Miranda of the Balcony: A Story

by A. E. W. Mason

CHAPTER XVIII

[IN WHICH THE TAXIDERMIST AND A BASHA PREVAIL OVER A BLIND MAN]

He went at once to the taxidermist's shop. M. Fournier expected him, but not the story which he had to tell.

"You wish to discover the man who shouted through your door six months ago," said Charnock. "It was I."

M. Fournier got together his account-books and laid them on the counter of the shop. "I have much money. Where is my friend Mr. Jeremy Bentham?"

"It is Hassan Akbar whom we must ask," said Charnock, and he told Fournier of what he had seen on the day of his previous visit to Tangier.

The two men walked up to the cemetery gate, where Hassan still sat in the dust, and swung his body to and fro and reiterated his cry "Allah Ben!" as on that day when, clothed as a Moor, Ralph Warriner had come down the hill. It was the tune which that Moor had hummed, and which Miranda had repeated, that had led Charnock to identify the victim and the enemy.

Charnock hummed over that tune again as he stood beside the Moor, and the Moor stopped at once from his prayer.

"Hassan Akbar, what hast them done with the Christian who hummed that tune and dropped a silver dollar in thy lap at this gate?"

Hassan made no answer, and as though his sole anxiety had been lest Warriner should have escaped and returned, he recommenced his cry.

"Hassan," continued Charnock, "was it that Christian who betrayed thy wealth? Give him back to us and thou shalt be rich again."

"Allah Beh!" cried Hassan. "Allah Beh!"

"It is of no use for us to question him," said M. Fournier. "But the Basha will ask him, and in time he will answer. To-morrow I will go to the Basha."

Charnock hardly gathered the purport of Fournier's proposal. He went back into the town, and that evening M. Fournier related to him much about Ralph Warriner which he did not know.

The idea of running guns in Morocco had appealed to Warriner some time before he put it into practice, and whilst he was still at Gibraltar.

"I did not know him then," said Fournier. "He had relations with others, very likely with Hassan Akbar, but nothing came of those relations. When he ran from Gibraltar in the Ten Brothers, he landed at Tangier, and lay hid somewhere in the town, while he sent the Ten Brothers over to South America and ordered the mate to sell her for as much as she would fetch. But in a little while Ralph Warriner met me and asked me to be his partner in his scheme. He had a little money then, and indeed it was just about the time when Hassan's fortune was discovered. It is very likely that our friend told the Basha of Hassan's wealth. If he knew, he would certainly have told," said M. Fournier, with a lenient smile, "for there was money in it. Anyway, he had some money then, I had some, I could get more, and I like him very much. I say yes. He tells me of his ship. We want a ship to carry over the guns. I telegraph to the Argentine and stop the sale. Warriner sent orders to change her rig, as he call it, and her name, and she comes back to us as the Tarifa. The only trouble left was this. The most profitable guns to introduce are the Winchester rifles. But for that purpose one of us must go between England and Tangier, must sail the Tarifa between England and Tangier. I could not sail a toy-boat in a pond without falling into the water. How then could I sail the Tarifa? So Warriner must do it. But Warriner, my poor dear friend, he has made little errors. He must not go to England, not even as Bentham. To make it safe for Jeremy Bentham to go to England, Ralph Warriner must be dead. You see?"

"Yes, I see. But why in the world did he call himself Jeremy Bentham?" asked Charnock.

"Because he was such an economist. Oh, but he was very witty and clever, my poor friend, when he was not swearing at you. At all events he decided that Ralph Warriner must die, and that there must be proofs that he was dead. So he packed up a few letters--one from his wife before he was married to her--that was clever, hein? A love-letter from his fiancée which he has carried about next to his heart for six years! So sweet! So convincing to the great British public, eh? He found that letter by chance among his charts. He gives it to me and some others in an oilskin case, and sends me with one of his sailors to the Scilly Islands. And then Providence helped us.

"All that we hoped to do was to hear of a wreck, in which many lives were lost, to go out amongst the rocks, where the ship was wrecked, and to pick up that little oilskin case. You understand? Oh, but we were helped. There was a heavy storm for many days at Scilly, and after the storm for many days a fog. On one day the sailor and I--we go out in the fog to the Western Islands, to see if any ship had come ashore. But it was dangerous! I can tell you it was very dangerous and very wet. However, we come to Rosevear, and there was the remnant of a ship, and no sailor anywhere. We landed on Rosevear, and just as I was about to place the oilskin case among the rocks where it would be naturally found, we came upon one dead sailor, lying near to the sea just as if asleep. I slipped the oilskin case into his pocket, and then with stones we broke in his face. Ah, but that was horrible! It made me sick then and there. But we did it, until there was no face left. Then for fear the waves might come up and wash him away, we dragged him up the rocks and laid him amongst the grass, again as though he was asleep. We made a little mistake there. We dragged him too far from the sea. But the mistake did not matter."

"I see," said Charnock. "And that day I shouted through the door Warriner sailed for England?"

"Yes," replied Fournier. "I hired that morning a felucca to sail himself across to Tarifa."

"I remember."

"The boat lay at Tarifa. He set sail that night."

"Yes," said Charnock. "I spent the night here. I waited two days for the P. and O. at Gibraltar, we passed the Tarifa off Ushant, and three days later I met Warriner in Plymouth. Yes, the times fit."

"It is very likely Ralph who told about Hassan," mused M. Fournier, with a lenient smile. "If he knew, he would have been sure to have told; for there was money in it. To-morrow I will see the Basha."

M. Fournier went down to the Kasbah and found the Basha delivering justice at the gates. The suitors were dismissed, and M. Fournier opened his business.

"We do not wish to trouble the Legation," said he. "The Legation would make much noise, and his Shereefian Majesty, whom God preserve, would never hear the end of it. Besides, we do not wish it." And upon that money changed hands. "But if the Englishman told your nobility that Hassan Akbar was hoarding his money in utter selfishness, then your nobility will talk privately with Hassan and find out from him where the Englishman is."

The Basha stroked his white beard.

"The Nazarene speaks wisely. We will not disturb the dignity of his Majesty, whom Allah preserve, for such small things. I will talk to Hassan Akbar and send for you again."

That impenetrable man was fetched from the cemetery gates, and the Basha addressed him.

"Hassan, thou didst hide and conceal thy treasure, and truly the Room told me of it; and since thy treasure was of no profit to thee, I took it."

"When I was blind and helpless," said Hassan.

"So thou wast chastened the more thoroughly for thy profit in the next world, and thy master and my master, the Sultan, was served in this," said the Basha, with great dignity, and he reverently bowed his head to the dust. "Now what hast thou done with the Room?"

But Hassan answered never a word.

"Thou stubborn man! May Allah burn thy great-great-grandfather!" said the Basha, and chained his hands and his feet, and had him conveyed to an inner room, where he talked to him with rods of various length and thickness. At the end of the third day the Basha sent a message to M. Fournier that Hassan's heart was softened by the goodness of God, and that now he would speak.

The Basha received Charnock and M. Fournier in a great cool domed room of lattice-work and tiles. He sat upon cushions on a dais at the end of the room; stools were brought forward for his visitors; and M. Fournier and the Basha exchanged lofty compliments, and drank much weak sweet tea. Then the Basha raised his hand; a door was thrown open; and a blind, wavering, broken man crawled, dragging his fetters, across the floor.

"Good God!" whispered Charnock; "what have they done to him?"

"They have made him speak, that is all," returned M. Fournier, imperturbably. He kept all his pity for Ralph Warriner.

M. Fournier translated afterwards to Charnock the story which Hassan told as he grovelled on the ground, and it ran as follows:--

"When the son of the English first came into Morocco I showed him great kindness and hospitality, and how he returned it you know. So after I was blind I waited. More than once I heard his voice in the Sôk, and in the streets of Tangier, and I knew that he had quarrelled with his own people the Nazarenes, and dared not turn to them for help. I sit by the gate of the cemetery, and many Arabs, and Moors, and Negroes, and Jews come down the road from the country to the market-place, and at last one morning I heard the steps of one whose feet shuffled in his babouches; he could not walk in the loose slippers as we who are born to the use of them. And it was not an old man, whose feet are clogged by age, for his stride was long; that my ears told me which are my eyes. It was an infidel in the dress of the faithful. It may be that if I had seen with my eyes, I should never have known; but my ears are sharpened, and I heard. When he passed me he gave me greeting, and then I knew it was the Room. He dropped a dollar into my hands and whistled a tune which he had often whistled after he had eaten of my kouss-kouss, and so went on his way. I rose up and followed him, thinking that my time had come. Across the Sôk I followed him, hearing always the shuffle of the slippers amidst the din of voices and the hurrying of many feet. He did not see me, for he never turned or stopped, but went straight on under the gate of the town, and then turned through the horse-market, and came to a house which he entered. I heard the door barred behind him, and a shutter fixed across the window, and I sat down beneath the shutter and waited. I heard voices talking quickly and earnestly within the room, and then someone rose and came out of the door and walked down the street towards the port. But it was not the man for whom I waited. This one walked with little jaunty, tripping steps, and I was glad that he went away; for the bolt of the door was not shut behind him, and the dog of a Nazarene was alone. I rose and walked to the door. A son of the English stood in the way: I asked him for alms with the one hand and felt for the latch with the other; but the son of the English saw what I was doing and shouted through the door."

"It was I," said Charnock.

Hassan turned his sightless face towards Charnock and reflected. Then he answered: "It was indeed you. And after you had spoken the bolt was shot. Thereupon I went back to the Sôk, and asking here and there at last fell in with some Arabs from Beni Hassan with whom in other days I had traded. And for a long while I talked to them, showing that there was no danger, for the Room was without friends amongst his own people, and moreover that he would fetch a price, every okesa of which was theirs. And at the last they agreed with me that I should deliver him to them at night outside the walls of Tangier and they would take him away and treat him ill, and sell him for a slave in their own country. But the Room had gone from Tangier and the Arabs moved to Tetuan and Omara and Sôk-et-Trun, but after a while they returned to Tangier and the Room also returned; and the time I had waited for had come."

"What have you done with him?" said the Basha. "Speak."

"I besought a lad who had been my servant to watch the Room Bentham, and his goings and comings. With the dollar which he had given me I bought a little old tent of palmetto and set it up in the corner of the Sôk apart from the tents of the cobblers."

"Well?" interrupted M. Fournier, "speak quickly."

"One evening the lad came to me and said the Room had gone up to a house on the hill above the Sôk, where there were many lights and much noise of feasting. So I went down the Sôk to where the Arabs slept by their camels and said to them, 'It will be to-night.' And as God willed it the night was dark. The lad led me to the house and I sat outside it till the noise grew less and many went away. At last the Nazarene Bentham came to the door and his mule was brought for him and he mounted. I asked the boy who guided me, 'Is it he?' and the boy answered 'Yes.' So I dismissed him and followed the mule down the hill to the Sôk, which was very quiet. Then I ran after him and called, and he stopped his mule till I came up with him. 'What is it?' he asked, and I threw a cloth over his head and dragged him from the mule. We both fell to the ground, but I had one arm about his neck pressing the cloth to his mouth so that he could not cry out. I pressed him into the mud of the Sôk and put my knee upon his chest and bound his arms together. Then I carried him to my tent and took the cloth from his head, for I wished to hear him speak and be sure that it was Bentham. But he understood my wish and would not speak. So I took his mule-hobbles which I had stolen while he feasted, and made them hot in a fire and tied them about his ankles and in a little while I made him cry out and I was sure. Then I stripped him of his clothes and put upon him my own rags. The Arabs came to the tent an hour later. I gagged Bentham and gave him up to them bound, and in the dark they took him away, with the mule. His clothes I buried in the ground under my tent, and in the morning stamped the ground down and took the tent away."

"And the chief of these Arabs? Give me his name," said the Basha.

"Mallam Juzeed," replied Hassan.

The Basha waved his hand to the soldiers and Hassan was dragged away.

"I will send a soldier with you, give you a letter to the Sheikh of Beni Hassan, and he will discover the Room, if he is to be found in those parts," said the Basha to M. Fournier.

Charnock spent the greater part of a month in formalities. He took the letter from the Basha and many other letters to Jews of importance in the towns with which M. Fournier was able to provide him; he hired the boy Hamet who had acted as his guide on his first visit, and getting together an equipment as for a long journey in Morocco, rode out over the Hill of the Two Seas into the inlands of that mysterious and enchanted country.