The Talbot Mundy Megapack. Talbot Mundy

talk well,” she said, “but you must be a fool at bottom, or you wouldn’t suggest friendship with me. Can you imagine me not pushing you into Ali Higg’s clutches at the first chance?”

      “Sure I can, or I wouldn’t waste time talking. You’ve got more sense than that, Jael. You might trick me. It has been done. Ali Higg might scupper me and the crowd—he mighty likely would. But that ’ud be the end of Ali Higg’s prospects, for as sure as my name’s Grim the British would smash him to avenge me, and you know it! If they didn’t get you they’d get him, and you’d become the property of the first petty chief who could lay his hands on you. So let’s talk like two sensible people.”

      “You’ll find me sensible,” she answered. “I shall just do nothing—tell you nothing.”

      “You’ve told too much already to be able to stop now, Jael,” he answered, smiling. “I’m sure you won’t put me to the necessity of searching you; you’ve too much pride for that. So suppose you pass me Ali Higg’s seal—the one you sign all his letters with. No, don’t try to hide it in the sand; put it here.”

      He held his hand out, and she bit her lip in mortification. It was too bad that she had made that slip of boasting to Narayan Singh and me about the seal, but there was nothing else for it now and she gave it to him—a gold thing as big as a silver half-dollar, marvelously engraved.

      “That settles the financial end of it,” said Grim. “We can impound all that money in the Bank of Egypt—although I’m free to admit I wouldn’t take such a seal away from a friend of mine.”

      “Give it back, then,” she answered with a bitter little laugh. “I see I’ll have to be your friend.”

      He smiled—wonderfully gently. There wasn’t the least offense in it, although there wasn’t any credulity either.

      “I always aim to prove myself a man’s friend—or a woman’s,” he said, “before expecting to be trusted out of sight. I dare say that’s your code too?”

      “If ever Ali Higg catches you with that seal—”

      “He won’t catch me, Jael; he won’t catch me. But you shall have it back, and the money shan’t be touched, if you play straight.”

      She shrugged her shoulders petulantly, admitting defeat but resenting it. There came a time, months later, when she understood Grim’s peculiar altruism and respected it, but she was a long way just then from admiring him.

      “You force me,” she said. “Name your terms.”

      “Well, then, suppose we speak of Ali Higg to begin with. Is his temper uneven? Is there any way to catch him in a specially good humor?”

      “He’s the most even-tempered man I know,” she laughed. “He’s always in a rage.”

      “So much the easier for us,” Grim answered. “That kind always make mistakes. He must have counted on your brains exclusively to keep him on top; and now your brains are in my pocket, so to speak. How’s his health? Boils? Indigestion?”

      She nodded.

      “Ah! Most angry men have indigestion. Dislikes European doctors, I dare say? Thought so; most fanatical Moslems do that. But an Indian hakim? Now, many an Indian hakim knows how to relieve indigestion—in between the bouts of rage. D’you suppose he’d entertain a hakim?”

      She nodded again.

      “Well, we’ll fix it so a hakim can relieve his boils and indigestion. But let you and me understand each other first, Jael. I can be a mean man when I must, but I’ll always take a heap of trouble to find a white man’s way of accomplishing the same purpose. I can act mean toward you—sheer plug-ugly if you force my hand—but I’d sooner not; and I’d just as lief help you as hinder you, provided you don’t upset what I’m seeking to build.”

      She laughed again, and not so bitterly.

      “You’re on the wrong side of the wall to build much,” she answered. “You should come over into our camp. You’re so like Ali Higg in certain lights and in some of your gestures, and so unlike him in other things, that if you came across the Jordan for good I think you could show us something.”

      Her eyes said far more than her lips did. She was studying him from a new angle—a thoughtful, speculative angle that vaguely excited her.

      “What I mean is just this,” he said; “that you and I had better decide to be real friends, and not half-open enemies, each looking for a chance to spoil the other’s game. There are men in this camp who’ll tell you that I keep my word. I’m willing to pledge it not to hurt you or Ali Higg, provided you pledge yours to be equally friendly and to help me in taming Ali Higg so’s he’ll be useful and not just an ordinary trouble-maker.”

      “Would you accept my word?” she asked him—ready to consider him fool or liar, according to how he answered.

      “I’ll accept it, Jael. Sure. For you’ll have to give it, and it’s all you’ve got to trade with. And I’ll watch you just about twice as carefully as examiners watch the bank directors of New York State.

      “Knowing you’re watched, like them you’re going to be too proud to cheat; and after you’ve found how it pays to play straight with me you’re going almost to enjoy being watched for the sake of the advertisement.”

      Her face did not soften in the least; but it changed expression, like a woman buyer’s who has decided to make a purchase but has not done bargaining.

      “I think I’m going to like you,” she said. “Of course, you’re a liar, like all men, but you’ve a finer touch than most.”

      At that point Ali Baba made his first contribution to the argument. The old man did not know much English, but there are certain words—such as liar, cheat, swine, thief, and the list of oaths—that find their way like water to the common level and are known from Spitzbergen to the Horn.

      “He is no liar!” he exclaimed in Arabic. “A cunning man with the brain of three, who can use the truth for his own ends! A keeper of secrets! An upsetter of plans! But he is no liar, and I will not hear him called one by a woman! Peace, thou fool! It is written that a woman’s tongue is worse than water dripping through a roof!”

      It is manners in that country to sit silent while an old man speaks, and even Jael Higg did not offer to rebuke him for the interruption. When he had quite finished Grim took up the argument again.

      “Now let’s know where we stand. Are you and I to be friends, Jael?”

      She nodded.

      “I’m no half-way adventurer. I’ll make your fortune,” she said, “if you’ll come the whole way with me, and stay this side of Jordan.”

      He shook his head and smiled back at her.

      “You’ve your work cut out to keep Ali Higg off the rocks, Jael.”

      “There’s no room for two of you,” she answered darkly.

      “I guess not.”

      She looked hard at me, and back from me to Grim. I don’t know yet whether she was setting a trap for us or really in earnest about what she said next. Grim thinks she was drawing a bow at a venture.

      “Is this the hakim? One of the two respectable persons you have with you? Hm! Respectability is a mask—often a safe mask, often an offensive one, always a lie. All really dangerous criminals are respectable people.

      “And a hakim, eh? An Indian physician? I have heard of Indian physicians being poisoners—although, of course, they’re respectable people and give the poison by mistake! Now if he should go to Ali Higg and poison him, while pretending to cure boils and indigestion—”

      “But he won’t,” said Grim, “so why suppose?”

      “Of course he won’t, unless you tell him to!” she snapped.

      “I