lent me money. He promised to bring explosives. Oh, he was full of enthusiasm! It was not until last night, when I had broken that last obstruction down and discovered nothing but this coffin, that I learned his real plan. The devil intended all along to fill this tomb with high explosive and to destroy the mosque above, with everybody in it! Curse him!”
“Never mind cursing him,” said Grim, “tell us the story.”
“He sent oranges here, all marked with the labels of a Zionist colony. When I told him that the explosive would arrive too late, he said I should use it to smash these walls and find another tomb. He himself disappeared, and when I questioned his men they told me the explosive would be brought in hidden under fruit in baskets. I waited then in the hope of killing him myself—”
“Hah-hah!” laughed Grim.
“That is true! But they bound me, and later on bound the woman, and laid us here to be blown up together with the mosque.”
Grim turned to Goodenough, who had been listening.
“Do I win the bet, sir?”
“Ten piastoes!” said Goodenough. “Yes. Narayan Singh says Noureddin Ali was gone by the time they reached the wall.”
“Sure, or he’d have brought Noureddin Ali. I’ve been thinking, sir. We’ve one chance left to bag that buzzard. Will you give me carte blanche?”
“Yes. Go ahead.”
Grim crossed the place to the corner where old alligator-eyes stood herded with the other prisoners.
“Are you guilty?” he demanded.
“No. Guilty of nothing. I came out of curiosity to see what was happening here.”
“Thought so. Can you hold your tongue? Then go! Get out of here!”
Alligator-eyes didn’t wait for a second urging, nor stay to question his good luck, but went off in a shambling hurry.
“You are mad!” exclaimed Scharnhoff. “That man is the next-worst!”
“Grim, are you sure that’s wise?” asked Goodenough.
“We can get him any time we want him, sir,” Grim answered. “He lacks Noureddin Ali’s gift of slipperiness.”
He turned to Narayan Singh.
“Follow that man, but don’t let him know he’s followed. He’ll show you where Noureddin Ali is. Get him this time!”
“Dead or alive, sahib?”
“Either.”
CHAPTER TWENTY.
“ALL MEN ARE EQUAL IN THE DARK.”
The first thing Goodenough did after Grim had sent Narayan Singh off on his deadly mission was to summon the sheikh of the Dome of the Rock. He himself went to fetch him rather than risk having the sheikh bring a crowd of witnesses, who would be sure to talk afterwards. The all-important thing was to conceal the fact that sacrilege had been committed. But it was also necessary to establish the fact that Zionists had had no hand in it.
“You see,” Grim explained, sitting on the edge of the stone coffin, “we could hold Jerusalem. But if word of this business were to spread far and wide, you couldn’t hold two or three hundred million fanatics; and believe me, they’d cut loose!”
“The sheikh must realize that,” said I. “What do you bet me he won’t try to black-mail the Administration on the strength of it?”
“I’ll bet you my job! Watch the old bird. Listen in. He’s downy. He knows a chance when he sees it, and he might try to cheat you at dominoes. But in a big crisis he’s a number one man.”
While we waited we tried to get an opinion out of Scharnhoff about the coffin and the skeleton inside it. But the old fellow was heart-broken. I think he told the truth when he said he couldn’t explain it.
“What is there to say of it, except that it is very ancient? There is no decoration. The coffin is beautifully shaped out of one solid piece of stone, but that is all. The skeleton is that of an old man, who seems to have been wounded once or twice in battle. The linen is good, but there is no jewelry; no ornaments. And it is buried here in a very sacred place, so probably, it is one of the Jewish kings, or else one of the prophets. It might be King David—who knows? And what do I care? It is what a man sets down on parchment, and not his bones that interest me!”
The sheikh arrived at last, following Goodenough down the dark passage with the supreme nonchalance of the priest too long familiar with sacred places to be thrilled or frightened by them. He stood in the entrance gazing about him, blinking speculatively through the folds of fat surrounding his bright eyes. Goodenough took the lantern and held it close to the prisoners’ faces one by one.
“You see?” he said. “All Syrians. All Moslems. Not a Jew among them. I’ll take you and show you the others presently.”
“What will you do with them?”
“That’s for a court to decide. Hang them, most likely. They were plotting murder.”
“They will talk at the trial.”
“Behind closed doors!” said Goodenough.
“Ahum!” said the sheikh, stroking his beard. It would not have been compatible with either his religion or his racial consciousness not to try to make the utmost of the situation. “This would be a bad thing for all the Christian governments if the tale leaked out. Religious places have been desecrated. There would be inflammation of Moslem prejudices everywhere.”
“It would be worse for you!” Grim retorted. The sheikh stared hard at him, stroking his beard again,
“How so, Jimgrim? Have I had a hand in this?”
“This is your famous Bir-el-Arwah, where, as you tell your faithful, the souls of the dead come to pray twice a week. This is the gulf beneath the Rock of Abraham that you tell them reaches to the middle of the world. Look at it! Shall we publish flashlight photographs?”
The sheikh’s eyes twinkled as he recognized the force of that argument. He turned it over in his mind for a full minute before he answered.
“You cannot be expected to understand spiritual things,” he said at last. “However,” looking up, “this is not under the Rock. This is another place.”
Goodenough pulled a compass from his pocket, but Grim shook his head.
“Go on,” said Grim. “What of it?”
“It is better to close up this place and say nothing.”
“Except this.” Goodenough retorted: “you will say at the first and every succeeding opportunity that you know it is not true that Zionists tried to blow up the Dome of the Rock.”
“How
