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 mediaeval 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?”
