"Take her some of Mrs. Davey's candy. Don't eat it on the way, mind. Get inside the place if you can. If she won't let you in try how much you can see through the door. Ask no questions. If she asks what you've been doing, tell her the truth: say that you cleaned my boots and washed Julius Caesar. Then come back here and tell me all you've seen."
"Sending him to spy on his own mother, Jim?" asked Mrs. Davey as Suliman left the room with candy in both fists. She paused from stitching at the cotton bags to look straight at Grim.
"His mother is old Scharnhoff's housekeeper," Grim answered. "Scharnhoff wouldn't stand for the boy, and drove him out. The mother liked Scharnhoff's flesh-pots better than the prospects of the streets, so she stayed on, swiping stuff from Scharnhoff's larder now and then to slip to the kid through the back door. But he was starving when I found him."
Mrs. Davey laid her sewing down.
"D'you mean to tell me that that old butter-wouldn't-melt-in- his-mouth professor is that child's father?"
"No. The father was a Turkish soldier—went away with the Turkish retreat. If he's alive he's probably with Mustapha Kemal in Anatolia. Old Scharnhoff used to keep a regular harem under the Turks. He got rid of them to save his face when our crowd took Jerusalem. He puts up with one now. But he has the thorough-going Turk's idea of married life."
"And to think I had him here to tea—twice—no, three times! I liked him, too! Found him interesting."
"He is," said Grim.
"Very!" agreed Goodenough.
"If it weren't for that harem habit of his," said Grim, "some acquaintances of his would have blown up the Dome of the Rock about this time tomorrow. As it is, they won't get away with it. Suliman came and told me one day that his mother was carrying food to Scharnhoff, taking it to a little house in a street that runs below the Haram-es-Sheriff. I looked into that. Then came news that two tons of TNT was missing, on top of a request from Scharnhoff for permission to go about at night unquestioned. After that it was only a question of putting two and two together—"