venture to say there would be something doing, instead of mere talk about precautions! I hope you will enjoy your little cigarette,” he added bitterly. “Good morning!”
“Talk of fiddling while Rome burns!” Grim laughed as soon as the Zionist had left the room. “Has it ever occurred to you that Nero was possibly smothering his feelings? I wonder how long there’d be one Zionist left out here, if we simply stood aside and looked on. Go and change your clothes, Suliman. It’s time I broke a leg.”
Grim disappeared upstairs himself, and returned about ten minutes later in the uniform of a Shereefian officer—that is to say, of Emir Feisul’s Syrian army. Nothing could be smarter, not anything better calculated to disguise a man. Disguise, as any actor or detective can tell you, is not so much a matter of make-up as suggestion. It is little mannerisms—unstudied habits that identify. The suggestion that you are some one else is the thing to strive for, not the concealment of who you really are.
Grim’s skin had been sun-tanned in the Arab campaign under Lawrence against the Turks. The Shereefian helmet is a compromise between the East and West, having a strip of cloth hanging down behind it as far as the shoulders and covering the ears on either side, to take the place of the Arab head-dress. The khaki uniform had just enough of Oriental touch about it to distinguish it from that of a British officer. No man inexperienced in disguise would dream of choosing it; for the simple reason that it would not seem to him disguise enough. Yet Grim now looked so exactly like somebody else that it was hard to believe he was the same man who had been in the room ten minutes before. His mimicry of the Syrian military walk—blended of pride and desire not to seem proud—was perfect.
“I’m now staff-captain Ali Mirza of Feisul’s army,” he announced. “Ali Mirza a man notorious for his anti-British rancor, but supposed to be down here just now on a diplomatic mission. I’ve been seen about the streets like this for the last two days. But say: that doctor is a long time on the way.”
He went to the telephone, but did not call the hospital; that would have been too direct and possibly too secret.
“Give me Headquarters—yes—who’s that?—never mind who’s speaking—say: I can’t get the military hospital—something wrong with the wire—will you call Major Templeton and say that Major Grim has had an accident—yes, Grim—compound fracture of the thigh—very serious—ask him to go at once to Major Grim’s quarters—thanks—that’s all.” He returned to the fireplace and stood watching me meditatively for several minutes.
“If you deceive Templeton, you’ll do,” he said at last. “Wait a minute.”
He went to the desk and scribbled something in Arabic on a sheet of paper, sealed that in a blank envelope, and handed it to me.
“Hide it. You’ve two separate and quite distinct tasks, each more important and, in a way, dangerous than the other. The principal danger is to me, not you. If they spot you, my number’s as good as hoisted from that minute. You mustn’t kid yourself you’re safe for one second until the last card has been played.”
“Who are ’they’?”
“I’m coming to that. Your first job is to make it possible for me to get the confidence of one or two of these conspirators. You’re a deaf-and-dumb man—stone deaf—with a message for staff-captain Ali Mirza, which you will only deliver to him in person. Suliman does the talking. You say nothing. You simply refuse to hand your message over to any one but me. They’ll appreciate why a deaf and dumb man should be chosen for treasonable business. But perhaps you’re scared—maybe you’d rather reconsider it? It’s not too late.”
I snorted.
“All right. These conspirators meet at Djemal’s coffee shop on David Street. They talk to one another in French, because the proprietor and the other frequenters of the place only know Arabic. You know French and Arabic enough to understand a sentence here and there, so keep your ears wide open. I shan’t show up until a Sikh named Narayan Singh tells me that a certain Noureddin Ali is in there. He’s the bird I’m after. He’s a dirty little murderer, and I’m going to be right pleasant to him.
“You may have to sit in the place all day waiting for me; but wait until after midnight if you must. Sooner or later Noureddin Ali is bound to show up. I shall be hard after him. If they offer you food, take it. Eat with your fingers. Eat like a pig. Lick the plate, if you like. The nearer mad you seem to be, the safer you are. After I get there, hang around until I give you money. Then beat it.”
“Where to? I can’t go to my room at the hotel in this disguise.”
“I’ve thought of that. You know Cosmopolitan Oil Davey, of course? He lives at the hotel. I’ll get word to him that he may expect a messenger from me after dark tonight. He’ll leave word with the porter downstairs, who’ll take you to Davey’s room. You can tell Davey absolutely anything. He’s white.”
“Well, I think I can execute that maneuver. What’s task number two?”
“To sit on the TNT! But one thing at a time is enough. Let’s attend to this one first. Ah! Here comes Templeton!”
“Damn you, Grim!” said a calm voice in the doorway. A tall, lean man in major’s uniform with the blue tabs of the medical staff strode in. He had the dried-out look of the Sudan, added to the self-reliance that comes of deciding life and death issues at a moment’s notice.
“The hospital is crowded with patients, and here you immobilize me for half a morning. I can’t pretend to set a compound fracture in ten minutes, you know! Why couldn’t you break your neck and have me sign a death certificate?”
“Didn’t occur to me,” said Grim. “But never mind, doc. You need a rest. Here’s tobacco, lots to read, and an armchair. Lock yourself in and be happy.”
“Who’s this?” asked Templeton, looking down at me.
“Deaf and dumb poor devil, earning a few piastres by working for the Intelligence.”
“Spy, eh? He looks fit for honest work if he had all his faculties. Is he dumb as well as deaf, or because he’s deaf?”
“Dunno,” said Grim. “He never speaks.”
“Perhaps I can do something for him. Suppose you leave him here with me. I can give him a thorough examination instead of wasting my time here.”
“He’s got a job of work to do right now,” said Grim.
“Does he know the sign language? Have you any way of telling him to come and see me at the hospital?”
“I give him written instructions in Arabic.”
“That so? I’ll look at his ears—tell you in a minute whether it’s worth while to come to me.”
He took my head between strong, authoritative hands and tilted it sidewise.
“Hello! What’s this?”
The Arab head-dress I was wearing shifted and showed non-Arab symptoms.
“Open that bag of mine, will you, Grim, and pass me that big pair of forceps you’ll find wrapped in oiled paper on top of everything. There’s something I can attend to here at once.”
It was an uncomfortable moment. Grim never cracked a smile. He dug out the instrument
