The Talbot Mundy Megapack. Talbot Mundy

a bargain, but ten score jackals would ruin a country-side.”

      Ali Higg turned that over in his mind for five full minutes, like a chess player refusing to admit that he is mated. But there wasn’t a move left to him, and Jael went closer on her knees to whisper advice in his ear.

      “I agree,” he said at last. “As Allah is my witness, I agree. Let us be friends, O Jimgrim!”

      Grim shook hands with him and offered him a cigarette, while Ali Baba’s men outside the cave sent up a great shout of victory. Then to Ali Higg’s inexpressible delight Mahommed started to sing the Akbar song, and they all roared the chorus:

      “Akbar! Akbar! Akbar Ali Higg!”

      The song put everybody in good temper, so that when Jael wrote out a letter to the bank at Grim’s dictation Ali Higg affixed the seal to it without a murmur and ordered food supplied at once to all Grim’s men; and we had a feast up there on the ledge outside the cave—in sight of the very spot where Amaziah, King of Israel, once hurled ten thousand of his enemies into the gorge below—that, in some respects, was the most enjoyable I ever shared.

      But Grim was not the man to spoil success by lingering in what might yet turn into a trap. He who sups with the devil should not sit long at the feast; and I warned you this was a story without an end to it.

      There is the lady Ayisha, and what became of her, and the account of when and in what way the Lion kept his bargain. Well, have you heard of those tale-tellers in the East, who sit under a village tree with the menfolk all around them? They work up to the climax, and then pause, and pass the begging-bowl for whatever the tale is worth. I fear those masters of inducement would mock me as a tyro for having already told too much before the pause!

21 Greeting!

22 All right

23 Lit., nothing—corresponds to “na-poo” in Army slang.

24 Jerusalem

25 Tomorrow, if God is willing.

26 Bazaar

27 The Moslems attribute all their favorite proverbs to the Koran, whether they are in the book or, as in this case, not.

28 An exclamation of contempt.

29 Lit., gentleman-sir

30 One who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca.

31 O lady Ayisha.

32 Poverty-stricken

33 To call any one an Egyptian is an Arab’s notion of a perfect insult.

34 A synonym for Allah.

35 What?

36 This is strange!

37 Akbar means “great.”

38 Mishmish—apricot. In that land of drought and desolation the highest compliment you can pay a man is to call him lord of water and ripening fruit.

39 Thanks be to God!

40 O lady Jael.

41 Um Kulsum was a lady in Arabic legend whose immoralities have made her name a byword.

42 Miyan: the rather contemptuous form of address that Arabs use toward Indian Moslems.

43 A scandalous piece of blasphemy.

44 What chatter is this?

45 Greeting.

46 Literally girl; about as respectful as the word “skirt” would be if used of one’s wife.

47 By Allah, this is a strange happening.

48 You shame me with your friendship!

49 The name of the valley that leads into Petra

      THE WOMAN AYISHA

      CHAPTER I

      “Ali, I say I go with him!”

      Consider the situation for a moment first. There were twenty of us—seventeen Arabs, Narayan Singh the Sikh, myself, and Grim. We were in Petra over-Jordan, which was no-man’s land until Ali Higg, self-styled Lion of Petra, friend of the Prophet of Islam, Lord of the Limits of the Desert and Lord of the Waters—Ali Higg the Terrible, swooped into it from Arabia, and with the aid of Jael, his European wife, established himself there as a thorn in the flank of Palestine.

      You couldn’t choose a better place to be a thorn in. Impregnable without long-range artillery; inaccessible except by aeroplanes, if once the Valley of Moses leading into it through a twelve-foot gap were blocked; furnished with enough half-ruined graves and temples for accommodation purposes; close enough to Palestine for sudden raids, and surrounded by dry desert over which no mandatory power would think of sending an army if that could possibly be helped, Petra is the perfect outlaw’s paradise—a paradise of opal set in savage mountains.

      As for ourselves, you could hardly call us an official expedition, nor even exactly authorized, for Grim enjoyed a free hand, subject to the definite proviso that he would be promptly disowned by the Palestine authorities if trouble came of it. The British, having heard from the tax-payer, did not want to send an army against Ali Higg, besides which they had no mandate yet for the trans-Jordan country, as Ali Higg and all the Bedouins were well aware.

      An American, even though commissioned in the British army, can get away with things no Britisher would dare attempt because, of course, the authorities would have to stand behind a Britisher, whereas Americans are all born crazy and act without authority, and everybody knows it, and there you are, old top; so what’s the use? And Grim by using brains and information, which is a combination nobody can beat, had cornered Ali Higg,