advertised his appearance in person to all Isfahan. Although he wore his dark civilian suit and kept in the shadow behind a stone butt of the great bazaar gate, heads turned to peer at him curiously as the noon crowd thronged out. Only the giant figure of Arslan Khan, followed by servants laden with parcels, swept past, seemingly oblivious.
Moreover, by then Din had a sinking feeling that his idea of reconstructing the crime was not going to work out. For one thing, Joe, who had insisted on making the daily inspection round, was late in arriving with Sulaiman. For another, the crowd, in contrast to the day before, was orderly if not mute. As it passed him, Din counted no less than eighteen men with the green headgear of pilgrims, but without European shoes.
At last Joe came speeding across the Maidan in Colonel Isfandiyar’s jeep, with Sulaiman clinging to the seat behind. Din, saturated with the radiated heat, walked out to ask him why he had waited until the act was nearly over.
The sharp "crang” of the rifle seemed to come out of the air. The jeep had stopped by the goal posts. Joe bent over against the low windshield and stayed there. By the time Din pushed his way out to the jeep, Sulaiman had disappeared, along with most of the crowd.
An hour later, Doctor Yeats came out of the Rudbar bedroom to where the two infants were asleep under fly nets. "Good, Miriam,” he assured the anxious Mary. "The broken rib won’t heal perfectly, but it will do. Your man will be trying to get out of bed in a fortnight . . . unless something happens to make him lose more blood.” His glance touched the Virginian with the antagonism of the hard-working exile for the homeward-bound traveler. "A half million units of American penicillin would help, but we have none.”
"The bullet went into Joe’s back?" Din asked.
"Yes.” With a nod, the physician tiptoed out, so as not to wake the children. At the hospital he had a typhus epidemic to cope with.
For the first time since Din had known her, Mary had nothing to say. The sight of her husband half conscious had shaken her.
"Listen, Mary,” Din said. "Whoever did this shooting must have had more than a grudge against poor Isfandiyar. I’m going to have a guard posted at your house now.”
"Thank you.”
When he eased past the sleeping children she took his hand and stopped him. She didn’t say anything. But she might as well have begged him, by token of his friendship, not to leave the wounded man and the two babes.
"Mary, you don’t understand,” he said desperately. "I haven’t authority to give orders any more. And I’ve only made a mess of investigating this shoot ing.”
"I understand.” In her distress she answered him in Persian. "Your heart is sick in this country. You must find the way to the door of your own home. I—I should not ask you to stay.” And she turned her head quickly, to keep him from seeing how her lips quivered.
She wasn’t acting. He felt certain she was very much afraid. "I promise you no one else will take a shot at Joe,” he said.
With his morale at a new low, he went around to the familiar gendarmery headquarters, to see about posting the guard at the Rudbar house. To his surprise, no other officer had assumed the duties of acting commander. The captain on guard detail fell into moody silence the moment he understood Din had no more orders to give. After that, the whole place seemed to be hung with invisible crape.
When he left, Din thought longingly of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who trailed their man unerringly ... in the stories. As a policeman, he felt himself to be a Jonah. What good could he do by hanging around, just to be there? He couldn’t even figure out whether the shot that noon in the crowded heart of the city had been fired from the ground or the sky. The only thing Din knew for certain was that a cool and expert marksman had fired that shot.
The only man he knew with those qualifications who also wore European shoes was Arslan Khan. Reluctantly he altered his course through the simmering heat toward the hotel near the bazaar where Arslan Khan might be.
Awakened from his siesta, the Gashghai greeted the American with great good nature. "Major Din,” he roared with an Oxford accent, "come in! Will you have sherbet or whisky?”
Din declined, explaining that he was on duty, and announcing, as if it were a good joke, "Besides, we’re going to arrest you, Arslan Khan.”
The ruler of ten thousand families knotted his flaming dressing gown about him as he considered. An Enfield gleaming with oil rested against the head of his bed. Then he grinned. "Splendid! My father was imprisoned in Isfahan, and my grandfather also. My greatgrandfather captured Isfahan. So far, no one has arrested me. I shall accompany you with pleasure. But first please tell me”—he waved a long arm at the floor, covered with opened bundles of women’s slippers and sandals—"what make of shoes is most stylish in America now?”
And he explained that his errand in town was to buy new shoes for his family, by which he meant his wives.
He would buy two or three dozen pairs and let the family sort them out.
Din admitted that he didn’t know what American women were wearing, and added bluntly that Lieutenant Colonel Rudbar had been shot in the back near the heart on the Maidan, in the same way as Isfandiyar. "Did you see it?”
The Gashghai’s expression changed. "No. Picked out of a crowd again? Marvelous shooting.” His dark eyes probed Din. "But not by me,” he went on regretfully. "It is true that once I hunted for Isfandiyar. He was a Bor Ahmadi and he killed a cousin of mine.” So simply a man of Tazewell County might have spoken of a member of a family at feud with him in ancient days. "But I went to Oxford, you know, and Isfandiyar migrated to join your regiment. I had no quarrel with him here.”
On the whole, Din believed him." Do you know anyone in Isfahan who can shoot like that?” he asked.
For a long moment, the big man considered. Then he laughed. "Only you, Din. But perhaps they used telescope sights.” The thought pleased him. " Don’t you want me to help you? We should shoot them first and arrest them afterward. It’s much simpler that way.”
"Thanks, no. It’s—it’s my responsibility. Forget about the arrest, Arslan Khan. I was joking.”
Wending his solitary way to his hot hotel room, Din reflected that he could make nothing at all out of the tribesman. Or out of the case. Flinging himself into his coolest chair, he gazed blankly from Joe’s futile list of suspects to the head of the mountain sheep. His own head felt like stuffed mutton. Twenty-six hours before, he had been congratulating himself smugly on a job well done; in two hours the car would leave for Teheran.
In the books, people reasoned out why murders happened. Like logic. All right. Suppose the queer hadji had staged the riot for the first shooting. There wasn’t any riot with the second. Suppose one of the slew of enemies had shot Isfandiyar. Joe had no visible enemies. Arslan Khan had a trigger finger, but not the least guilt complex. Logic didn’t make sense. Somebody unseen by the naked eye was shooting at commanders of the gendarmes. That made even less sense. And—"And I am a one hundred per cent failure,” Din summed up concisely.
The door opened and Doctor Yeats came in and locked it. He looked tired. "If only these people wouldn’t wait until they are dying before they let themselves be taken to the hospital,” he said. Thirstily he drank from the water jar. "Have you any
idea who the murderer is? ”
Din shook his head.
"You, Alford.”
After four years in Persia, nothing could surprise Din. "Interesting. Who says so?”
"All Isfahan, this afternoon. My assistant, Doctor Nasir, and one of the Sidi brothers from the bazaar told me the same story, approximately. But someone else must have started the story.”
"How did I kill Isfandiyar,” Din asked wearily, "when I was trying to go to sleep here at the time?”
"Did anyone see you in your room?” Din reflected and shook his head. "But a few dozen people watched me today at the bazaar gate without a rifle.”
"These people don’t reason as we do, Major Alford. They are simply afraid.” Glancing at the Springfield in its open case, the physician added, "The story is, you have a high-powered rifle and a telescope sight.”
"Even so, why did I want to kill Joe Rudbar?”
Yeats hesitated. "They say because of Mary. You have been observed giving her presents and calling on her when she was alone. I don’t believe it,” he added hastily, " but ——”
Anger went like hot fever through Din’s lank body. "Of all the dirty lies! ” Yanking open his suitcase, he began to throw out neatly packed uniforms. "Here, I have a telescope sight, as you call it. It wouldn’t fit this rifle, as you can see. It’s been packed here for two days ——” He broke off to stare at the article in question. It was a secondhand sight with the finish worn off one side. Din remembered packing it with the worn side down; now the sight lay reversed. "The jerks have been searching my stuff,” he muttered, and the anger stabbed at his mind. "They’ve added up a string of lies about me. It doesn’t make sense.”
"It will,” Yeats sighed," if you leave Isfahan tonight.”