out into the street five minutes from now!”
“The governor must protect us!”
“Must he? You try him! Here he is listenin’ to what I say! I happen to know izzactly what he’ll do; soon as I’ve kicked you out, he’ll call for his cops to chase you down to the Ghetto where you belong! No; you’ve got your last chance; take or leave it! Who’s got a watch? Clock ‘em, some one. Give ‘em three minutes to decide!”
Grim pulled out Cohen’s own gold watch that had been the means of introducing him to all the trouble and laid it on the table ostentatiously, face upward.
“Time starts now!” he announced.
Cohen proceeded to put his shirt on, as if he always made a point of doing that before committing acts of violence; he looked something like a gladiator fitting on his mail—a muscled, beefy man, perfectly able to carry out his threat.
The Rabbi looked imploringly at de Crespigny for any sign of weakness, but was met by a smile whose enigmatic corners suggested anything but that. He tried to consult with his friends, but they thrust back the responsibility on him with shrugging shoulders and something vague about making complaint to Jerusalem later on.
“Thirty seconds more!” announced Grim and Cohen started for the door to open it.
“It is a scandal; but you compel me!” said the Rabbi, throwing up both hands, palms upward.
“Compel nothing!” Cohen retorted hotly. “You choose!”
“I have no choice. I am in the hands of determined men; what can I do?”
“Do you agree to the proposal?” asked de Crespigny. “I must!”
“No side-stepping!” said Grim. “We want a definite affirmative. Will you or won’t you?”
“Very well, I will. But there should be a writing—something in writing to prove afterwards that I am not responsible. This is none of my doing. I must not interfere with Moslem prejudices. I cannot accept the blame for it. You must absolve me.” Grim’s eyes met de Crespigny’s curiously across the table.
“How about it, Crep? If the old bird wants to be nasty afterward they may have to make an official goat of someone.”
“Oh, what’s the odds? I’ll sign it.”
“Don’t you!” broke in Cohen. “I’m the guy that forced him. Let me sign it! No reason why you should lose your job for this. The worst they can do to me is fire me out of the country. Come on, write him out a paper and I’ll sign it.”
“You’re a good scout, Aaron,” Grim answered, “but we won’t let you do it all. Rabbi, you write your own acquittal and I’ll put my name on it. I’m responsible for this.”
CHAPTER X.
“We must score the last trick with the deuce of spades!”
Cohen took charge of the training of the Rabbi and his men; not that they would not have preferred almost anyone else, for their scorn of him was marrow-deep. He had a certain amount of kindly feeling for them; they none for him whatever. Those timid old last-ditch conservatives had clung to their orthodoxy in the face of worse calamity than Cohen had ever dreamed of; and the pride that accompanies all conservatism had fossilized their humanity to a point where almost nothing mattered except form and ritual.
Most of them traced descent to ancestors who had been driven from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella and so added to a natural pride of race and creed an unnatural, exotic arrogance copied from the Dons.
But Cohen was for that very reason exactly the man to handle them. He had just enough sympathy to understand them and know what verbal shafts would surest sting them into obedience. He knew enough to threaten—too much to strike; to mock their pride and yet play up to it. And his business brain was working; he had grasped the extent of the possibilities and was keener now on making the most of the situation than on saving his own skin and ours.
I suspect that at the back of that bull-necked head of his he already had a scheme for making money out of the adventure somehow; if so, I am equally sure he abandoned it afterward, because, although a man of his parts might build up a business with the Hebron suk, the same amount of energy and intrigue expended elsewhere would bring at least ten-fold return. But he went at the training of those “Orthodoxies,” as he called them, with the zeal of a man who sees money at the other end.
That left Grim free for equally important things and he took them in proper order.
“Crep,” he said, “will you be a good fellow and go to the Mosque—don’t send, go yourself—and bring the Sheikh here. I’m going to curl up and sleep until he comes.”
“All right. In a hurry to see him?”
“No. My guess is that the more parading about the city you do the better. You and Jonesy and the Sheikh might do worse than interview the notables. Get the crowd so keen on tonight’s show that they’ll have no time to think of much else. Time’s the main thing, remember. We must gain time. Every minute of delay brings the arrival of the Sikhs a minute nearer. Better time the affair for ten o’clock. That may mean that some of ‘em’ll be too sleepy afterward to care for anything but bed. Dawn may see the Sikhs on the road. Bring the Sheikh here when you’re good and ready—any time before dark will do. But for the love of Mike, Crep, don’t tell him who I am—yet!”
“Your name means something in this place.”
“Maybe. But if he learns in advance that I’ve been in his mosque in disguise with a Jew and another American he’ll get rabies! Afterward it won’t matter; we’ll have the goods on him afterward! You keep up the fake about my being a messenger from Seyyid Omar of El-Kudz, or we’ll have the whole nest of wasps about our ears yet!”
So de Crespigny rode horseback into the city, acting on the well- established principle that however clumsy and inconvenient the horse might be in narrow streets, the man on his back looks like personified authority and commands more respect from the crowd than a man on foot.
That is particularly true in the case of Arabs, who think more of a man on a horse than in a motor-car. No mechanical appliance less than a machine gun makes much impression on their minds; the gun means power; the horse means dignity; most other modern trappings either excite cupidity or else contempt.
Grim curled up like a dog and slept on the window-seat as soon as de Crespigny had gone—unconscious almost the moment that he closed his eyes. That trick of sleeping like an animal whenever you so choose is only a forgotten gift; most men can pick it up again, like the sense of smell, that belongs to men as much as to the beasts and is far more valuable, really, than sight or hearing.
A deaf and blind man can still smell his way along, and know more of his surroundings than the ordinary man with eyes and ears intact, who hardly uses them. And as for that trick of sleep, it makes you independent of the clock and furlongs in the race ahead of others, who have to go to bed at stated intervals. It is one of the great good things that living in towns has stolen from us.
But Grim was not destined to sleep
