if I hold you three as hostages, and retire from Abu Lissan?” he asked suddenly.
That being a poser, it was my turn to meditate. None of us had an answer ready. I could have told him it would be a breach of faith to treat messengers in that way, but there isn’t much to be gained, as a rule, by imputing bad faith in advance of the occurrence.
“That would not prevent pursuit,” I said at last, “but it would lose you the good offices of Jimgrim.”
“You mean he would—
“I mean,” I interrupted, “you would have to make what terms you could with your enemies, instead of signing peace on a friend’s conditions.”
“Conditions? What conditions will he make?”
“Who am I that I should answer that?” I replied. “You, who know Jimgrim, should be able to judge whether he will be fair with you or not.”
“Jimgrim and I are brothers. He did me a favor once,” he muttered half- aloud; then relapsed again into silence, and was silent for so long a time that I began to be nervous about the hour. We had only until dawn to succeed; sunlight would show the skeleton on which our glittering display was spread.
“Try Jimgrim again,” I suggested at last; and for answer he clapped his hands together.
One of the staff brought him paper and pen, and at Ibrahim ben Ah’s dictation he signed a statement “in the name of Allah, the all-merciful, the compassionate,” that he would agree to Jimgrim’s terms if Jimgrim would come and hold the balance squarely between himself and Ali Higg.
He did not whine, squeal, wriggle, swear, seek to excuse himself, equivocate, or make any fuss at all, but acted throughout manfully, ordering coffee to be brought as soon as he had signed the paper, and behaving generally like a gentleman, making the most of temporary failure. I was right glad to know he was being restrained from conquest that would inevitably bring him up against British artillery sooner or later.
I took the lantern off the chair and swung it in a circle round my head for several minutes, until five shots from a pistol cracked out much nearer at hand than I had expected—so near, in fact, that I went on signaling, believing it could not be Grim.
But Grim, too, had been growing nervous about the hour, and had crept close in order to waste as little time as possible. The Avenger sent two of his staff to meet him and prevent accidents, and inside ten minutes Grim came up the stairs, not alone, but followed, of all improbable people, by Ayisha. She hadn’t been included in the plan as far as I knew, but Lord! how she was enjoying herself. What with her rifle and bandolier, Amazon smile and blazing eyes, she looked as picturesque by lantern-light as any woman I have ever seen.
Grim stood smiling at the stair-head for thirty seconds, until the Avenger called out a sonorous greeting and rose to his feet to receive him. They seized each other’s hands, and then embraced in the Arab style, which is Biblical.
“Once before, O Jimgrim, you came to my aid in a tight place. Do you bring peace now?”
“If you are swift,” Grim answered, turning so as to face the undulating lines of fires. “I can hold those men there until dawn—no longer!”
“Let us talk then. I am in no shape just now to fight an army such as that. Mashallah, what locusts! They have eaten up in one night a year’s supply of wood!”
Grim turned from admiring our illuminations and sat down in front of him. Ben Saoud the Avenger set both elbows on his thighs, and sat still, resting his jaws on the heels of both hands.
“Do you remember, at the time when I sent you those camels in the tight place you speak of, how I tricked you?” Grim asked him.
“Wallah! Yes. Ha-ha! I never will forget it! It called for a cunning fox indeed to play that trick on me—and a wise one! I would have plundered Feisul’s baggage but for you; and the Turks would have caught me in the bargain! That was a true Jimgrim trick; there is no other name for it.”
“I’m going to trick you again,” announced Grim.
“By Allah, I will take the chance!” the Avenger answered laughing. “Go ahead.”
“I’m not joking. I want it clearly understood that I’m going to trick you. I shall take your word, Ben Saoud, and hold you to it.”
“I am no longer afraid of your tricks. I will pass my word as soon as we agree. It is several hours since I had the first inkling of this trick; there came a message from the southward, saying that Jimgrim waited in a fiumara twenty miles away, and begged the immediate loan of four hundred men.”
“What did you do about it?” Grim asked. He did not look particularly interested, but Ayisha, standing upright in the dark behind Grim, leaned forward on her rifle with parted lips.
“Wallahi!” swore the Avenger. “It sounded like a strange request to come from Jimgrim. It sounded to me like a trap of some kind. So I sent fifty men, whom I could ill spare, and a man in charge of them who should have been commanding my right wing. Had he been with the right wing, there might have been another tale to tell about tonight’s affair. My brother Achmet. You know him? Like a rifle bullet is Achmet for quick thinking. I said to Achmet, if the sender of that message truly is Jimgrim, then stay and serve him with your fifty. But if he is not Jimgrim, catch him and bring him hither, or else feed him to the jackals; but better to bring him alive, for the amusement we may have with him.”
“It was very good of you, when you needed men so badly, to send your best wing-commander and fifty on the half-chance of helping me,” Grim answered gravely. “Let us call the account even between us, and begin all over anew.”
“Taib*—since you suggest it.”
(* All right)
I began to feel horribly uneasy, and I know Narayan Singh did, for he was holding his breath and letting it out between his teeth sibilantly. I knew Grim was playing a hunch by the way he smiled, and spoke slowly with his eyes not quite wide open; you learn to recognize a man’s game after you have played with him a while and watched him in the climaxes. But hunches are fickle friends. If the Lion of Petra should have been killed by the Avenger’s brother, all our plan was worth nothing; and if he had been made prisoner, it looked like worse than nothing.
But Grim had to be quick. Before so very long now those fires of ours would begin paling in the dawn.
“Well then,” Grim said slowly, “do you wish me to act arbiter in this dispute between you and Ali Higg?”
“Yes; for he seems too strong for me.”
There was a long pause at that moment. Several shots were fired in the near distance towards the south. Shouting followed for two or three minutes; and then silence. I judged by the slow movement of his hands that Grim was horribly excited, but he had his voice under command.
“If I can call off that army, then, will you agree to retire from Abu Lissan at once, and not to invade Ali Higg’s territory for a period of three years?”
“Three years is a long time, Jimgrim.”
“Nevertheless, my condition is three years.”
There was another
