The Seventeen Thieves of El-Kalil/Chapter 2

HE Scots doctor’s prognostications were proven accurate sooner than expected. Rumor travels on swallow’s wings in that land and almost as soon as Cohen’s bag had been carried in there came a native policeman looking pallid under the bronze, who saluted precisely and then talked to de Crespigny and Jones with the familiarity of an old nurse to children.

“Word has come that the Jews in Jerusalem are massacring Moslems! Shall ten of us prevent the Moslems here from turning the tables on the Jews? Better let it be known at once that we intend to stand aside. Then let them get the business over with. Afterward will be the proper time to make arrests.”

He looked like a perfectly good policeman, but there had not been time enough yet to educate out of him Turkish notions of convenience.

“Who brought the news?” asked de Crespigny.

“He is outside.”

“Bring him in.”

A burly-looking ruffian with more white to his eye than sheer straightforwardness begets, clad in a smelly sheepskin coat and with a long knife tucked into his sash, was ushered in and stood uncomfortably in the middle of the room.

“Are you from Jerusalem?” de Crespigny asked him.

“Yes.”

“Since when?”

“I have just come.”

“And you left Hebron after seven o’clock this morning to my knowledge! Have you got so virtuous and truthful that you’ve suddenly grown wings?”

“I went half-way and met three men, who said the Jews of Jerusalem have risen and have already killed three thousand Moslems. So I came back.”

“To talk about it, eh? Well, if I hear of your repeating such a lie in Hebron I’ll clap you in the jail, d’ you understand me? Go home and hold your tongue.”

”Taib.”

The man slouched out again, but three more reports arrived by way of the back door within the next ten minutes, the last one giving the total of slain at exactly four thousand eight hundred and one Moslems, adding that the Jews were parading through Jerusalem in triumph.

“All of which probably means that a Jew has been killed and the Moslems are looting,” Grim commented quietly.

The next alarm was a message from the Arab jailer to say that his prisoners were getting out of hand and that a crowd was collecting outside the jail.

Jones volunteered to go and investigate, but before he could leave the room two policemen came running in with word that the crowd was swarming up- street toward the Governorate. We could hear them a moment later. They were taking their time about it, singing as they came, pausing at intervals to dance a few steps in measure and then surging on. The song was like the Carmagnole of the Terror. De Crespigny got up from his chair—thought better of it —sat down again and lighted a cigarette. After that he passed the case around and we each took one, Cohen included.

“What’s going to happen?” asked Cohen. “Those guys coming to kill us?” He looked less afraid than I felt. “Well, I guess it’s up to you fellers to fix this.”

“I’ll go out and talk to them,” said de Crespigny.

“Take your time,” Grim advised him. “Let them wait for you.”

It was obvious that de Crespigny and Jones felt better for Grim’s being there, although to my mind he was stretching his policy of non-interference to absurd limits. I had seen enough of his influence with Arabs at one time and another to convince me that he could do nearly what he liked with them and I itched to tell him to take charge and use his resourceful wits. He made no move whatever, but sat like a wooden Indian in front of a tobacco store, blowing out the cigarette-smoke through his nose.

The crowd—there must have been two or three thousand of them—came thundering up-street, chanting over and over again a rape-and-murder chorus in response to the stanzas of a solo sung by a man who was carried shoulder-high in their midst waving a sword. I could see his sword through the window, over the top of the shrubs and the stone wall. They halted in front of the gate and the song ceased. In the silence that followed when the shuffling of feet had died down you could hear them breathe.

“I suppose they’ll swipe our camels?” I suggested.

“Not yet,” Grim answered. “They’ll do nothing much yet unless they think we’re rattled. Take your time, de Crespigny.”

The Governor of Hebron got out of his chair again with all the stately dignity of twenty-six amusing years, and lighted another cigarette with a deliberately steady hand.

“Do I look as if I’d got the wind up me, or any rot like that?” he asked.

“You look good,” Grim assured him. “Be sure you smile, though. You’ll pull it off all right.”

“Shall I come with you?” asked Jones.

“No. Better not. They might think we were scared, if two of us went. So long.”

De Crespigny walked out, doing the most difficult thing in the world perfectly, which is to act exactly like your normal self when fear is prompting you to bluster and look preternaturally clever. Jones began talking in a matter-of-fact voice to Cohen about his emigration scheme.

“Care to come with me?” asked Grim; and he and I went upstairs to watch from a bedroom window, screening ourselves carefully behind the curtains.

“These are two good boys,” said Grim. “More depends on them than you guess. If they can hold Hebron quiet for two days, all’s well. If not, the next thing will be a march on Jerusalem, and every Moslem in the country is likely to follow suit.”

“Couldn’t the British machine guns deal with that?”

“Of course. But who wants to slaughter ’em?”

“Pity the wire’s down,” said I.

“Uh-uh! Wouldn’t be any good. All the troops Jerusalem could spare would only whet these fellows’ appetites for blood. Judging by the symptoms before we came away I should say Jerusalem will have its hands full for the next forty-eight hours or so. But watch de Crespigny.”

░ THE crowd in the street was packed so densely that those nearest were pressed against the gate and de Crespigny could not open it. There was only one gap in their midst, where one of our camels lay and the other stood moving his jaw phlegmatically. Camels get excited only when they shouldn’t, and insist on taking human climaxes with the indifference they possibly deserve; those two beasts were the only meditative creatures within view, although the crowd was silent enough—sweating in the hot sun—a sea of faces set in the white frames of kufiyis, angry, but intensely anxious to know what this youngster of an alien race proposed to do.

De Crespigny did not hesitate. He vaulted on to the wall, stood on it for a minute to judge the number of the crowd and get a bird’s-eye view of what was happening on its outskirts, then sat down on the wall facing them, with his feet hanging on a level with their breasts. They could have seized him easily. A fool would have stood up and tried to look dignified out of reach.

“Now, don’t all speak at once,” he began. “What do you want?”

Of course they all did speak at once, at the top of their lungs for the most part and he waited until the tumult died.

“Suppose one or two of you speak for the rest,” he suggested at last.

A burly man of middle age took that duty on himself and de Crespigny had to draw his legs up, for the men in front were crushed tight against the wall by those behind who wanted to hear better. So he set his feet on the shoulders of the men beneath him and they seemed rather to like it.

“We are told that the Jews in Jerusalem are murdering our co- religionists!”

“I’ve heard that story too,” said de Crespigny. “If it’s true, it’s bad.”

“Give us rifles, then! We are going to Jerusalem to help our friends!”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. The military might mistake your motive; then there’d be an accident. Let’s find out the truth first; I’m as keen to know it as you are. Tell you what: the wire’s down, so I can’t phone, but see those two camels. Why don’t you choose two men whose word you can depend on, let them take those camels, and bring back word? I’ll write a pass that will get them by the guard outside Jerusalem; and I’ll give them a letter asking the authorities to let them see what’s happening. How about it?”

The sweet reasonableness of that offer was too much even for their fanaticism, but there were men at the back of the crowd to whom it did not appeal for various reasons—the chief of them, no doubt, that it postponed the hour of looting.

“Ali Baba ben Hamza is in the jail on a Jew’s complaint!” they yelled. “Let him out! Give him back to us!”

“Certainly not!” laughed de Crespigny. “I’ve had most of you in the jail at one time or another! Which of you was ever jailed unfairly? Ali Baba ben Hamza stays in until he’s had a fair trial. Anything else?”

“How do we know the Jews in the jail haven’t killed him already?”

“You know quite well I’d never let them. There are only three Jews in the jail, and Ali Baba has a cell to himself. However—choose a committee of five or six of you, and I’ll issue a permit for the committee to visit him and make sure.”

“Let him out! Let him out!”

“Certainly not! Choose your committee if you want to. But you’re wasting time. Send two men to Jerusalem on the camels and bring us all back that news.”

“Kill him!” yelled some one from behind, but no other voice repeated it and the man who had made the suggestion was elbowed further to the rear. De Crespigny pretended not to have heard.

“I could recognize that fellow again,” said I.

“Never mind him,” Grim answered.

“You’d all better go away now and wait in your homes until the camels get back,” said de Crespigny. “I’ll see the head-men inside the city in the mejliss hall half an hour from now. Take care that all the head-men come! Who are going on the camels? What are their names?”

It did not take them a minute to choose delegates, for among Arabs there never seems any doubt as to which man’s evidence is to be preferred before that of others. De Crespigny took their names, vaulted off the wall, and went into the house to write a pass for them. Before he returned with it the crowd had already begun to disperse, relieving the pressure so that he could open the gate this time and go out among them. The pass was written in English for the benefit of British sentries, but he read it aloud to the nearest men, translating into Arabic to satisfy them that they were not being tricked; and the moment the camel-men were off the crowd went too, in the opposite direction. They seemed to have forgotten about Ali Baba ben Hamza in the jail.

“That gives us eight hours’ breathing space at all events,” de Crespigny laughed when we rejoined him in the room downstairs. “Next question is what to do with it. I’ll interview the head-men presently and use strong language, but what after that?”

“Stage a side-show,” Grim answered.

“Easy to say, but what? How?”

“Suppose we call that my end?” Grim suggested.

“All right, sir. That’ll suit me.” De Crespigny turned to Jones. “How’s the jaw now? I think perhaps you’d better show yourself in the city. Walk about the place and show them we’re not panicky; it’ll do our policemen as much good as anyone to see we’re cool and on the job. How many men are on guard outside the jail?”

“Three.”

“Take one away. Tell the other two they’re such fine fellows that two’s plenty. Let the third man walk through the streets behind you, it’ll do his guts good. I’ll stroll about too, after I’ve seen the head-men. Meet here for dinner, eh? Leave you to your own devices, I suppose?” he added, smiling cheerfully at Grim.

“Yes. I shall visit the jail first. So long.”

Cohen heaved a huge sigh as de Crespigny and Jones walked out.

“Eight hours, eh? Well, that’s something! But why, if two o’ them knifers can go to Jerusalem on camels, can’t some other feller go and ask for troops? What this place needs is Sikhs—lots of ’em, with the corks off the end o’ their bayonets! Why not indent for a regiment quick an’ lively?”

“Because,” Grim answered slowly, “they’ve plenty to worry them just now in Jerusalem without our adding to it. The troops at Ludd are being held in readiness to go elsewhere and all the men in Jerusalem are hardly enough to keep order. If we can’t handle this without the Sikhs, we’re ‘it,’ that’s all.”

“And you’re going out? And him? He going with you? I’m to sit alone in this place? What d’you take me for?”

“A man.”

“Say; I’ll go with you to the jail!”

“Uh-uh! Jews indoors just now! If the Arabs were to fall foul of you and draw blood, there’d be no stopping them. Sit here and read. You’ll be all right.”

I felt strong sympathy for Cohen. Perhaps what Grim had said of him while we were on the way had something to do with that, but I think I would have liked him in any case, not being one of those unfortunates so prejudiced that they loathe Jews simply because there was once a man named Judas. There were and are others.

Grim was obviously working him thoughtfully, no doubt in order to bring to the top the particular quality or mood he then had use for—that being Grim’s way. I have never known him try to convert a man, or waste much time on futile argument; so far as I have been able to analyze Grim’s method from close study of it, I should say he accepts the world exactly as he finds it and then looks keenly for something he can use. He invariably seems to find it somewhere in the heap, although not by any means always on top.

“Doin’ things is easy,” Cohen grumbled. “Sittin’ still expectin’ things to happen is what eats you.”

“All the same, sit here,” Grim answered. “There’ll be plenty for you to do presently. We shall need the use of your wits and all your pluck. Out in the street they’d very likely kill you and I’ve never seen a dead man’s brains real active. I’m off to get your watch.”

“Shucks! Let ’em keep it! Don’t get startin’ more trouble!”

“Did you ever see a forest fire in the States checked by setting another one?” Grim answered. “Sit tight, Cohen; we’ll be back for dinner.”

But we did not start out in the Arab clothes we were still wearing. Upstairs in de Crespigny’s bedroom Grim got into his major’s uniform and I changed into flannels—it was hot enough for a bathing suit. The room was full of curios de Crespigny had picked up in the course of eight years’ foreign service and Grim used up a minute or two studying a picture of Japanese Shintoist priests performing the “Hi-Watterai” stunt of walking barefooted on a bed of burning charcoal.

“Who was it said that about the world being full of a number of things?” he remarked. “Are you ready? Come on.”

In the street he began to let fall little scraps of information in that aggravating way he has, that starts you conjecturing and guessing until you realize that you know less than you thought you did before.

“This old Ali Baba ben Hamza that de Crespigny has put in jail is the very man I left Jerusalem to come and see. He’s the father of Mahommed ben Hamza, who helped us at El-Kerak you remember, and again to some extent at Ludd. The old boy has sixteen sons and grandsons, and they’re about the toughest gang this side of Chicago. If they’ve got Cohen’s watch we ought to be able to stave off a holy war.”

“I never heard anything sound more like a complete non sequitur,“ said I.

“Thieving has been a poor trade in Hebron lately,” he answered. “When professional thieves come on hard times, Ramsden, they pray for trouble as a rule and usually help to start it, with a view to loot. There’ve been strange doings by night in this town of late. Let’s hope Doc Cameron has plenty of chemicals.”

“What on earth for?”

“We’ve got to stage a bluff or go fluey.”

It was not far to the jail and there were not many people in the street to see us pass; but those who did see us recognized Grim and were respectful, if not exactly obviously glad to know he was in town. I saw one man go running off in the direction of the city to carry the news.

The jail was a long stone structure with a stone roof and iron-barred windows, looking not altogether unlike an American armory on a small scale. The two dark-gray-uniformed policemen on guard outside it became suddenly possessed by a new spirit at sight of Grim and beamed at him as they presented arms. He stopped for a minute to address each of them by name and make some familiar joke in Arabic.

“Nothing to be afraid of,” he assured them.

They laughed, shrugged their shoulders and seemed to revert at once to their former state of gloom.

“If only there were Sikhs here! Our two officers are very young and there are only ten of us! The men in the city are calling us traitors, being Moslems born in this place yet taking the pay and obeying the orders of the British, who are foreigners! And now come these tales from Jerusalem! We are willing to die like men but, in the name of God, Jimgrim, this is no joking matter!”

“Who am I, that you should think I joke about it?” Grim answered. “I am a foreigner. I take the pay and obey the orders of the British. They and you and I are here to keep the peace, that is all. Our honor is concerned in the matter. There is more honor in being ten than ten thousand, when the ten are right and the others wrong. As for the youth of your officers—which would you prefer, young capables or old fools?”

“True—true, Jimgrim! We will stand! Depend on us!”

“Those fellows’ property would be the first to be looted, if looting should begin,” said Grim as we entered the jail. “It’s a of a test for men who were fighting for the Turks two years ago! The rest of us think we’re men of principle and all that, but we don’t know what temptation is! I’d like to know I was as brave as one of those policemen.”

The jail was as clean as the proverbial new pin, divided up on the Turkish system into stone-floored cells, with room in each for twenty or thirty miserables on occasion, although now there were only two or three men clad in coarse jail suits who peered through each barred door curiously. They looked fat and on the whole not dissatisfied.

░ THE cell we sought was at the far end, and it seemed empty; but the Arab jailer who had followed us unlocked it and slammed the iron door shut again in a hurry behind us, as if afraid some wild beast might escape. Yet all we found inside was a meek-looking old patriarch with a long blue-gray beard, who sat in a corner telling amber beads so piously that he could hardly spare us attention. They had not dressed him in a jail suit; he was arrayed in all the full-flowing Arab dignity that is very far from being a mere mask. It is the outward and visible sign of an inner quality that makes those who know the Arab well prefer to condone his roguery.

“Mar’haba, Ali Baba!”

“Allah y’afik, Jimgrim! It is time! Behold the indignity to which that young whelp of an Englishman has put me! I have grandsons older than him! Yet he put me in this cell, laughing when I cursed him, as if an old man’s curse had no weight. When I threatened him, he offered me tobacco—the young spawn of an adder! Tell the jailer to bring in two chairs, Jimgrim, and some tea, so that I can offer you hospitality! You and your friends will all be dead by midnight, but what of it? There is no malice between me and thee. Speak through the door to the jailer.”