in the city; and the servant began laying the table for dinner with a brave effort to seem cheerful too, as if he hoped we might live to eat it. He was a wizened old city Arab, deeply pitted with smallpox marks, who had seen his share of trouble in Hebron and retained little except poverty and a huge capacity to doubt.
“The city’s quiet,” announced de Crespigny, as we started on the soup. “Either they’re waiting for the men on the camels to bring back a report, or they’ve made up their minds to cut loose at midnight. There’s no knowing which. I acted Dutch uncle to the head-men in the mejliss hall.”
“How old was the youngest of them?” I asked him.
“Lord knows. Why? What difference does his age make? I told them they are responsible for good order in the city and that I’ll hold their noses to it. The Jews made the most fuss; they’re naturally scared. They demanded a curfew rule—everybody to be within doors after eight o’clock.”
“Did you agree to that?” Grim asked—a shade sharply it seemed to me. He left off eating soup and waited for the answer.
“Didn’t dare. Couldn’t enforce it with ten policemen. So I pretended to give the idea a minute’s consideration and then told ‘em the head-men might make any ruling they liked and that at the first sign of disorder the head-men will be the ones who’ll catch it! On top of that I told ‘em I’ve decided not to send for troops as long as they behave themselves; thought that might explain away the fact that we can’t get troops!”
“Good boy!” said Grim.
“I feel like Pontius Pilate!” laughed de Crespigny.
“He was better off; he had about a hundred men,” said Jones. “All the same, you’ve done what he did. I was all through the city. You’ve jolly well got P. Pilate Esquire looking like a silver-plater cantering behind the crowd at the end of a season.”
“Thanks!”
“What I mean is, I think you’ve kept on top. You were so jolly cool they think you’ve got a red ace up your sleeve.”
“I’m hoping Grim has,” said de Crespigny.
“Sure—I’ve got Cohen,” answered Grim.
Cohen laid his spoon down and looked about him.
“Red ace? Me? Up anybody’s sleeve? Say, quit your kiddin’!”
“All right. You’re to do the kidding from now on.”
“Kid myself, I suppose? Kid myself my stummik don’t feel creepy each time there’s a new noise in the street!”
“Yes, kid yourself. You’re going to be an Arab after dinner.”
“Well, give me a long knife then! Maybe I’ll wave it an’ preach a holy war an’ lead all the Arabs in rings around the country until they get sore feet an’ die o’ homesickness? That’s a better idea than any I’ve heard yet.”
“You’ve got to lead Jews, not Arabs,” Grim answered.
“Me? In this place? It can’t be done. They’re all Orthodox here. There isn’t one of ‘em would listen to me.”
“We’ll see,” Grim answered and he would not say another word on the subject all through dinner.
It was not an easy meal. There were constant interruptions by mysterious men from the city who sought word with de Crespigny. Most of them were men who feared for their property in case of an outbreak of violence—for the Moslems loot pretty indiscriminately when the game begins, and he who has an enemy does well to watch him. But two or three of them were on the official list of spies and their reports were not reassuring.
However, we reached the stage of nuts and port wine without having been fired at through the window, which was something, and although there was an atmosphere of overhanging danger, not lessened by the smoky oil lamps and the shadows they cast on the wall, or by the dead silence of the street outside, broken only at intervals by the cough of the solitary sentry. I, for one, did not feel like a doomed man; and I suspected Cohen of feeling less afraid than he pretended. I think he was actually more nervous about what Grim had in store for him than creepy about Arab knives.
* * * * *
After dinner the house was ransacked for Arab garments that would fit him, and in half an hour he was trigged out well enough to deceive any one. The Jewish are not unlike Arab features, in the dark especially, and there was less risk of his being detected than of my making some bad break that would give the three of us away; although by that time under Grim’s tuition I had learned how to act an Arab part pretty well, provided I held my tongue.
Cohen could talk Arabic as easily as English, being a linguist like most Jews, as against my mere beginner’s efforts. But Grim would not hear of leaving me behind. I am convinced that over and over again if he had left me out of things he could have accomplished his purpose more easily, but he has a sort of showman instinct under his mask of indifference to side-issues, coupled to a most extravagant devotion to his friends.
I should say that his weakest point is that. He is inclined to run absurd risks to do a friend a favor, and takes a child’s delight in springing a weird surprise on you, often for his purpose treating regulations and such encumbrances as if they never existed. And his friends are strictly of his own choosing. Nationality, creed, social standing, even morality, mean nothing to him when it comes to likes and dislikes, so that you often find yourself in strange company if you are lucky enough to stumble into his astonishing circle, as I did.
He and Cohen and I left the house by the front door—I with strict instructions to keep silent and much occupied with the difficulty of walking like a native. We went past the jail, where the man on duty did not recognize us, for he challenged gruffly and cautioned us to go home; then straight on down the empty street toward the city, where hardly a light hinted that more than twenty thousand people dwelt.
Parts of the ancient wall are standing, but there are no gates left and it was only as the street grew narrower and crooked that we knew we were within. There was no moon; so although the purple sky was powdered with blazing jewels, the shadows were black as pitch and it was more by watching the roof- line than the pavement that we found our way.
Now and then we passed under tunnels where ancient houses with six-foot- thick walls were built over the street; but those were generally lighted by dim oil lamps that flickered wanly, suggesting stealthy movements in the dark ten feet away.
It was clean enough underfoot, for those two boys had set at naught the Palestinian obsession for saving water that is as old as the tanks they preserve the rain in; but as the camel-load-wide street shut in on us, the smells of ancientry awoke, until we came to the ghetto and a stench like rotting fish put all other sensations for the moment out of mind.
You can get a suggestion of the same smell in New York in the small streets where the immigrants live awhile before they begin to absorb America.
There an iron lamp hung on a bracket and shed gold on the flanks and floor of a plain stone arch. There had been a great gate, for the hinges were there, but the gate was gone. Under the arch, beyond the farthest rays of lamplight was the night in its own home, blacker than the gloom of graveyards. There was not a sound or a suggestion of anything but mother-night, that you might lean against.
Grim led the way in. It felt like
