Omar’s messenger.”
“Show me a writing from him.”
Grim shook his head and sneered.
“It is from you that there must be a writing. I come with two witnesses to hear me ask the question and to prove that I report your answer truly. Shall I ask a second time?”
The Sheikh glared back and bit his beard, tortured I thought, between indignation and fear. I guessed Grim was on pretty safe ground now, for he knew Sheikh Seyyid Omar of El-Kudz intimately, and to my knowledge had done him a greater service than could ever be lightly overlooked; he was truly delivering a message from him for aught I knew; more improbable things have happened. True message or not, he waited with the air of a man who represents high authority.
“What business is it of Seyyid Omar’s? Let him mind his own mosque!”
“It is his judgment,” Grim answered, “that this place is lapsing into disrepute. If that is true it is his duty to accuse you. If the fault is not yours, although the charge is true, it is his purpose to help you remedy the matter.”
“It is not my fault.”
“But the charge is true?”
“Allah pity us, it is true! But how can Seyyid Omar help—a fat man with both hands full of troubles of his own?”
“He has sent us three.”
“If you were three angels with the trumpet of Gabriel I fail to see how you could set matters straight. There are seventeen thieves of El-Kalil who have tricked me and won the upper hand. May the curse of the Most High break their bones forever!”
“Who are they?”
“Ali Baba ben Hamza and his brood of rascals.”
“I have heard of them. Such ignorant men can surely never get the better of us.”
“They have it! Listen. That old dog Ali Baba ben Hamza came to me and said: ‘I am old and my sins weigh heavy on me. I saw a vision in the night. A spirit appeared to me and said I must pray all night at the tomb of Abraham, I and my sixteen sons, together with none watching. So I may obtain mercy and my sons shall have new hearts.’ That was fair speaking, was it not? Who am I that I should stand between a man and Allah’s mercy? But they are thieves, those seventeen, and the charge of this mosque is mine; so I would not lock them in the place alone, as they desired. I and another entered with them on a certain night and locked the door.”
“Leaving no guard outside?” asked Grim.
“Leaving seven men outside, whose orders were to stay awake. But they slept. When the door was locked those seventeen devils took me and the man who was with me, and laid cloths over our faces, having first saturated the cloths with a drug they had stolen from the hospital. I know that, because the foreign doctor made complaint afterwards that his drugs had been stolen. So I and the man who was with me also slept, I do not know how long. When we awoke we were deathly sick and vomited.”
“Where were the seventeen thieves by that time?” Grim asked him, for the Sheikh seemed too disturbed by the memory to go on with the tale.
“They were here, where we sit now. But I did not go in to them at once. They had laid me and the man who was with me in the northern porch not far from the cenotaphs of Jacob and his wife, and to reach them I had to pass by the entrance to the cave that has been sealed up these eight hundred years. Then I made a terrible discovery. Allah! But my eyes popped out of my head with unbelief! Yet it was so. The masonry had been broken through! They had been down into the tomb of Abraham!”
“Did you go and see what they had done down there?” Grim asked.
”Shi biwakkif! (Who could think of such a thing!) Allah! I did not dare! Eight hundred years ago a Turkish prince defied the guardians of the mosque and entered the tomb alone. He came groping his way out with eyesight gone, and could never tell what befell him, for his speech was also taken. After that the opening was sealed. Nay, I did not dare go. Who knows what spirits dwell in that great cave? But when my fear was a little overcome and wrath succeeded it I came in here to see what manner of curse had fallen on those seventeen men. They were breathing fire! As I sit here and Allah is my witness, they were breathing flame! It shot forth from their mouths as I stood and watched them!”
“And the man who was with you? What did he do all this time?”
“He came and stood beside me and saw all that I saw and bore witness. I took courage then, having another with me, and together we approached Ali Baba, who sat where you sit, and I demanded what it all might mean. The old thief—the old trespasser—the old damned rake answered that while he and his sons prayed there came an angel, who touched with his fingers the masonry that closed the entrance to the cave, so that it fell.”
“How did he account for your not seeing this?” asked Grim.
“He said that, the vision not being intended for me, the presence of the angel overpowered me and the man who was with me and we swooned. I accused him of having drugged us, but he answered that we must have dreamed that. The dog of a thief!”
“Well, go on. What next?”
“He said that the angel beckoned and he and his sixteen rascals followed into the tomb of Abraham, where a spirit came and breathed on them and they all received the gift of fire. In proof of it every one of the sixteen eggs of Satan belched fire from his mouth as the father of thieving spoke.
“You should have summoned your seven men, and have sent them for others, and have had Ali Baba and his thieves jailed for sacrilege,” said Grim.
“But I tell you the seven men slept! I opened the door and shouted for them, but none came; and Ali Baba and his sixteen dogs pushed past me through the door and were gone! So after we had locked the door again I and the other man who was with me took counsel together and I was for sending for the Governor of Hebron; but he said that would be to make a public scandal, which it were well to avoid.
“He said that the Moslems of Hebron would not be pleased with us if it were known that we had let ourselves be tricked in such a matter and that they would be yet less pleased with us if we should appeal to foreigners. Moreover, he confessed himself afraid. He said that after all the story of the angel might be true and that if we denied it there might be a tumult. There are many wild fools in El-Kalil!”
“But you, not he, are the Sheikh of the mosque,” said Grim.
“Truly. Yet he refused to follow the course I favored. He vowed that he would tell what he had seen with his own eyes and no more: to wit, the broken masonry and seventeen men all breathing fire in this place where we sit. He insisted that the wisest course for both of us would be to say nothing and to wait and see what Ali Baba and his sons might have to say first; to that course he was willing to agree.
“There is wisdom in silence; so he and I carried in cement and replaced the broken masonry with great care, agreeing to tell no word of it to any man until circumstances should reveal to us the right course. And the day following he ran away, Allah knows whither; so I am all alone to bear the brunt of this matter. Allah send a poor man wisdom that I may avoid disgrace!”
“Well—what account has Ali Baba given of it?”
“Have you not heard? He and his
