When I discuss ancient history it is only about King Solomon’s harem that they care to know; or possibly about the modern dancing girls of El-Kerak, who are all spies. But there is no need to inform you as to that. Eh? I haven’t seen you for a long time, Major Grim. What have you been doing?”
“Nothing much. I was at the Tomb of the Kings yesterday.”
Scharnhoff smiled scornfully.
“Now you must have some whiskey to take the taste of that untruth out of your mouth! How can a man of your attainments call that obviously modern fraud by such a name? The place is not nearly two thousand years old! It is probably the tomb of a Syrian queen named Adiabene and her family. Josephus mentions it. This land is full—every square metre of it—of false antiquities with real names, and real antiquities that never have been discovered! But why should a man like you, Major Grim, lend yourself to perpetuating falsity?”
He walked over to the cupboard to get whiskey, and from where we sat we could both of us see what he was doing. The cupboard was in two parts, top and bottom, without any intervening strip of wood between the doors, which fitted tightly. When he opened the top part the lower door opened with it. He kicked it shut again at once, but I had seen inside—not that it was interesting at the moment.
He set whiskey and tumblers on the desk, poured liberally, and went on talking.
“Tomb of the Kings? Hah! Tomb of the Kings of Judah? Hah! If any one can find that, he will have something more important than Ludendorff’s memoirs! Something merkwürdig, believe me!”
He stiffened suddenly, and looked at Grim through the green goggles as if he were judging an antiquity.
“Perhaps this is not the time to make you a little suggestion, eh?”
Grim’s face wrinkled into smiles.
“This man knows enough to hang me anyhow! Fire away!”
“Ah! But I would not like him to hang me!”
“He’s as close as a clam. What’s your notion?”
“Nothing serious, but—between us three, then—you and I are both foreigners in this place, Major Grim, although I have made it my home for fifteen years. You have no more interest in this government and its ridiculous rules than I have. What do you say—shall we find the Tomb of the Kings together?”
Grim wrinkled into smiles again and glanced down at his uniform.
“Yes, exactly!” agreed Scharnhoff. “That is the whole point. They call me an enemy alien. I am to all intents and purposes a prisoner. You are a British officer—can do what you like—go where you like. You wear red tabs; you are on the staff; nobody will dare to question you. These English have stopped all exploration until they get their mandate. After that they will take good care that only English societies have the exploration privilege. But what if we—you and I, that is to say—between us extract the best plum from the pudding before those miscalled statesmen sign the mandate—eh? It can be done! It can be done!”
Grim chuckled:
“I suppose you already see a picture of you and me with an ancient tomb in our trunks—say a few tons of the more artistic parts—beating it for the frontier and hawking the stuff afterward to second-hand furniture dealers? Pour me another whiskey, prof, and then we’ll go steal the Mosque of Omar!”
“Ach! You laugh at me—you jest—you mock—you sneer. But I know what I propose. Do you know what will be found in that Tomb of the Kings of Judah when we discover it?”
“Bones. Dry bones. A few gold ornaments perhaps. A stale smell certainly.”
“The Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel! Think of it! A parchment roll—perhaps two or three rolls—not too big to go into a valise—worth more than all the other ancient manuscripts in the world all put together! Himmel! What a find that would be! What a record! What a refutation of all the historians and the fools who set themselves up for authorities nowadays! What a price it would bring! What would your Metropolitan Museum in New York not pay for it! What would the Jews not pay for it! They would raise millions among them and pay any price we cared to ask! The Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel— only think!”
“But why the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel in the tomb of the Kings of Judah?” Grim asked, more by way of keeping up the conversation, I think, than because he could not guess the answer. He is an omnivorous reader, and there is not much recorded of the Near East that he does not know.
“Don’t you know your history? You know, of course, that after King Solomon died the Jews divided into two kingdoms. The latter-day Jews speak of themselves as Israelites, but they are nothing of the kind; they are Judah-ites. The tribe of Judah remained in Jerusalem, forming one small kingdom; their descendants are the Jews of today. Part of the tribe of Benjamin stayed with them. The other seceding ten tribes called themselves the kingdom of Israel.”
“Everybody knows that,” said Grim. “What of it?”
“Well, the Assyrians came down and conquered the kingdom of Israel—marched all the Israelites away into captivity—and they vanished out of history. From that day to this their Book of Chronicles, so often referred to in the Old Testament, has never been seen nor heard of.”
“Of course not,” said Grim. “The King of Assyria used it to wipe his razor on when he was through shaving every morning.”
“Ach! You joke again; but I tell you I am not joking. Such people as those Hebrews are naturally secretive and so proud that they wrote down for posterity all the doings of their puny kings, would never have let their records fall into the hands of the Assyrians. They themselves were marched away in slave-gangs, but they left their Book behind them, safely hidden. Be sure of it! Ten years ago I found a manuscript in the place they now call Nablus, which in those days was Schechem. Schechem was the capital of the Kingdom of Israel, just as Jerusalem was the capital of the Kingdom of Judah, or the Jews. I sold that manuscript for a good price after I had photographed it. The idiots to whom I sold it—historians they call themselves!—value it only as a relic of antiquity. I made a digest of it—analyzed it—studied it—compared it with other authentic facts in my possession—and came to the definite conclusion that I hold the clue to the whereabouts of that lost Book of Chronicles.”
“Let’s see the photograph,” Grim suggested.
“It has been impounded with other so-called ‘enemy property’ by your friends the British. I suppose they thought the German General Staff might get hold of it and conquer the Suez Canal! But what good would the sight of it do? You couldn’t understand a word of it. It convinced me, after months of study, that when the Ten Tribes were carried away into captivity by the Assyrians they sent their records secretly to Jerusalem. Ever since the secession the Israelites and Jews had been jealous enemies. But they were relatives after all, boasting a common ancestor, proud of the same history, more or less observing the same religion. And Schechem was only about thirty miles from Jerusalem, which was considered an impregnable fortress until the Babylonians took it later on. So they sent their records to Jerusalem, and the Jews hid them. Where? Where do you suppose?”
“The likeliest place would be Solomon’s Temple.”
“You think so? Then you think superficially, my young friend. Let us return to that Tomb of the Kings again for a moment. That place that you visited is such an obvious fake that even the guide-books make light of it. The one all-important thing
