"They are all right." Anazeh's eyes pursued the liquor bottle.
"Why not go and see?" I suggested.
"Ilhamdul'illah, they are good men. I know them. If there is trouble they will come and tell me."
The door opened softly. The gorgeous old-rose parasite slipped through. I had a mental vision of Mahommed ben Hamza lying face- downward with his new coat stained with blood. There was nothing for it, it seemed, but the magic formula to move Anazeh.
"Jimgrim says, 'See that ben Hamza gets safely away!"'
"Dog of a Hebron tanner's son—let him die! What is that to me?"
"It is Jimgrim's command."
"Wallahi haida fasl! (By God, this is a strange affair!) Wait here!"
Old Anazeh, with the name of the Prophet of God on his lips, cast an envious glare at the bottle of liquor and seized action by the forelock. There was nothing to excite comment in his getting up to leave the room. A dozen men had done that and come in again. He strode out, straight down the middle of the carpet. Suliman ben Saoud—Jimgrim—went on talking, and to judge by Abdul Ali of Damascus' increasingly restless retorts he was getting that gentleman's goat as promised. Finally Abdul Ali got to his feet and said that if the Ichwan would see him alone he would show him certain documents that would satisfy him, but that it would not be policy to produce them in public. He offered to send for the documents, and to show them during or after the banquet.
So Jimgrim sat down, and there was a good deal of quiet nudging and nodding. Every one seemed to understand that the Ichwan was going to be bribed; they seemed to admire his ability to get for himself a share of the funds that most of them had tapped.