Nothing under that stone you’re sitting on?”
“Nothing, Jimgrim. I am old. The floor of the cave is cold. My sons give me the place of honor.”
“Suppose you let me look.”
Ali Baba hesitated and collected eyes like a hostess breaking up a dinner- party. It was perfectly obvious that at a word from their chief the whole gang would resist, but Grim stepped into the midst of the circle very coolly with his back to the most dangerous men and waited smiling. I knew what he had in mind. At the first symptom of attack he was going to put his foot on the candle. I got ready to bolt into the throat of the cave ahead of him where, with one rifle and one pistol he and I could keep the lot of them at bay while the policeman could run for help. He told me afterwards that he would have sent me running and kept the policeman by him; so the imaginary glory of a scrap that never happened is not mine after all.
What saved the situation was the Egyptian’s tactics. Fired by his own savage imagination he supposed Grim was going to lay hands on Ali Baba and he was one of the all-too-plentiful gentry who believe that numbers are the only unanswerable argument.
“Idiots! Kill him!” he screamed and began to struggle with the men who held him, burying his yellow teeth in the giant’s hand and striking out like a great ape simultaneously with arms and legs.
Now that giant was a great good-natured fellow—the apple of old Ali Baba’s eye and the pride of the gang. The blood squirted from his hand and the patriarch sprang up from his place to interfere, but not so quickly as the youngest, Mahommed, he who had helped us once at El-Kerak. He sprang across the floor from behind Grim and beat the Egyptian over the eyes with a fist like an olive-knot until he let go, stunned.
Then, while they crowded to make a fuss about the big man’s injury Grim very calmly lifted up the stone on which Ali Baba had been sitting. Funnily enough, I expected to see jewels and all the rest of the trimmings of the legendary robbers’ cave—golden money at any rate and perhaps a big iron chest with rings to lift it by. But Grim looked perfectly contented with the little paper packages that lay in the hole, neatly fastened with red string and laid in a circle like a clutch of flattened eggs.
“Who stole these from the doctor?” he asked, stowing them carefully away about his person. “You, Ali Baba?”
“Allah forbid! I would not rob the hakim. This dog of an Egyptian was in the hospital to have his eyes healed. He knows English and can read the names on labels.”
“Did you put him up to it?”
“Not I! He begged a meal from us afterwards and offered to show us how he fooled foreigners for money in the hotels of Massa (Egypt). So we came with him to this cave, where he had hidden what he stole; and here he breathed fire, and showed us how to do it. But he kept the secret to himself of how to mix the powders, putting the stuff on our tongues and teaching us until we could do it perfectly.”
“So you can’t work the fire-gift without him, eh?”
“More is the pity!”
“That settles that, then! Did you tell the people what I said about postponing action until tonight?”
“I and my sons. We all spoke of it. Some were angry with us. Some were pleased. Some doubted. But we, who had the fire-gift, had the last word. Jimgrim, we have kept faith.”
I went over and looked at the Egyptian, who was still stunned, gurgling through his gruesome mouth and bleeding pretty freely from Mahommed’s blows that would have felled a lion. The scars on his face looked like burns at close quarters; and that was likely, for they say that nearly all beginners at that trickster’s trade have ghastly accidents.
“What is this about the fire-gift going back, Jimgrim?” Ali Baba asked.
“It goes back tonight.”
“And we? Do you mean to put us to shame? Are we to have no hand in this? Is our honor not in your keeping?”
The gang crowded close on Grim to hear his answer, and Mustapha clucked nervously between his teeth, rattling the rifle to call attention to it.
I was as scared as he was, but if Grim minded in the least he did not show it.
“What’s this talk about honor?” he asked. “Are you trying to add to the terms of a bargain after it is made?”
“No, no, no!” they chorused and he laughed at them.
“What then?”
“We are your friends,” said Ali Baba. ”Inshallah, a man such as you is thoughtful for his friends!”
“Your friends, Jimgrim, don’t forget it!”
“Think of El-Kerak, Jimgrim!”
“Who provided camels for you when you went in pursuit of the Beersheba thieves?”
“When you were governor here, who brought word about the man from Bethesda—he who sought to knife you in the night? Remember that, Jimgrim!”
“Yes, and who slew the fakir who had gone mad?”
“Didn’t we save the life of the British officer, who had offended everybody and was mobbed?”
“Yes, and lied afterwards to save him from his own people! We have done everything that you ever asked of us, Jimgrim; isn’t our father Ali Baba’s honor in your keeping?”
“Well, what is it you want?” asked Grim.
“That we shall not be made the laughing-stock of El-Kalil!” Ali Baba answered solemnly. And at that they all sat down, in a circle as before, with Grim standing in the midst. So he moved the stone deliberately with his foot and sat down too, whereat they all clothed themselves in a new contentment. The Arab thinks far more highly of a judgment given sitting.
“This is a new bargain,” Grim began after a moment’s thought.
”Inshallah!“
“The terms are these: The old bargain continues until the end of this affair.”
”Na’am, na’am. (Yes, yes.)”
“Ali Baba shall retain such personal dignity as I can contrive for him, but the method must be mine.”
”Na’am, na’am.“
“In return for it, Ali Baba and all his sixteen sons and grandsons shall be the friends of the present governor, de Crespigny, and of his assistant Jones.”
”Taib! They are worthy of it. They are bold. The right spirit is in both of them! We agree!”
“And nothing in this agreement shall be construed to mean that Ali Baba and his gang shall not all or severally go to jail, if convicted of breaking the law in future. They go to jail in the proper spirit, without malice, if caught and convicted.”
”Taib! Agreed!”
“Very well,” said Grim. “Now three or four of you pick up that
