looked at the bottles of brandy—looked at me—and prayed under his breath; or, at any rate, it looked and sounded like a prayer. He may have been swearing. He and I were not very far from the door; the seats near the head of the table had all been taken. I sat down at once, so as not to be conspicuous, but Anazeh remained standing so long that at last Abdul Ali called to him to sit down and eat his fill, using the offensively magnanimous tone of voice that some men can achieve without an effort. I think Anazeh had been waiting for just that opening.
“I have twenty men outside,” he announced. “Shall I eat, and not they?”
“This is a feast for notables,” said Abdul Ali.
“A little bread with my own men is better than meat and drink at a traitor’s table,” Anazeh answered. “Wallahi! (By God!) I go to eat with honest men!” He laid a hand on my head. “Ye have said this effendi must stay in the castle. Well and good. Whoever harms him or offers him indignity shall answer to me and my men for it!” He bowed to me like a king taking leave of his court. “Lailtak sa’idi. Allah yifazak, effendi!” (Good night. God keep you, effendi!) With that he stalked out, and the door slammed shut behind him. Everybody, including Abdul Ali, laughed.
The banquet was a boresome business—an interminable competition to see who could eat and drink the most. With my interpreter gone, and everybody else too busy guzzling to trouble to speak distinctly for my benefit, I had to depend on my ayes for information and naturally used them to the utmost. I noticed that Abdul All of Damascus, Jimgrim Suliman ben Saoud and myself were the only men in the room, servants included, who ate and drank within the bounds of decency and reason. One of the servants, walking up and down the table-cloth with brandy and relays of vegetables, was drunk very early in the game and had to be thrown out.
Abdul Ali kept conversation going on the subject of the raid. The more the brandy bottles circulated the easier he found it to keep enthusiasm burning. He talked about me, too, several times, and every time that subject cropped up all eyes turned in my direction. I think he was making the most of the school idea, mixing up the raid with education and serving the mixture hot, as it were, with brandy sauce.
But over the way, about half-way down the table, the Ichwan Suliman ben Saoud, dead-cold-sober and abstemious, as befitted a fanatic, was talking, too. He was quite evidently talking against Abdul Ali, so that the Damascene kept looking at him with a troubled expression. He glanced frequently at the door, too, as if he expected some one who could put an end to Suliman ben Saoud’s intrigue.
But it was a long time before the door opened and the second of his old-rose parasites came in. I had not noticed until then that the man was missing. He thrust a packet of some sort into Abdul Ali’s hands. He whispered. The Damascene’s face darkened instantly, and he swore like a pirate. Then, I suppose because he had to vent his wrath on somebody, he shouted to me in German all down the length of the table:
“Your cursed interpreter has nearly killed my secretary! He struck him in the mouth and knocked all his teeth out. What courteous servants you employ!”
“What was your secretary trying to do to him?” I retorted, but he saw fit not to answer that. He poured some more brandy instead for Ali Shah al Khassib.
So that was what Anazeh had been laughing at! The old humourist had either seen the fracas, or had come on the injured old-rose messenger of death nursing a damaged face. I began to share Grim’s good opinion of ben Hamza. But though I watched Grim’s face, and knew that he knew German, I could not detect a trace of interest. He kept on talking against Abdul Ali until after ten o’clock. By that time most of the notables were about as full as they could hold. Those who were not too drunk appeared ready for anything in or out of reason.
At that stage of the proceedings they ushered in the dancing girls. The servants cleared away most of the food, removed the table-cloths, and a ring was formed practically all around the room, the notables leaning their backs against the wall to ease overworked bellies. I set my cushion down next to a very drunken man just by the narrow door that opened on the stairway leading to the ramparts. He fell asleep with his head on my shoulder within five minutes, and as that, for some subtle reason, seemed to make me even more unnoticeable I let him snore away in peace.
Over in Abdul Ali’s corner of the room there was a real council of war going on in whispers. Opposite to him, ten paces or so distant from me, Jimgrim Suliman ben Saoud was holding a rival show. It seemed about an even bet which was making greater headway. Those who were more or less drunk, and all the younger sheikhs had eyes and ears for nothing but the dancing girls.
They were outrageous hussies. They wore more clothes than a Broadway chorus lady, and rather less paint, but if they were symbols of the Moslem paradise (as a learned Arab once assured me that they are meant to be) then, as I answered the Arab on that occasion, “me for hell.” But none of those sheikhs had ever seen Broadway, so you could hardly blame them.
Abdul Ali of Damascus seemed to have his arrangements with the men in his corner cinched at last to his satisfaction. He walked a little unsteadily across the room, apparently to make his peace with Suliman ben Saoud. He held brazenly in one hand a leather wallet that bulged with paper money—doubtless the “documents” that he had sent for. He nodded to me as he passed with more familiarity than he had any right to, since he had so ostentatiously dismissed me to the dogs. I suppose he felt so sure of “convincing” Suliman ben Saoud, and was so bent on offsetting the reaction caused by Anazeh’s behavior that he had been reviving that project about the school and therefore chose to appear on intimate terms with me. I met him more than half-way; any one who cared to might believe I loved him like a brother.
He stood in front of Suliman ben Saoud, rocking just a trifle from the effects of alcohol and smoke, and there was about five minutes’ conversation of which, although I missed a lot of it, I caught the general drift. The men who had come under the Ichwan’s influence kept joining in and raising objections. I gathered that they expected a proportionate percentage of the bribe for which Suliman ben Saoud was supposed to be maneuvering.
But even Abdul Ali, with a pouch of paper money in his hand, was not quite so barefaced as to bribe the Ichwan publicly. At the end of five minutes he suggested a private talk on the parapet. Suliman ben Saoud rose with apparent reluctance. Abdul Ali of Damascus took his arm. It was Suliman ben Saoud who opened the narrow door, and Abdul Ali who went through first. I did not wait for any invitation, but let my snoring neighbor fall on his side, hurried through after them, and closed the door behind me. Groping for the stick in the dark, I jammed it into the notches. It fitted perfectly. It held the door immovable and barred that stairway against all-comers. Then I followed them to the parapet.
The moon was about full and bathing the whole roof, and all the countryside in liquid light. There was a certain amount of mist lower down, and you could only make out the Dead Sea through it here and there; but up where we were, and even in the moat eighty feet below us, it was almost like daylight without the glare and heat. I leaned over, but could see nobody in the moat, and there was no sign of Mahommed ben Hamza.
Abdul Ali led the way toward the corner where Grim had given his orders to ben Hamza that afternoon. Abdul Ali did not seem to realize that I was following. When he turned at last, with his back to the parapet and the moonlight full in his face, he demanded in German:
“Wass machen Sie hier?”
I was about to answer him when there came a noise like subterranean thunder from the mouth of the stairway. They were trying to force that door below and follow us. The first words I used were in English, for Grim’s benefit:
“I stuck a stick in the door. I should say it’s good for ten or fifteen minutes unless they use explosives.”
That gave the
