The Seventeen Thieves of El-Kalil/Chapter 8

O WE, who had gone forth that night but a party of three, returned a twenty-man platoon, dumping our prisoner at the jail en route. They lugged him like a corpse with heels trailing, and he hardly recovered consciousness before being locked up, which was a good thing for him as well as us, for he began acting like a caged wild animal at once, yelling as he wrenched at the cell bars, setting both feet against them, cracking huge shoulder-muscles in the effort to break loose.

There was almost a mutiny when Grim insisted on six of Ali Baba’s gang offering themselves at once to Dr. Cameron for a body-guard.

“Ask him to come soon, and you hold that Egyptian while he attends to him.”

“But Jimgrim, why? Surely such a man is better dead! And he is cunning. Later, when the rage has left him he will make plans and talk to the other prisoners through the bars.”

Grim laughed. “And give away the secret of the fire-gift, eh? Tell ’em you haven’t it any longer? Too bad!”

“One might go in there and kill him, as if it were by accident,” suggested Mahommed ben Hamza genially—he who had done the damage in the first place. “Or I could strike him through the bars, thus!”

“You for the gallows if you dare!” Grim answered. “There’s a row of old cells below-ground. Some of you men go down and clean out one of them thoroughly. I’ll have him put down there after the doctor’s through with him; then, if all’s well and you all play the game straight, he shall be taken to Jerusalem.”

All except six of them and Ali Baba trooped down-stairs with the easy familiarity of old frequenters of the place. They knew where the brooms and buckets were—whom to ask for soap—where to draw water; the whole routine of that establishment was at their fingers’ ends.

But Ali Baba and the six who went to offer their strong service to the doctor had to cool their heels. He was at the Governorate to breakfast, and had brought the nurse with him—a big, raw-boned Scots virgin from the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, where they call fish “fush” and the girl who cannot do the work of two southron men is not thought much of. I think she could have licked that Egyptian single-handed. She and Cohen were already in an argument about religion, and just as we came in she was telling him he would better mend his doctrine while there was time.

“For Hell’s an awful place!”

“Maybe you know?” he suggested. “Tell me some more, miss.”

She talked to him about fire and brimstone all through breakfast without any kind of malice but a perfectly sincere desire to scare him into Christianity.

“Ain’t you afraid you’ll get killed before night?” he asked, trying at last to turn the subject.

But she was not afraid of anything except bad doctrine, and only of that in case it should get by her unrebuked. As Cameron had said the day before, she was a good lass; she would stand.

“Tell me about Heaven,” sighed Cohen. “I’m tired of hearin’ about Hell.”

“Man, man! You may be in Hell before bedtime!” she answered and Grim laughed aloud.

“She’s quite right, Aaron. Initiation takes place directly after breakfast. Third degree follows, and Hell tonight!”

All through breakfast there were interruptions. De Crespigny had to keep leaving the table to interview local notables, who called to complain that the city was growing more turbulent every hour and they could not fairly be held responsible.

Jones swallowed a few mouthfuls and started off alone to look alert and confident in the swarming suk, since to appear the reverse of afraid was about the only available resource, though that seemed limitless. And just as breakfast finished there came once more the splutter and bark of a motorcycle down-street.

“Can you beat that?” asked de Crespigny, coming in and handing the dispatch to Grim. They let me look at it; in fact, it was passed around the table afterward, although the envelope was stamped “SECRET” as usual in enormous letters:

It was signed by the same staff-major who had written the message of the day before. But this time there was a foot-note, not typewritten but in the angular long-hand of the administrator himself.

“That postscript’s typical of ‘Pots and Pans’,” said Grim. “I’ll bet he’s sent help to some of the weak sisters elsewhere and counts on you fellows to worry through. There’s probably a raid in force coming up from the Jordan Valley and every available man in Jerusalem combed up to deal with it. How will you answer?” De Crespigny wrote two lines and showed them:

“Good!” said Grim. “He likes telegrams. Man fired at on the way?”

“Says not.”

“That proves nothing,” put in Cameron. “I’ve been five-and-twenty years here, and know their ways. They’re flocking into the city. So the fields are deserted. The Turks understood how to deal with them. The Turks, in a crisis like this, would have hanged out of hand any man found in the streets who did not belong to the city. I’ve seen them strung up in front of the jail in a row like haddock drying in the sun. Djemal Pasha would have straightened out this business in less than half a day. He was a rascal, though; he’d have lined his pockets afterwards with fines that would have kept them all too poor to make trouble for a year to come! Well, we’re not Turks and they’re gone. But I heard ex-president Roosevelt speak in Egypt. ‘Rule or get out!’ That was his advice. Speaking as a missionary, I’d say take the latter half of it—get out! Teach, yes, if they’ll listen; but teach ’em what? They’re as moral as we are. Teach ’em our Western commercialism? God forbid! Literature? We don’t read our own books, so why should they? Which of you can quote me half a line from Robbie Burns?”

“Speaking of burns, Doc,” put in Grim, “You’ve got to teach me some chemistry before lunch—something to prevent them.”

“I’m a very busy man.”

“Have you plenty of drugs?”

“I’ve plenty of nothing! Fifteen hundred pounds a year our Mission scrapes together for this hospital, and out of that must come my salary, if, as and when I choose to draw it. I’ve drawn it seven times in twenty years. Ye’d think Hebron would contribute something; it did at times under the Turks; but now all the rascals do is steal my stores. Teach, eh? Come wi’ me to the hospital and I’ll show ye how one man and one trained nurse care for eighty patients in a forenoon.”

░ SO COHEN, Grim and I walked over with him and the lady from the Hebrides and he barked with pleasure at sight of the paper packets that Grim laid on his office table in the trim stone mission building.

“This man Cohen has got to be made fire-proof!” Grim announced.

Cameron smiled.

“Has Miss Gordon’s sermon made him so afraid of Hell as that?”

“The point is, can you do it for us, Doc? Or must we experiment?”

“Well, there are preparations that so indurate the cuticle as to render it insensible to a very high degree of heat.”

“Are the ingredients in these packets?”

“Aye, some of them. These could be improved on.”

“What would you add?”

“Quicksilver, but I’ve none to spare. I think I can recall a formula, though, that I once used for the hands of a Turkish soldier who was employed in the castle armory on some hot metal work. Let’s see—mnmn—spirit of sulfur—onion juice—essence of rosemary—sal ammoniac—that’s all. You could make a paste of these drugs on the table, but it would be liable to form a hard film that might crack, with dangerous consequences. The other’s better; I’ve a notion it’s what they used in mediæval times when people went through the ordeal by fire—walking on hot plow-shares, ye know, and all that hocus-pocus.”

“Here’s your patient,” said Grim. “Make him Hell-proof, please!”

He pulled Cohen forward by the arm and the poor chap’s face changed color under the tan.

“Why me? Say, I’m not afraid of Hell! You quit your kiddin’! I’ve had about enough of this practical jokin’! That tank in the dark was my positively last performance!”

“Listen, old man—we’ve nobody but you,” said Grim. “You’ve got to carry the big end. All we can do is support you and watch points. You know perfectly well it would be no use trying to argue with the Jews of this place; we’ve got to show them. If you prove to them you can handle fire without getting burned and I prove to them that they’ll all be dead before night unless they sit into the game, we can make at least some of them play. It’s the only chance. If you should back down now, we’re done for! Go ahead, Doc—mix the devil’s undershirt. See that Satan has nothing on this man when it comes to squatting on the slag!”

“What? Have I got to sit on fire? Without pants?”

“No, not as bad as that.”

“There’s a word of advice I’ll give ye,” said Cameron. “It’s a simple matter to treat a man’s skin so that he can sit on hot coals, or walk on them, or take them in his hands. Ye may even put them in your mouth; but there’s the danger. That’s very dangerous. Ye can treat the inside of a man’s mouth so that flame won’t hurt it; but ye can’t reach the membrane of the throat or the lungs and I wouldn’t change places with the man who breathed flame inward!

“That’s how most of these fire-eaters ye see performing in Cairo and places like that come to a bad end. They don’t die so quickly but they’ve time to suffer the agony of the damned. I’d recommend ye to be very careful. And mind ye, I’m not asking what ye’re up to. It’s none o’ my business.”

It was a long job squeezing out the juice of onions and mixing up the different ingredients, but Grim and I lent a hand and Cohen watched like a victim getting ready for the stake. He had a feeling, that nobody could blame him for, of being put upon; and his naturally alert business instinct made him suspicious of taking what looked like more than his share of the risk, to say nothing of the physical danger involved in fooling with fire.

But Grim kept talking to him and did not make the mistake of minimizing what he had to do. He took the other line, making use of rather subtle flattery, saying how lucky we were to have a genuine, sure-fire American Jew to show the Orthodox crowd of Hebron how to save themselves.

But there wasn’t really the least doubt about Cohen. He would kick and complain for the simple business purpose of emphasizing his stake in the proceedings; that much was second nature. And he was certainly afraid; but so was I, and I don’t think Grim felt any too confident under his mask of cool amusement. But if Grim had told Cohen he was slated for sure death, though he would have argued the point undoubtedly, I’m pretty sure he would have gone ahead.

As a matter of fact, none of us was fooling himself very seriously about the chance of surviving that night’s work. The prospect was too slim altogether. There were too many opportunities for a slip, however carefully and cunningly Grim might stage-manage the affair. Besides, we had not yet converted the Orthodox Jews of Hebron to our plan; and to lift up a mountain by the roots and plant it in the sea might prove not much more difficult than to persuade those frozen-souled conservatives.

It was best not to try to imagine what might happen if we were detected playing tricks with Moslem prejudices—as might easily turn out. The Sheikh of the mosque, for instance, might turn cold at the last minute and denounce us as the best way out of his own predicament.

But Cohen was finally stripped to the waist to an accompaniment of joshing, and every inch of his skin was covered carefully with the preparation. Then that was allowed to dry and the whole performance was repeated, until at last Cameron pronounced him fire-proof from the waist upwards. But he doubted it volubly, until Grim struck a match and made the first test, holding the flame against his body in a dozen places without producing the least sensation.

After that it was vaudeville. Cohen’s spirits rose and his imagination with them. He staged a whole performance, and bally-hooed it in the bargain like a small-town circus side-show performer.

“Ladies and gents, you mayn’t believe it, but the guy who ought to spill the talk for me is sick. After my performance at the last town I was red-hot and he feared I’d set the bed on fire. So he took a bucket of water and threw it over me. The water turned to steam and scalded him. Now watch! The original and only noncombustible asbestos man!”

Cameron had to hurry through his hospital and then go to the jail to attend to the Egyptian, held down by the iron hands of Ali Baba’s men. So he lent Grim a battered old book on ancient magic and left us.

Cohen was so full of high spirits and original ideas for stunts by that time that it was quite a job to get him to pay attention, but Grim took as much pains with him as if he were a performing animal. Ali Baba had to be brought in, anointed with the dope and taught too, for the old Arab’s accomplishment was crude and limited, although he was a first-class showman in his own way.

Thereafter the whole plan for the night’s unlawful ritual had to be worked out in detail and there Ali Baba was a great help, for he understood the Arab mind and knowing Hebron of old could judge to a nicety just what would produce an effect and what would not. The hardest thing was to get Cohen imbued with a proper sense of solemnity, for he had a perfectly entire disrespect for every kind of ritual and was constitutionally inclined to make low comedy of it.

Again and again Grim impressed on him, Ali Baba seconding, the certainty that we, and every Jew in Hebron, would be killed that night unless he kept a straight face. He had no feeling for tribal history; none for pageantry; every suggestion Grim made he capped with a caricature of it.

“Say, when I reach the mosque steps, suppose I throw the fire in the Sheikh’s face and set alight to his beard, what then?”

The rehearsal was cut short by the noise of rioting. We were hardly a quarter of a mile from the Governorate and through the open window came the yelling of a mob that surged by the Governorate gate. It bore no resemblance to the singing of the men who had come dancing up-street the previous day, but was shriller voiced, without rhythm, and there was the ominous mob-growl underneath it like the anger of a hundred upset hives.

“Ah!” remarked Ali Baba dryly. “That will be the end of it all! No fire-gift tonight! Better run, Jimgrim! Run for Jerusalem while there is time! I would be sorry to see you with your throat cut!”

Grim was listening and signed to Ali Baba to be still. It was difficult to pick out words from the babel of noise down-street, for the uproar came from a thousand throats; but it was clear they were shouting for de Crespigny, and that was a good sign as far as it went. If they had intended murder they would have rushed the building, instead of calling for the governor to come and talk to them.

Suddenly Grim ran from the room and I after him. I didn’t stop to reason it out, but followed intuitively—partly from a sense of dependence on his swift wit and also because it’s easier, though not nearly always wiser, to meet trouble half-way than to sit and wait for it.

░ WE RAN out through a side door into a garden and followed a wall fronting on the road. At the far end was a rambling old barn-like building that nearly faced the Governorate. We entered that by climbing the wall at the end of the garden and in another minute were lying on the roof overlooking the crowd.

“Good Lord!” said Grim. “They’ve got the Chief Rabbi with them! It’s all up to young Crep now!”

To say they “had” the Rabbi was to state it very mildly. They had dragged him by the beard and driven him with blows. They held him now in their midst, bruised and terrified, while thirty or forty young Jews and one pathetically brave policeman strove to force their way through the crowd and rescue him—all yelling at the top of their lungs and being yelled at.

When de Crespigny came to the gate at last he was not smiling. I think that boy could have smiled in the face of torturers, for he had the priceless gift of self-control and an inborn faith in the value of a grin. But, as he said afterward, crowds vary; sometimes it pays to laugh at them, but at others the suggestion of a smile will goad them into fury. The man who smiled at that crowd would probably have paid for the indiscretion with his life.

As he reached the gate they thrust the Rabbi forward to confront him; but if the Jew deduced from that that he was going to get first word in he was wildly wide of the mark. Ten Arabs, holding the old man by the clothing, foaming at the mouth with emphasis and gesticulating like fish-wives, denounced him to the governor all together, while the crowd tossed in reminders and the Jews on the outskirts shrilled rejoinders. You couldn’t make head or tail of it, except that they were threatening de Crespigny. And as everybody talked at once he couldn’t understand them either.

“Touch and go!” said Grim to me. “Crep’s got the wind up! Lord send he keeps his head!”

De Crespigny watched his chance and then picked out the noisiest, most violent man to do the talking—a very wise move that, for it let off steam.

“Now,” he demanded, “what is it?”

“This cursed Jew is a thing they call a Rabbi. He is their leader. He should die. He has defied us and says you will protect him. The Sheikh of the Mosque of Er-Rahman had a vision concerning the fire-gift. It was stolen by thieves for use against the Jews, so the Jews are to return it or be slain! We went to this Rabbi to tell him what he must do tonight, and to make arrangements; but the father of lies swore he knew nothing about it and, what is more, would do nothing!”

“Nothing! I know nothing, nothing! What do I know of any fire-gift?” said the Rabbi.

“Perhaps he doesn’t!” said de Crespigny.

“He lies! He does! One was released from the jail this morning, who says he knows the thieves no longer have the fire-gift. So the Jews must have it! Who else?”

“Kill the liar! Kill him!” yelled the rear ranks that were close enough to hear.

De Crespigny looked up, for inspiration probably, and caught sight of Grim’s face peering over the roof. Grim nodded violently, that being the only available signal for “go ahead.” De Crespigny seemed to understand, and smiled at last.

“I know a way to persuade the Jews,” he said. “They no doubt have the fire-gift and they shall return it tonight. Leave the Rabbi and his friends here. I’ll see justice done!”

“Good boy!” Grim muttered. “That young Crep has gall and guts. Couldn’t be better! Now we’ve got the Rabbi with the wind up where he can’t talk back and can’t refuse! Oh, good!”