Jimgrim - The Spy Thrillers Series. Talbot Mundy

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Jimgrim - The Spy Thrillers Series - Talbot  Mundy

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man with a black moustache waxed into points, and a neck the color of rare roast beef—a man not given to self-restraint in any shape or form. But he had to make a quick decision. Sir Louis’ footsteps were approaching. He glared at me, made a sign to me to sit still, twisted his moustache savagely, and listened, breathing through his mouth to avoid the tell-tale whistle of his hairy nostrils. I heard Grim start toward the hall, but Sir Louis turned him back and came straight in.

      “It occurred to me I’d save you the time of coming up to see me this morning, Grim, and look in on you instead before I start my rounds. Any new developments?”

      “Not yet, sir. I’ll need forty-eight hours. If we move too fast they may touch the stuff off before we get the whole gang in the net.”

      “You’re sure you’d rather not have the police?”

      “Quite. They mean well, but they’re clumsy.”

      “Um-m-m! All the same, the thing’s ticklish. There are rumours about all ready. The Grand Mufti[14] came to me before breakfast with a wild tale. I’ve promised him some Sikhs for special sentry duty. He’d hardly gone before some Zionists came with a story that the Arabs are planning to blow up their hospital; I gave them ten men and an officer.”

      “Is the city quiet?” Grim asked him.

      “Fair to middling. The Jews refused to take their shutters down this morning. I had to issue an order about it. I hear now that they’re doing business about as usual, but I’ve ordered the number of men on duty within the city walls to be doubled. At the first sign of disturbance I shall have the gates closed. Are you quite sure you’re in touch?”

      “Quite. sure, sir. I’m positive of what I told you last night. Will you be seeing Colonel Goodenough?”

      “Yes, in ten minutes.”

      “Please ask him to hold his Sikhs at my disposal for the next two days. You might add, sir, that if he cares to see sport he could do worse than lend his own services.”

      “I’ll do that. You can count on Goodenough. That’s a soldier devoid of nonsense. Anything else?”

      “That’s all.”

      “Keep me informed. Remember, Grim, I’m responsible for all you do. I’ve endorsed you in blank, as it were. Don’t overlook that point.”

      “I won’t, sir.”

      Sir Louis walked out. Almost before his spurs ceased jingling in the tiled hall, Brigadier-General Jenkins strode out in a towering rage from behind the screen.

      “’Pon my soul, a spy’s trick!” he exploded. “Had an eavesdropper, did you? Listening from behind a screen while you tricked me into a promise on Catesby’s account!”

      “Sure,” Grim answered, folding the screen back, and letting his face wrinkle in smiles all the way up to the roots of his hair. Very comical he looked, for his eyebrows were only partly sprouted again. “Had two of you to listen in on the Administrator!”

      “Endorses you in blank, eh? How long would he let the endorsement stand if he knew I was behind that screen while he was talking to you?”

      “Try him!” Grim suggested. “Shall I call him back? He doesn’t want to break you—told me so, in fact, last night—but he could change his mind, I daresay. My tip to you is to get back to Ludd as fast as your car can take you, release Catesby, and say as little as possible to any one!”

      “Damn you for a Yankee!” Jenkins answered. “You’ve got me cornered for the moment, and you make the most of it. But wait till my turn comes! As for you, sir,” Jenkins turned and looked me up and down with all the arrogance that nice new crossed swords on his shoulder can give a certain sort of man, “don’t let me catch you trying to interfere in any Administration business, that’s all!”

      I offered him a cigarette, grinning. There was no sense in picking a quarrel. No man likes to discover that a perfect stranger has overheard his intimate confessions. His annoyance was understandable. But he hadn’t nice manners. He knocked the cigarette case out of my hand and kicked it across the room. So I got into one of the deep armchairs and laughed at him in self-defense, to preserve my own temper from boiling up over the top.

      “To hell with both of you!” Jenkins thundered, and strode out like Mars on the war-path.

      “Poor old Jinks!” said Grim, as soon as he had gone. “As Sir Louis said last night, he has a wife and family besides the unofficial ladies on his string. All they’ll have to divide between them soon, at the rate he’s going, will be his half-pay. He has fought for promotion all his days, to keep abreast of expenses. What that string of cormorants will do with his four hundred pounds a year, when he oversteps at last and gets retired, beggars imagination! However, let’s get busy.”

      Business consisted in dressing me up as an Arab with the aid of Suliman, and drilling me painstakingly for half-an-hour, both of them using every trick they knew to make me laugh or show surprise, and Grim nodding approval each time I contrived not to. More difficult than acting deaf and dumb was the trick of squatting with my legs crossed, but I had learned it after a fashion in India years ago, and only needed schooling.

      “You’ll get scuppered if you’re caught,” he warned me. “If Suliman wasn’t so scared of devils I wouldn’t risk it, but I must have somebody to keep an eye on him when the time comes; that’ll be tomorrow, I think.”

      “Suppose you tell me the object of the game,” I suggested. “I’m sick of only studying the rules.”

      “Well—your part will be to sit over those two tons of TNT and see that nobody explodes them ahead of time. There’s a conspiracy on foot to blow up the Dome of the Rock.”

      “You mean the Mosque of Omar?”

      “The place tourists call the Mosque of Omar. The site of Solomon’s Temple—the Rock of Abraham—the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite. Next after the shrine at Mecca it’s the most sacred spot in the whole Mahommedan world.”

      “Good lord!” I said. “Are the Zionists so reckless?”.

      “No, the Arabs are. Remember what old Scharnhoff said the other day about the new fanaticism?”

      “Is Scharnhoff mixed up in it?”

      “He’s being watched. If the Arabs pull it off, they’ll accuse the Jews of doing it, and set to work to butcher every Jew in the Near East. That will oblige the British to protect the Jews. That in turn will set every Mohammedan in the world—’specially Indians, but Egyptians, too—against the British. Jihad—green banner—holy war—all the East and Northern Africa alight while the French snaffle Syria. Sound good to you?”

      “Sir Louis knows this?”

      “He, is paid to know things.”

      “And he lets you play cat and mouse with it?”

      “Got to be careful. Suppose we draw the net too soon, what then? Most of the conspirators escape. The story leaks out. The Jews get the blame for the attempt, and sooner or later the massacre begins anyhow. What we’ve got to do is bag every last mother’s son of them, and suppress the whole story—return the TNT to store, and swear it was never missing.”

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