twice our number of armed guards.
“The hour is passed,” he announced. “The order is to admit no late-comers.”
“Who gives orders to me?” Anazeh retorted.
“It was agreed by all the notables.”
“I did not agree. Wallah! Thou dog of a devil’s dung-heap, say you I am not a notable?”
“Nevertheless—”
“Open that gate!”
They opened it. Two of the men began to do it even before their chief gave the reluctant order. Anazeh started to ride through with his men crowding behind. But that, it seemed, was altogether too much liberty to take with the arrangements. Shouting all together, the gate-guards surged in to take hold of bridles and force Anazeh’s dependents back. Teeth and eyes flashed. It looked like the makings of a red-hot fight.
“No retainers allowed within the gate! Principals only!” roared the captain of the guard, in Arabic that sounded like explosions of boiling oil.
Anazeh, Mahommed ben Hamza and I were already within the courtyard. Four of Anazeh’s followers made their way, through after us before any one could prevent them. At that moment there came a tremendous clattering of hoofs and the crowd outside the gate scattered this and that way in front of about a hundred of the other chiefs’ dependents, who had dutifully stayed outside and had sought shade some little distance off.
Whether the sudden disturbance rattled him, or whether he supposed that all the other truculent ruffians were going to try to follow our example, at any rate the man on duty lost his head and shouted to his men to shut the gate again. Before they could do it every one of Anazeh’s gang had forced his way through. There we all were on forbidden ground, with a great iron-studded gate slammed and bolted behind us. To judge by the row outside the keepers of the gate had got their hands full.
In front of us was a short flight of stone steps, and another great wooden door set in stone posts under a Roman arch. There were only two armed men leaning against it. They eyed Anazeh and our numbers nervously.
“Open!”
Anazeh could use his voice like a whip-crack. They fumbled with the great bolt and obeyed, swinging the door wide. I thought for a minute that my arrogant old protector meant to ride up the steps and through the door into the mejlis hall with all his men; but he was not quite so high-handed as that.
After a good long look through the door, I suppose to make sure there was no ambush inside waiting for him, he dismounted, and ordered his men to occupy a stable-building across the courtyard, from which it would have been impossible to dislodge them without a siege. Then, when he had seen the last man disappear into it, he led me and Mahommed ben Hamza up the steps.
Ben Hamza was grinning like a schoolboy, beside himself with delight at the prospect of elbowing among notables, as well as inordinately proud of his new clothes and the smell of imported soap that hung about him like an aura. But Anazeh looked like an ancient king entering into his own. Surely there was never another man who could stride so majestically and seem so conscious of his own ability to override all law.
We passed under the shadowy arch and down a cool stone passage to yet another heavy door that barred our way. Anazeh thundered on it with his rifle-butt, for there were no attendants there to do his bidding. There was no answer. Only a murmur of voices within. So he thundered again, and this time the door opened about six inches. A face peered through the opening cautiously, and asked what was wanted.
“What is this?” asked Anazeh. “Is a mejlis held without my presence? Since when?”
“You are too late!”
The face disappeared. Some one tried to close the door. Anazeh’s foot prevented.
“Open!” he demanded. The butt of his rifle thundered again on the wood.
There was a babel of voices inside, followed by sudden silence. Anazeh made a sign to Mahommed ben Hamza and me. We all three laid our shoulders against the door and shoved hard. Evidently that was not expected; it swung back so suddenly that we were hard put to it to keep our feet. The man who had opened the door lay prone on the floor in front of us with his legs in the air, and Anazeh laughed at him—the bitterest sign of disrespect one Arab can pay to another.
“Since when does the word of a Damascene exclude an honourable sheikh from a mejlis in El-Kerak?” asked Anazeh, standing in the doorway.
He was in no hurry to enter. The dramatic old ruffian understood too well the value of the impression he made standing there. The room was crowded with about eighty men, seated on mats and cushions, with a piece of carpeted floor left unoccupied all down the centre—a high-walled room with beautifully vaulted ceiling, and a mullioned window from which most of the glass was gone. The walls were partly covered with Persian and other mats, but there was almost no furniture other than water-pipes and little inlaid tables on which to rest coffee-cups and matches. The air was thick with smoke already, and the draft from the broken windows wafted it about in streaky clouds.
Every face in the room was turned toward Anazeh. I kept as much as possible behind him, for you can’t look dignified in that setting if all you have on is a stained golf suit, that you have slept in. It seemed all right to me to let the old sheikh have all the limelight.
But he knew better. Perhaps my erstwhile host ben Nazir had understood a little German after all. More likely he had divined Abdul Ali’s purpose to make use of me. Certainly he had poured the proper poison in Anazeh’s ear, and the old man understood my value to a nicety.
He took me by the arm and led me in, Mahommed ben Hamza following like a dog that was too busy wagging its tail to walk straight. You would have thought Anazeh and I were father and son by the way he leaned toward me and found a way for me among the crowded cushions.
He had no meek notions about choosing a low place. Expecting to be taken at his own valuation, he chose a high place to begin with. There were several unoccupied cushions near the door, and there were half-a-dozen servants busy in a corner with coffee-pots and cakes. He prodded one of the servants and ordered him to take two cushions to a place he pointed out, up near the window close to Abdul Ali. There was no room there. That was the seat of the mighty. You could not have dropped a handkerchief between the men who wanted to be nearest the throne of influence. But Anazeh solved that riddle. He strode, stately and magnificent, up the middle of the carpet amid a mutter of imprecations. And when one more than ordinarily indignant sheikh demanded to know what he meant by it, he paused in front of him and laid his right hand on my shoulder. (There was a loaded rifle in his left.)
“Who offers indignity to a distinguished guest?” he demanded.
The question was addressed to everybody in the room. He took care they were all aware of it. His stern eyes traveled from face to face.
“My men, who escorted him here, are outside the door. They can enter and escort him away, if there are none here who understand how to treat the stranger in our midst!”
There was goose-flesh all over me, and I did not even try to look unembarrassed. A man’s wits, if he has any, work swiftly when he looks like being torn to pieces at a moment’s notice. It seemed to me that the less insolent I appeared, the less likely they were to vent their wrath on me. I tried to look as if I didn’t understand I was intruding—as if I expected a welcome.
“Good!” Anazeh whispered in my ear. “You
