The King in Check/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
""Atcha, Jimgrim sahib! Atcha!""
THAT conversation and Jeremy's conversion to the big idea took place on the way across the desert to Jerusalem—a journey that took us a week on camel-back—a rowdy, hot journey with the stifling simoom blowing grit into our followers' throats, who sang and argued alternately nevertheless. For, besides our old Ali Baba and his sixteen sons and grandsons, there were Jeremy's ten pickups from Arabia's by-ways, whom he couldn't leave behind because they knew the secret of his gold-mine.
Grim's authority is always at its height on the outbound trail, for then everybody knows that success, and even safety, depends on his swift thinking; on the way home afterward reaction sets in sometimes, because Arabs are made light-headed by success, and it isn't a simple matter to discipline free men when you have no obvious hold over them.
But that was where Jeremy came in. Jeremy could do tricks, and the Arabs were like children when he performed for them. They would be good if he would make one live chicken into two live ones by pulling it apart. They would pitch the tents without fighting if he would swallow a dozen eggs and produce them presently from under a camel's tail. If he would turn on his ventriloquism and make a camel say its prayers, they were willing to forgive—for the moment anyhow—even their nearest enemies.
So we became a sort of traveling sideshow, with Jeremy ballyhooing for himself in an amazing flow of colloquial Arabic, and hardly ever repeating the same trick.
All of which was very good for our crowd and convenient at the moment, but hardly so good for Jeremy's equilibrium. He is one of those handsome, perpetually youthful fellows, whose heads have been a wee mite turned by the sunshine of the world's warm smile. I don't mean by that that he isn't a top-hole man, or a thorough-going friend with guts and gumption, who would chance his neck for anyone he likes without a second's hesitation, for he's every bit of that. He has horse-sense, too, and isn't fooled by the sort of flattery that women lavish on men who have laughing eyes and a little dark mustache.
But he hasn't been yet in a predicament that he couldn't laugh or fight his way out of; he has never yet found a job that he cared to stick at for more than a year or two, and seldom one that could hold him for six months.
He jumps from one thing to another, finding all the world so interesting and amusing, and most folk so ready to make friends with him, that he always feels sure of landing softly somewhere over the horizon.
So by the time we reached Jerusalem friend Jeremy was ripe for almost anything except the plan we had agreed on. Having talked that over pretty steadily most of the way from Abu Kem, it seemed already about as stale and unattractive to him as some of his oldest tricks. And Jerusalem provided plenty of distraction. We hadn't been in Grim's quarters half an hour when Jeremy was up to his ears in a dispute that looked like separating us.
Grim, who wears his Arab clothes from preference and never gets into uniform if he can help it, went straight to the telephone to report briefly to headquarters. I took Jeremy up-stairs to discard my Indian disguise and hunt out clothes for Jeremy that would fit him, but found none, I being nearly as heavy as Grim and Jeremy together. He had finished clowning in the kit I offered him, and had got back into his Arab things while I was shaving off the black whiskers with which Nature adorns my face whenever I neglect the razor for a few days, when an auto came tooting and roaring down the narrow street, and a moment later three staff officers took the stairs at a run.
So far, good; that was unofficial, good-natured, human and entirely decent. The three of them burst through the bedroom door, all grins, and took turns pumping with Jeremy's right arm—glad to see him—proud to know him—pleased to see him looking fit and well, and all that kind of thing. Even men who had fought all through the war had forgotten some of its red tape by that time, and Jeremy not being in uniform they treated him like a fellow human being. And he reciprocated, Australian fashion, free and easy, throwing up his long legs on my bed and yelling for somebody to bring drinks for the crowd, while they showered questions on him.
It wasn't until Jeremy turned the tables and began to question them that the first cloud showed itself.
"Say, old top," he demanded of a man who wore the crossed swords of a brigadier. "Grim tells me I'm a trooper. When can I get my discharge?"
The effect was instantaneous. You would have thought they had touched a leper by the way they drew themselves up and changed face.
"Never thought of that. Oh, I say—this is a complication. You mean?"
"I mean this," Jeremy answered dryly, because nobody could have helped notice their change of attitude: "I was made prisoner by Arabs and carried off. That's more than three years ago. The war's over. Grim tells me all Australians have been sent home and discharged. What about me?"
"Um-m-m! Ah! This will have to be considered. Let's see; to whom did you surrender?"
" you, I didn't surrender! I met Grim in the desert, and reported to him for duty."
"Met Major Grim, eh?"
"Yes," said Grim, appearing in the door. "I came across him in the desert; he reported for duty; I gave him an order, and he obeyed it. Everything's regular."
"Um-m-m! How'd you make that out regular? Have you any proof he wasn't a deserter? He'll have to be charged with desertion and tried by court martial, I'm afraid. Possibly a mere formality, but it'll have to be done, you know, before he can be given a clear discharge. If he can't be proved guilty of desertion he'll be cleared."
"How long will that take?" Jeremy demanded.
His voice rang sharp with the challenge note that means debate has ceased and quarrel started. It isn't the right note for dissolving difficulties.
"Couldn't tell you," said the brigadier. "My advice to you is to keep yourself as inconspicuous as possible until the Administrator gets back."
It was good advice, but Grim, standing behind the brigadier, made signals to Jeremy in vain. Few Australians talk peace when there is no peace, and when there's a fight in prospect they like to get it over.
"I remember you," said Jeremy, speaking rather slowly, and throwing in a little catchy laugh that was like a war-cry heard through a microphone.
"You were the Fusileer major they lent to the Jordan Highlanders—fine force that—no advance without security—lost two men, if I remember—snake-bite one; the other shot for looting. Am I right? So they've made you a brigadier! Aren't you the staff officer they sent to strafe a regiment of Anzacs for going into action without orders? We chased you to cover! I can see you now running for fear we'd shoot you! Hah!"
Grim took the only course possible in the circumstances. The brigadier's neck was crimson, and Jeremy had to be saved somehow.
"Touch of sun, sir—that and hardship have unhinged him a bit. Suffers from delusions. Suppose I keep him here until the doctor sees him?"
"Um-m-m! Ah! Yes, you'd better. See he gets no whisky, will you? Too bad! Too bad! What a pity!"
Our three visitors left in a hurry, contriving to look devilish important. Grim followed them out.
"Rammy, old cock," said Jeremy, sprawling on the bed again and laughing, "don't look all that serious. Bring back your brigadier and I'll kiss him on both cheeks while you hold him! But say; suppose that doctor's one of these swabs who serve out number nine pills for shell-shock, broken leg, dyspepsia, housemaid's knee and the creeping itch? Suppose he swears I'm luny? What then?"
"Grim will find somebody to swear to anything once," I answered. "But you look altogether too dashed healthy—got to give the doctor-man a chance—here, get between the sheets and kid that something hurts you."
"Get out! The doc 'ud put a cast-iron splint on it, and order me into a hospital. How about toothache? That do? Do they give you bread and water for it?"
So toothache was selected as an alibi, and Jeremy wrapped his jaw in a towel, after jabbing his cheek with a pin so as to remember on which side the pain should be. But it was artifice wasted, for Grim had turned a better trick. He had found an Australian doctor in the hospital for Sikhs—the only other Australian in Jerusalem just then—and brought him coo-ee-ing up-stairs in a way that proved he knew the whole story already.
THE autopsy, as he called it, was a riot. We didn't talk of anything but fights at Gaza—the surprize at Nazareth, when the German General Staff fled up the road on foot in its pajamas—the three-day scrap at Nebi Samwil, when Australians and Turks took and retook the same hill half-a-dozen times, and parched enemies took turns drinking from one flask while the shells of both sides burst above them. It seems to have been almost like old-fashioned war in Palestine from their account of it, either side conceding that the other played the game.
When they had thrashed the whole campaign over from start to finish, making maps on my bed with hair brushes, razors and things, they got to talking of Australia; and that was all about fighting too: dog-fights, fist-fights between bullockies on the long road from Northern Queensland, riots in Perth when the pearlers came in off the Barrier Reef to spend their pay, rows in the big shearing sheds when the Union men objected to unskilled labor—you'd have thought Australia was one big battle-field, with nothing else but fights worth talking of from dawn till dark.
The doctor was one of those tightly knit, dark-complexioned little men with large freckles and brown eyes, who surprize you with a mixture of intense domestic virtue and a capacity, that shouldn't mix with it at all, for turning up in all the unexpected places. You meet his sort everywhere, and they always have a wife along, who worships them and makes a home out of tin cans and packing cases that would put the stay-at-home housekeepers to shame. They always have a picture on the wall of cows standing knee-deep in the water, and no matter what their circumstances are, there's always something in reserve, for guests, offered frankly without apology. Never hesitate with those folk, but don't let them go too far, for they'll beggar themselves to help you in a tight place, if you'll let them. Ticknor his name was. He's a good man.
"Say, Grim, there's a case in the Sikh hospital that ought to interest you," he said at last. "Fellow from Damascus—Arab—one of Feisul's crowd. He wouldn't let them take him to the Zionist hospital—swore a Jew knifed him and that the others would finish the job if they got half a chance. They'd have been arguing yet, and he dead and buried, if I hadn't gone shopping with Mabel. She saw the crowd first (I was in Noureddin's store) and jabbed her way in with her umbrella—she yelled to me and I bucked the line.
"The Jews wanted to tell me I had no right to take that chap to the Sikh hospital, and no more I had; so I plugged him up a bit, and put him in a cab, and let him take himself there, Mabel and me beside him. Seeing I was paying for the cab, I didn't see why Mabel should walk. Of course, once we had him in there he was too sick to be moved; but the Army won't pay for him, so I sent a bill to the Zionists, and they returned it with a rude remark on the margin. Maybe I can get the money out of Feisul some day; otherwise I'm stuck."
"I'll settle that," said Grim. "What's the tune he plays?"
"Utter mystery. Swears a Jew stabbed him, but that Damascus outfit blame the Jews for everything. He's only just down from Damascus. I think he's one of Feisul's officers, although he's not in uniform—prob'ly on a secret mission. Suppose you go and see him? But say, watch out for the doc on duty—he's a meddler. Tell him nothing!"
"Sure. How about Jeremy? What's the verdict?"
"What do you want done with him?"
"I want him out of reach of trouble here pending his discharge. No need to certify him mad, is there?"
"Mad? All Australians are mad. None of us need a certificate for that. Have you arrested him?"
"Not yet."
"Then you're too late! He's suffering from bad food and exposure. The air of Jerusalem's bad for him, and he's liable to get pugnacious if argued with. That runs in the blood. I order him off duty, and shall recommend him within twenty minutes to the P.M.O. for leave of absence at his own expense. If you know of any general who dares override the P.M.O. I'll show you a brass hat in the wind. Come on; d'you want to bet on it?"
"Will the P.M.O. fall?" asked Grim.
"Like a new chum off a brumby. Signs anything I shove under his nose. Comes round to our house to eat Mabel's damper and sirup three nights a week. You bet he'll sign it: Besides, he's white; pulled out of the firing-line by an Australian at Gaza, and hasn't forgotten it. He'd sign anything but checks to help an Anzac. I'll be going.
"You trot up to the slaughter-shop, Grim, and interview that Arab—Sidi bin Something-or-other—forget his name—he lies in number nineteen cot on the left-hand side of the long ward, next to a Pathan who's shy both legs. You can't mistake him. I'll write out a medical certificate for Jeremy and follow. And say; wait a minute! What price the lot of you eating Mabel's chow tonight at our house? We don't keep a cook, so you won't get poisoned. That's settled; I'll tell Mabel you're coming. Too-tle-loo!"
But there was a chance that the brigadier might carry resentment to the point of sending up a provost-marshal's guard to arrest Jeremy on the well-known principle that a bird in the hand can be strafed more easily than one with a medical certificate. The bush was the place for our bird until such time as the P.M.O.'s signature should adorn the necessary piece of paper; so we three rode up in a cab together to the Sikh hospital, and had a rare time trying to get in.
You see, there was a Sikh on guard outside, who respected nothing under heaven but his orders. He wouldn't have known Grim in any event, being only recently from India; Grim's uniform would have passed him in, but he and Jeremy were still arrayed as Arabs, and my civilian clothes entitled me in the sentry's opinion to protection lest I commit the heinous sin of impertinence. An Arab in his eyes was as an insect, and a white man, who consorted with such creatures, not a person to be taken seriously.
But our friend Narayan Singh was in the hospital, enjoying the wise veteran's prerogative of resting on full pay after his strenuous adventures along with us at Abu Kem. There was nothing whatever the matter with him. He recognized Grim's voice and emerged through the front door with a milk-white smile flashing in the midst of newly-curled black hair—dignified, immense, and full of instant understanding.
Grim said a few words to Narayan Singh in Arabic, which so far as the sentry was concerned wasn't a language, but Narayan Singh spoke in turn in Punjabi, and the man just out from India began to droop like Jonah's gourd under the old soldier's scorn.
In consequence we got a full salute with arms presented, and walked in without having to trouble anybody in authority, Narayan Singh leading with the air of an old-time butler showing royalty to their rooms. He even ascertained in an aside, that the doctor of the day was busy operating, and broke that good news with consummate tact:
"The sahibs' lightest wish is law, but if they should wish to speak with the doctor sahib, it would be necessary to call him forth from the surgery, where he works behind locked doors. Is it desired that I should summon him?"
"Operation serious?" asked Grim, and neither man smiled. It was perfect acting.
"Very, sahib. He removes the half of a sepoy's liver."
"Uh! Couldn't think of interrupting him. Too bad! Lead the way."
But we didn't enter the ward until Narayan Singh and an orderly had placed two screens around number nineteen cot, in the way they do when a man is dying, and had placed three chairs at the bedside contrary to the regulations printed on the wall. Then Narayan Singh stood on guard outside the screens, but didn't miss much of the conversation, I believe.
The man in bed was wounded badly, but not fatally, and though his eyes blazed with fever he seemed to have some of his wits about him. He recognized Grim after staring hard at him for about a minute.
"Jimgrim!"
"Sidi bin Tagim, isn't it? Well, well I thought it might be you," said Grim, speaking the northern dialect of Arabic, which differs quite a bit from that spoken around Jerusalem.
"Who are these?" asked the man in bed, speaking hoarsely as he stared first at Jeremy and then at me.
"Jmil Ras, a friend of mine," Grim answered.
"And that one?"
He didn't like the look of me at all. Western clothes and a shaven face spell nothing reassuring to the Arab when in trouble; he has been "helped" by the foreigner a time or two too often.
"An American named Ramsden. Also a friend of mine."
"Oh! An Amirikani? A hakim?"[1]
"No. Not a doctor. Not a man to fear. He is a friend of Feisul."
"On whose word?"
"Mine," Grim answered.
Sidi bin Tagim nodded. He seemed willing to take Grim's word for anything.
"Why did you say a Jew stabbed you?" Grim asked suddenly.
"So that they might hang a Jew or two. Wallah! Are the Jews not at the bottom of all trouble? If a Greek should kill a Maltese it would be a Jew who planned it! May the curse of Allah change their faces and the fire of Eblis consume them!"
"Did you see the man who stabbed you?"
"Yes."
And was he a Jew?"
"Jimgrim, you know better than to ask that! A Jew always hires another to do the killing. He who struck me was a hireling, who shall die by my hand, as Allah is my witness. But may Allah do more to me and bring me down into the dust unburied unless I make ten Jews pay for this!"
"Any one Jew in particular?" Grim asked, and the man in bed closed up like a clam that has been touched.
He was a strange-looking fellow—rather like one of those lean Spaniards whom Goya used to paint, with a scant beard turning gray, and hollow cheeks. He had thrown off the gray army blanket because fever burned him, and his lean, hard muscles stood out as if cast in bronze.
"But for the Jews, Feisul would be king of all this land this minute!" he said suddenly, and closed up tight again.
Grim smiled. He nearly always does smile when apparently at a loose end. At moments when most cross-examiners would browbeat he grows sympathetic—humors his man, and, by following whatever detour offers, gets back on the trail again.
"How about the French?" he asked.
"May Allah smite them! They are all in the pay of Jews!"
"Can you prove it?"
"Wallah! That I can!"
Grim looked incredulous. Those baffling eyes of his twinkled with quiet amusement, and the man in bed resented it.
"You laugh, Jimgrim, but if you would listen I might tell you something."
But Grim only smiled more broadly than ever.
"Sidi bin Tagim, you're one of those fanatics who think the world is all leagued against you. Why should the Jews think you sufficiently important to be murdered?"
"Wallah! There are few who hold the reins of happenings as I do."
"If they'd killed you they'd have stopped the clock, eh?"
"That is as Allah may determine. I am not dead."
"Have you friends in Jerusalem?"
"Surely."
"Strange that they haven't been to see you."
"Wallah! Not strange at all."
"I see. They regard you as a man without authority, who might make trouble and leave other men to face it, eh?"
"Who says I have no authority?"
"Well, if you could prove you have"
"What then?" the man in bed demanded, trying to sit up.
"Feisul, for instance, is a friend of mine, and these men with me are his friends too. You have no letter, of course, for that would be dangerous"
"Jimgrim, in the name of the Most High, I swear I had a letter! He who stabbed me took it. I"
"Was the letter from Feisul?"
"Malaish[2] It was sealed, and bore a number for the signature. If you can get that letter for me, Jimgrim—but what is the use! You are a servant of the British."
"Tell me who stabbed you and I'll get you the letter."
"No, for you are clever. You would learn too much. Better tell the doctor of this place to hurry up and heal me; then I will attend to my own affairs."
"I'd like to keep you out of jail, if that's possible," Grim answered. "You and I are old acquaintances, Sidi bin Tagim. But of course, if you're here to sow sedition, and should there be a document at large in proof of it, which document should fall into the hands of the police—well, I couldn't do much for you then. You'd better tell me who stabbed you, and I'll get after him."
"Ah! But if you get the letter?"
"I shall read it, of course."
"But to whom will you show it?"
"Perhaps to my friends here."
"Are they bound by your honor?"
"I shall hold them so."
There was the glint in Grim's eye now that should warn anyone who knew him that the scent was hot; added to the fact that the rest of his expression suggested waning interest, that look of his forebode fine hunting.
"There's one other I might consult," he admitted casually. "On my way here I saw one of Feisul's staff captains driving in a cab toward the Jaffa Gate."
The instant effect of that remark was to throw the wounded man into a paroxysm of mingled rage and fear. He almost threw a fit. His already bloodless face grew ashy gray and livid blue alternately, and he would have screamed at Grim if the cough that began to rack his whole body would have let him. As it was, he gasped out unintelligible words and sought to make Grim understand by signs. And Grim apparently did understand.
"Very well," he laughed, "tell me who stabbed you and I won't mention your name to Staff-Captain Abd el Kadir."
"And these men? Will they say nothing?"
"Not a word. Who stabbed you?"
"Yussuf Dakmar! May Allah cut him off from love and mercy!"
"Golly!" exploded Jeremy, forgetting not to talk English. "There's a swine for you! Yussuf Dakmar's the son of a sea-cook who used to sell sheep to the Army four times over—drive 'em into camp and get a receipt—drive 'em out again next night—bring 'em back in the morning—get a receipt again—drive 'em off—bring 'em back—us chaps too busy shifting brother Turk to cotton on. He'll be the boy I kicked out of camp once. Maybe remembers it too. I'll bet his backbone's twanging yet! Lead me to him, Grim, old cock, I'd like another piece of him!"
But Grim was humming to himself, playing piano on the bed-sheet with his fingers.
"Is that man not an Arab?" asked the fellow in bed, taking alarm all over again.
"Arab your aunt!" laughed Jeremy: "I eat Arabs! I'm the only original genuine woolly bad man from way back! I'm the plumber who pulled the plug out of Arabia! You know English? Good! You know what a dose of salts is then? You've seen it work? Experienced it, maybe? Hah! You'll understand me. I'm a grain of the Epsom Salt that went through Beersheba, time the Turks had all the booze in sight and we were thirsty. Muddy booze it was too—oozy booze—not fit for washing hogs! Ever heard of Anzacs? Well, I'm one of 'em. Now you know what the scorpion who stung you's up against! You lie there and think about it, cocky; I'll show you his shirt tomorrow morning."
"Suppose we go now," suggested Grim. "I've got the drift of this thing. Get the rest elsewhere."
"You can fan that Joskins for a lot more yet," Jeremy objected. "The plug's pulled. He'll flow if you let him."
Grim nodded.
"Sure he would. Don't want too much from him. Don't want to have to arrest him. Get me?"
"Come on then," answered Jeremy, "I've promised him a shirt!"
Beyond the screen Narayan Singh stood like a statue, deaf, dumb, immovable. Even his eyes were fixed with a blank stare on the wall opposite.
"How much did you hear?" Grim asked him.
"I, sahib? I am a sick man. I have been asleep."
"Dream anything?"
"As your honor pleases!"
"Hospital's stuffy, isn't it? Think you could recover health more rapidly outdoors? Sick-leave continued of course, but—how about a little exercise?"
The Sikh's eyes twinkled.
"Sahib, you know I need exercise!"
"I'll speak to the doctor for you. In case he signs a new certificate, report to me tonight."
"Atcha, Jimgrim sahib! Atcha!"