The Talbot Mundy Megapack. Talbot Mundy

were three camels. This man came with two others to bring word to me. Jael knew nothing of that, but she will know now. That is why this man is afraid. But as the other two came to protect this one, and knew nothing, it may be they will tell her nothing; and this man, who is a father of lies always, can tell Jael that the Lion sent him to help her escape. So he has no need to feel so very much afraid, although he is a great coward.”

      Grim raised his eyebrows comically. It was a predicament all right.

      CHAPTER VI

      “I will stick that pig Yussuf when I find him!”

      The news spread through our camp on a twinkling, for the two men whom I had sent up to Grim with the prisoner while I looked into Jael’s tent had been listening to Ayisha’s story, and one of them ran down below to tell his brothers.

      From their viewpoint it was a wonder of a tale, full of enchanting possibilities and side issues, and especially gratifying because it would oblige Grim to display his genius for counter-intrigue. Their faith in him was measureless, and why not? Had he not outwitted Ali Baba, grandsire of the gang, and bound the whole lot by good-will to his chariot wheels? The man who could accomplish that was capable of anything. We could hear them down in the dark fiumara exclaiming: “Allah!”—“Mashallah!”—“Mallahi!” as the tale unfolded and its ramifications dawned on their appreciative minds.

      It was no use my trying to suggest anything. I’m no diplomatist, and even strategy is a thing I can appreciate far better than invent. I suppose if we all were strategists it would take a man from Mars with something new, like “relativity,” to lead us anywhere; and if we were all just plain Merry Andrews with a pound or two of muscle on our arms and legs, we’d reduce the world to a fine mess of hash. Each man to his profession, then, and let the man whose job is thinking have a chance to think.

      Narayan Singh stood like a statue, making no sign. Grim sat looking at Ayisha, and the prisoner still trembled against my leg, although not so violently. Suddenly Grim pointed a finger at him.

      “Go!” he ordered. “Give him back his weapons, somebody.”

      A startled cat would have taken longer to obey that order. Inside a minute the fellow was scrambling up the far bank of the fiumara, pursued by volleys of ridicule from our men. He wasted no time taking cover as he ran, but raced his own shadow across the open to the place where he had left his camel.

      Ayisha with her placid brow and burning eyes had been doing some thinking meanwhile on her own account. She spoke at last—to Grim, of course; Narayan Singh and I hardly figured any longer in her consciousness.

      “So now I have told all the truth. Am I unworthy of my lord’s favor? I am as one who had a fortune and has given all of it. Shall I be cast off like a broken shoe?”

      Grim seemed to come out of a brown study suddenly, and Narayan Singh heaved an enormous sigh of relief. I believe he had been praying to all the gods of the Hindu pantheon to give his leader wisdom; for he forgets his Sikhism in times of stress and falls from orthodoxy, speculating that there might be virtue in the old gods after all.

      “There is no way, is there, by which Ibrahim ben Ah could have learned of your divorce?” Grim asked suddenly.

      “Not unless old Ali Baba has told him,” Ayisha answered.

      “When that old fox parts with information he isn’t paid for, it will be time for Gabriel to sound the last trump,” Grim said, smiling. “Have you ever given orders to Ibrahim ben Ah, Ayisha?”

      “A hundred times. I was the Lion’s second wife. Once, when Jael was away with the Lion on a raid against the men of El-Kerak, I was left in sole command in Petra, with Ibrahim ben Ah and fifty men to do my bidding. I am a sheikh’s oldest daughter,” she added proudly. “I am used to being obeyed.”

      “And will you help me now?” Grim asked her.

      “Even unto the end of the world,” she answered in a voice that would have melted icebergs.

      Her promise was likely more reliable than Jael Higg’s, but she made it clear she would demand her price. It was difficult to guess whether she was really in love with Grim; not because he wasn’t lovable from a woman’s viewpoint, for at least a score of women of his own speech, and several from his own country, have made small secret of their regard for him. But the customs of the country entered into it.

      Where women are practically bought and sold—occasionally given by their parents—and very often plundered like raided cattle, the sex acquires a viewpoint that the West can’t grasp. The famous advice of the Quaker to his son, not to love money, but to love where money is, has its adaptation in Arabia; and it might be that Grim’s peculiar genius pointed the way to her ambition.

      Whether she would be really heart-broken in our sense of the word when the inevitable truth should dawn that Grim lived in another world, as it were, and never would dream of making her his wife, was a conundrum. Of one thing, though, I was certain: He would never be able to explain his reason to her. She was a sheikh’s daughter—a princess of the pathless desert, fit to marry any one. The fact that her father lived in a goat-hair tent with several wives had nothing at all to do with it. However, that was Grim’s problem, or perhaps Narayan Singh’s; certainly not mine.

      Grim told her to go to her tent, and she obeyed him as meekly as Ruth obeyed Boaz. I thought he was going to talk things over with the Sikh and me, but after another minute’s silence he dismissed us as well.

      “I’ve had all the sleep I need,” he said. “I think I’ll keep watch up here and puzzle out the workings of this mix-up. Suppose you fellows turn in down below there and make up for lost time. I guess I’ll maybe need all your faculties when daylight comes.”

      So off we went, and turned in. It’s mortifying in a way to be sent to bed like a small boy when your own life as likely as not hangs on the issue of deliberation. But there’s nothing to be gained by intruding either your opinions or curiosity on a man who does his thinking best when undisturbed. I had a sort of nettled feeling that I’m not sure I wasn’t entitled to, and that kept me from falling asleep for an hour.

      After that Narayan Singh’s snores made sleep impossible, until I put the heel of a tent-peg in his mouth. And even then the intermittent roars of laughter of our gang, who would wake one another to discuss some fresh angle of the situation, kept me from little more than dozing until nearly dawn. They seemed to consider that Ali Higg’s turning the tables by masquerading as Jimgrim was the most prodigious joke that had ever been sprung on an amusing world.

      When I left the tent at daybreak Grim was still sitting up there on the island, motionless, not even smoking. I went up at once, to find out whether he had formed a plan.

      “Well?” I asked.

      “Yes,” he said, “I think all’s well. I’d like to pull up stakes and get a move on, but we’ve got to consider the camels; the silly fools have lain there all night long with good corn on mats beside them and haven’t touched a mouthful. We’ve got to wait and let them eat.”

      “What after that?”

      “I want you and Narayan Singh to scout ahead and get in touch with Ibrahim ben Ah. The best bet would be to find Ali Baba first, but that’s too much like luck to happen. He’s a shrewd old fox, and if he gets first sight of you he’s dead sure to try to give Ibrahim ben Ah the slip and give you the news out of earshot.

      “Next best after that would be for you to take his place with Ibrahim ben Ah, and let the old man come to me with information. Somehow or other I’ve got to know the exact state of mind of that army of Ali Higg’s before we try the long chance.”

      “Which is?”

      “To send Ayisha to command them.”

      I laughed.

      “She’ll be a safer bet than Jael ever was,” said I, “as long as she thinks there’s a chance of her becoming Mrs. Jimgrim.”

      But