Jimgrim and Allah's Peace

by Talbot Mundy

Chapter Ten

"Money doesn't weigh much!"

Well—you don't stand on precedence or ceremony at times like that. Over I went in the bight of the rope. They let me fall about fifteen feet before they seemed to realize that I had let go of the parapet. Added to all that had gone before, that made about the climax of sensation. The pain of barking the skin of knees and elbows against projecting angles of stone was a relief.

I am no man of iron. I haven't iron nerves. Not one second of that descent was less than hell. I could hear the thunder of some kind of battering-ram on the door at the foot of the stair. I could imagine the rope chafing against the sharp edge of the parapet as they paid it out hand over hand. The only thing that made me keep my head at all was knowledge that Abdul Ali had had to do the trip feet-upward, with his head in a bag. When they let go too fast it was rather like the half-way stage of taking chloroform. When they slowed up, there was the agonizing dread of pursuit. And through it all there burned the torturing suggestion that the rope might break.

Mother Earth felt good that night, when strong hands reached up and lifted me out of the noose that failed of reaching the bottom by about a man's height. Come to think of it, it wasn't mother earth at that. It was the stinking carcass of a camel only half autopsied by the vultures, that my feet first rested on—brother, perhaps, to the beast I had put out of his agony that afternoon.

The others came down the rope hand-over-hand, Grim last. I suppose he stayed up there with his pistol, ready for contingencies. He had his nerve with him, for he had fastened the upper end of the rope to a piece of broken stone laid across a gap that the crusaders had made in the ramparts, centuries ago, for the Christian purpose of pouring boiling oil and water on their foes. It did not take more than a minute's violent shaking after he got down to bring the rope tumbling on our heads.

Then the next thing he did was to take a look at the prisoner. Finding him not much the worse for wear, barring some bruises and a missing inch or two of skin, he ordered the bag pulled over his head again and gave the order for retreat. Mahommed ben Hamza went scouting ahead. The others picked up Abdul Ali as the construction gangs handle baulks of timber—horizontal—face- downward. When he wriggled they cuffed him into good behaviour.

You have to get down into an Arab moat before you can realize what the Hebrews meant by their word Gehenna. The smell of rotting carrion was only part of it. One stumbled into, and through, and over things that should not be. Heaps, that looked solid in the moonlight, yielded to the tread. Whatever liquid lay there was the product of corruption.

Yet we did not dare to climb out of the moat until we reached the shadows at the northern angle. Though the moonlight shone almost straight down on us it was a great deal brighter up above, and the walls cast some shadow. There was nothing for it but to pick our way in the comparative gloom of that vulture's paradise, praying we might find a stream to wade in presently.

Once, looking up behind me, I thought I saw men's heads peering over the parapet, but that may have been imagination. Grim vowed he did not see them, although I suspected him of saying that to avoid a panic. He shepherded us along, speaking in a perfectly normal voice whenever he had to, as if there were no such thing as hurry in the world. When we reached the farther corner of the moat it was he who climbed out first to con the situation. A look-out in a bastion on the ruined town wall promptly fired at him.

I expected him to fire back. I climbed up beside him to lend a hand with the pistol I had filched from Abdul Ali. But Grim shouted something about taking away for burial the corpse of a man who had died of small-pox. The man on the wall commanded us to Allah's mercy and warned us to beware lest we, too, catch that dreaded plague.

"Inshallah!" Grim answered. Then he summoned our men from the moat.

They passed up Abdul Ali, dragging him feet-first again with one man keeping a clenched fist ready to strike him in the mouth in case he should forget that corpses don't cry out. He looked like a corpse half-cold, as they carried him jerkily along a track that roughly followed the line of the wall. I don't suppose that anything ever looked more like an Arab funeral procession than we did. The absence of noisy mourners, and the unusual hour of night, were plausibly accounted for by the dreaded disease that Grim had invented for the occasion. My golf-suit was the only false note, but I kept in shadow as much as I could, with the unseemly burden between me and the ramparts.

It was a long time before we had the town wall at our backs. A funeral, in the circumstances, might justifiably be rapid; but we could hardly run and keep up the pretense. But at last we passed over the shoulder of a hill into shadow on the farther side, and there was no more need of play-acting.

"Yalla bilagel!" [Run like the devil.] Grim ordered then, and we obeyed him like sprinters attempting to lower a record.

Twelve men running through the night can make a lot of noise, especially when they carry a heavy man between them. Our men were all from Hebron. Hebron prides itself on training the artfullest thieves in Asia. They boast of being able to steal the bed from under a sleeper without waking him. But even the stealthiest animals go crashing away from danger, and, now that the worst of the danger lay behind, more or less panic seized all of us.

Mahommed ben Hamza refused to follow the regular track, for fear of ambush or a chance encounter in the dark. Grim let him have his way. They dragged the wretched Abdul Ali like a sack of corn by a winding detour, and wherever the narrow path turned sharply to avoid great rocks they skidded him at the turn until he yelled for mercy. Grim pulled off the sack at last, untied his arms and legs, and let him walk; but whenever he lagged they frog-marched him again.

At last we reached a brook where we all waded to get rid of the filth and smell from that infernal moat, and Abdul Ali seized that opportunity to play his last cards. Considering Ben Hamza's reputation, the obvious type of his nine ruffians, the darkness and rough handling, it said a lot for Grim's authority that Abdul Ali still had that wallet-full of money in his possession. Sitting on a stone in the moonlight, he pulled it out. His nerve was a politician's, cynical, simple. Its simplicity almost took your breath away.

"How many men from Hebron?" he demanded.

"Ten. Well and good. I have here ten thousand piastres—one thousand for each of you, or divide it how you like. That is the price I will pay you to let me go. What can these other two do to you? Take the money and run. Leave me to settle with these others."

Ben Hamza, knee-deep in the brook, laughed aloud as he eyed the money. He made a gesture so good-humoured, so full of resignation and regret and broad philosophy that you would have liked the fellow even if he hadn't saved your life.

"Deal with those two first!" he grinned. "I would have taken your money long ago, but that I know Jimgrim! He would have made me give it up again."

"Jimgrim!" said Abdul Ali. "Jimgrim? Are you Major James Grim? A good thing for you I did not know that, when I had you in my power in the castle!"

Grim laughed. "Are we all set? Let's go."

We hurried all the faster now because our legs were wet. The night air on those Moab heights is chilly at any season. Perhaps, too, we were trying to leave behind us the moat-stench that the water had merely reduced, not washed away. A quarter of a mile before we reached the place appointed we knew that Anazeh had not failed to keep his tryst. Away up above us, beside the tomb, like an ancient bearded ghost, Anazeh stood motionless, silent, conning the track we should come by—a grand old savage keeping faith against his neighbours for the sake of friendship.

He did not challenge when he heard us. He took aim. He held his aim until Grim called to him. When our goat track joined the main road he was there awaiting us, standing like a sentinel in the shadow of a fanged rock. And there, if, Abdul Ali of Damascus could have had his way, there would have been a fresh debate. He did not let ten seconds pass before he had offered Anazeh all the money he had with him to lend him a horse and let him go. Anazeh waived aside the offer.

"You shall have as much more money as you wish!" the Damascene insisted. "Let me get to my house, and a messenger shall take the money to you. Or come and get it."

All the answer Anazeh gave him was a curt laugh—one bark like a Fox's.

"Where are all the horses?" Grim demanded. I could only see five of six.

"I wait for them."

"Man, we can't wait!"

"Jimgrim!" said the old sheikh, with a glint of something between malice and amusement in his eyes, "I knew you in the mejlis when you watched me read that letter! One word from me and—" He made a click between his teeth suggestive of swift death. "I let you play your game. But now I play my game, Allah willing. I have waited for you. Wait thou for me!"

"Why? What is it?"

Anazeh beckoned us and turned away. We followed him, Grim and I, across the road and up a steep track to the tomb on the overhanging rock, where he had stood when we first saw him.

He pointed. A cherry-red fire with golden sparks and crimson- bellied sulphur smoke was blazing in the midst of El-Kerak.

"The home of Abdul Ali of Damascus," said Anazeh with pride in his voice. It was the pride of a man who shows off the behaviour of his children. "My men did it!"

"How can they escape?" Grim asked him.

"Wallah! Will the gate guards stand idle? Will they not run to the fire—and to the looting? But they will find not much loot. My men already have it!"

"Loot," said Grim, "will delay them."

"Money doesn't weigh much," Anazeh answered. "Here my men come."

Somebody was coming. There came a burst of shooting and yelling from somewhere between us and El-Kerak, and a moment later the thunder of horses galloping full-pelt. Anazeh got down to the road with the agility of a youngster, ordered Abdul Ali of Damascus, the shivering Ahmed and me under cover. He placed his remaining handful of men at points of vantage where they could cover the retreat of the fifteen. And it was well he did.

There were at least two score in hot pursuit, and though you could hardly tell which was which in that dim light, Anazeh's party opened fire on the pursuers and let the fifteen through. I did not get sight of Grim while that excitement lasted, but he had two automatics. He took from me the one that I had taken from Abdul Ali, and with that one and his own he made a din like a machine-gun. He told me afterward that he had fired in the air.

"Noise is as good as knock-outs in the dark," he explained, while Anazeh's men boasted to one another of the straight shooting that it may be they really believed they had done. An Arab can believe anything—afterward. I don't believe one man was killed, though several were hit.

At any rate, whether the noise accomplished it or not, the pursuers drew off, and we went forward, carrying a cashbox now, of which Abdul Ali was politely requested to produce the key. That was the first intimation he had that his house had been looted. He threw his bunch of keys away into the shadows, in the first exhibition of real weakness he had shown that night. It was a silly gesture. It only angered his captors. It saved him nothing.

Four more of Anazeh's men had been wounded, all from behind, two of them rather badly, making six in all who were now unfit for further action. But we did not wait to bandage them. They affected to make light of their injuries, saying they would go over to the British and get attended to in hospital. Abdul Ali was put on Ahmed's miserable mount, with his legs lashed under the horse's belly. Ahmed, with Mahommed ben Hamza and his men were sent along ahead; being unarmed, unmounted, they were a liability now. But those Hebron thieves could talk like an army; they put up a prodigious bleat, all night long, about that cash-box. They maintained they had a clear right to share its contents, since unless they had first captured Abdul Ali, Anazeh's men could not have burned his house and seized his money. Anazeh's men, when they had time to be, were suitably amused.

It was not a peaceful retreat by any means. Time and again before morning we were fired on from the rear. Our party deployed to right and left to answer—always boasting afterward of having killed at least a dozen men. I added up their figures on the fly-leaf of the pocket Bible, and the total came to two hundred and eighteen of the enemy shot dead and forever damned! I believe Anazeh actually did kill one of our pursuers.

By the time the moon disappeared we had come too close to Anazeh's country to make pursuit particularly safe. Who they were who pursued us, hauled off. We reached the launch, secure in its cove between the rocks, a few minutes after dawn. Anazeh ordered his six wounded men into it, with perfect assurance that the British doctors would take care of them and let them go unquestioned.

When Grim had finished talking with Anazeh I went up to thank the old fellow for my escort, and he acknowledged the courtesy with a bow that would have graced the court of Solomon.

"Give the old bird a present, if you've got one," Grim whispered.

So I gave him my watch and chain, and he accepted them with the same calm dignity.

"Now he's your friend for life!" said Grim. "Anazeh is a friend worth having. Let's go!"

The watch and chain was a cheap enough price to pay for that two days' entertainment and the acquaintance of such a splendid old king of thieves. Anazeh watched us away until we were out of earshot, he and Grim exchanging the interminable Arab farewell formula of blessing and reply that have been in use unchanged for a thousand years.

Then Abdul Ali produced his wallet again.

"Major Grim," he said, "please take this money. Keep it for yourself, and let me go. Surely I have been punished enough! Besides, you cannot—you dare not imprison me! I am a French subject. I have been seized outside the British sphere. I know you are a poor man—the pay of a British officer is a matter of common knowledge. Come now, you have done what you came to do. You have destroyed my influence at El-Kerak. Now benefit yourself. Avoid an international complication. Show mercy on me! Take this money. Say that I gave you the slip in the dark!"

Grim smiled. He looked extremely comical without any eyebrows.
The wrinkles went all the way up to the roots of his hair.

"I'm incorruptible," he said. "The boss, I believe, isn't."

"You mean your High Commissioner? I have not enough money for him."

Grim laughed. "No," he said, "he comes expensive."

"What then?"

"Don't be an ass," said Grim. "You know what."

"Information?"

"Certainly."

"What information?"

"You were sent by the French," said Grim, "to raise the devil here in Palestine—no matter why. You were trying to bring off a raid on Judaea. Who are your friends in Jerusalem who were ready to spring surprises? What surprises? Who's your Jerusalem agent?"

"If I tell you?"

"I'm not the boss. But I'll see him about it. Come on—who's your agent?"

"Scharnhoff."

Grim whistled. That he did not believe, I was almost certain, but he whistled as if totally new trains of thought had suddenly revealed themselves amid a maze of memories.

"You shall speak to the boss," he said after a while.

I fell asleep then, wedged uncomfortably between two men's legs, wakened at intervals by the noisy pleading of Mahommed ben Hamza and his men for what they called their rights in the matter of Abdul Ali's wallet. They were still arguing the point when we ran on the beach near Jericho, where a patrol of incredulous Sikhs pounced on us and wanted to arrest Ahmed and Anazeh's wounded men. Grim had an awful time convincing them that he was a British officer. In the end we only settled it by tramping about four miles to a guard-house, where a captain in uniform gave us breakfast and telephoned for a commisariat lorry.

It was late in the afternoon when we reached Jerusalem and got the wounded into hospital. By the time Grim had changed into uniform and put courtplaster where his eyebrows should have been, and he, Abdul Ali and I had driven in an official Ford up the Mount of Olives to OETA, the sun was not far over the skyline.

Grim had telephoned, so the Administrator was waiting for us. Grim went straight in. It was twenty minutes before we two were summoned into his private room, where he sat behind the desk exactly as we had left him the other morning. He looked as if he had not moved meanwhile. Everything was exactly in its place— even the vase, covering the white spot on the varnish. There was the same arrangement of too many flowers, in a vase too small to hold them.

"Allow me to present Sheikh Abdul Ali of Damascus," said Grim.

The Administrator bowed rather elaborately, perhaps to hide the twinkle in his eyes. He didn't scowl. He didn't look tyrannical. So Abdul Ali opened on him, with all bow guns.

"I protest! I am a French subject. I have been submitted to violence, outrage, indignity! I have been seized on foreign soil, and brought here by force against all international law! I shall claim exemplary damages! I demand apology and satisfaction!"

Sir Louis raised his eyebrows and looked straight at Grim without even cracking a smile.

"Is this true, Major Grim?"

"Afraid it is, sir."

"Scandalous! Perfectly scandalous! And were you a witness to all this?" he asked, looking at me as if I might well be the cause of it all.

I admitted having seen the greater part of it.

"And you didn't protest? What's the world coming to? I see you've lost a little skin yourself. I hope you've not been breaking bounds and fighting?"

"He is a most impertinent man!" said Abdul Ali, trying to take his cue, and glowering at me. "He posed as a person interested in a school for El-Kerak, and afterward helped capture me by a trick!"

The Administrator frowned. It seemed I was going to be made the scape-goat. I did not care. I would not have taken a year of Sir Louis' pay for those two days and nights. When he spoke again I expected something drastic addressed to me, but I was wrong.

"An official apology is due to you, Sheikh Abdul Ali. Permit me to offer it, together with my profound regret for any slight personal inconvenience to which you may have been subjected in course of this—ah—entirely unauthorized piece of—ah— brigandage. I notice you have been bruised, too. You shall have the best medical attention at our disposal."

"That is not enough!" sneered Abdul Ali, throwing quite an attitude.

"I know it isn't. I was coming to that. An apology is also due to the French—our friends the French. I shall put it in writing, and ask you to convey it to Beirut to the French High Commissioner, with my compliments. I would send you by train, but you might be—ah—delayed at Damascus in that case. Perhaps Emir Feisal might detain you. There will be a boat going from Jaffa in two days' time. Two days will give you a chance to recover from the outrageous experience before we escort you to the coast. A first-class passage will be reserved for you by wire, and you will be put on board with every possible courtesy. You might ask the French High Commissioner to let me know if there is anything further he would like us to do about it. Now, I'll ring for a clerk to take you to the medical officer—under escort, so that you mayn't be subjected to further outrage or indignity. Good evening!"

"Anything more for me?" asked Grim, as soon as Abdul Ali had been led away.

"Not tonight, Grim. Come and see me in the morning." Grim saluted. The Administrator looked at me—smiled mischievously.

"Have a good time?" he asked. "Don't neglect those scratches.
Good evening!"

No more. Not another word. He never did say another word to me about it, although I met him afterwards a score of times. You couldn't help but admire and like him.

Grim led the way up the tower stairs again, and we took a last look at El-Kerak. The moon was beginning to rise above the rim of the Moab Hills. The land beyond the Dead Sea was wrapped in utter silence. Over to the south-east you could make out one dot of yellow light, to prove that men lived and moved and had their being in that stillness. Otherwise, you couldn't believe it was real country. It looked like a vision of the home of dreams.

"Got anything to do tonight?" asked Grim. "Can you stay awake? I know where some Jews are going to play Beethoven in an upper room in the ancient city. Care to come?"