The Talbot Mundy Megapack. Talbot Mundy

appeal that is the simplest means of controlling any crowd of men anywhere. The demagog who can find a million men all responsive to the same emotion can swing them as easily as a hundred if he knows his business. Loot was the tune he harped, with the old Ishmael blood-lust by way of obbligato.

      He had them by the heart-strings, and there were long-necked bottles of liquor that smelt of aniseed being passed from hand to hand. We returned to our places almost unnoticed, and within the minute someone handed a full bottle to Anazeh; the accompanying cup was big enough to hold any ordinary drunkard’s breakfast, and the old sheikh’s eyes admired the size of it.

      I laid my hand on the wrist that held the bottle. He shook it off angrily, and began to pour. Grim, over the way, looked anxious. It was up to me to play this hand, so I led my ace of trumps.

      Suddenly, and very clumsily, I rocked sideways to reach my hip-pocket, contriving to jog his elbow and spill what was already in the cup. He turned his head to curse savagely, and I showed him the folded sheet from my notebook. His name was on it in Arabic:

      “Sheikh Anazeh ben Mahmoud, from Jimgrim.”

      He seized it, setting the bottle down between his feet, where it was instantly reached for by someone else and handed down the line. Reading was evidently not Anazeh’s favorite amusement, but he knitted his brows over the letter and wrestled with it word by word, while Abdul Ali’s fiery declamation made the vaulted roof resound. I could only make out snatches of the appeal to savagery—a word and a sentence here and there.

      “Who are you, princes? Men with swords, or slaves who must obey?—Raid over the Jordan twenty thousand strong!—What are Jews? Shall Jews take the home of your ancestors? Who says so?—Let the Jews be buried in the land they come to steal!—You say the Jews are cleverer than you. Cut their heads off, then they cannot think!”

      “When did Jimgrim give you this?” Anazeh demanded, fold­ing the letter and stowing it in his bosom.

      “That is the message that I told you would come later if you waited.”

      “Do you know what is in the message?”

      “No.” That was perfectly true. I had talked with Grim, but had not read what he had written.

      “He wishes me to go and wait for him in a certain place.”

      “Why not do it?”

      “Rubbama.” (Perhaps.)

      “True-believers! Followers of the Prophet! Sons of warrior kings!” thundered Abdul Ali. “Will you do nothing to help Feisul, a lineal descendant of the Prophet? You have helped him to a throne. Now strike to hold him there!”

      “Jimgrim says, I may go away and leave you here,” growled Anazeh. “What say you?”

      “Ala khatrak. (Please yourself.) Jimgrim is wise.”

      “He is the father of wisdom. Mashallah! I will consider it. There will be a banquet presently!”

      “And loot! You can help yourselves!” shouted Abdul Ali of Damascus. Then he sat down amid a storm of applause. Suliman ben Saoud—Jimgrim—was on his feet before the tumult died away, and again they grew perfectly still to listen to him. If an Arab loves anything under heaven more than his own style of fighting, it is the action and reaction of debate. I could not understand a word of the mid-Arabian dialect, but Abdul Ali’s retorts were plain enough; and from the way that Grim pointed at me and Mahommed ben Hamza it was fairly easy to follow what was happening.

      He denounced me as possibly dangerous, and wondered why they permitted me to have an interpreter, who could whisper to me everything that was being said.

      “Put out the interpreter!” sneered Abdul Ali, and there was a chorus of approval. Mahommed ben Hamza got up and hurried for the door while the hurrying was good and painless to himself, though it was hardly that to other people; forcing his way between the close-packed notables he kicked more than one of them pretty badly and grinned when they cursed him. I saw Abdul Ali of Damascus whisper to one of his rose-coloured parasites, who got up at once and made his way toward the door, too.

      “The fellow is from Hebron,” Abdul Ali sneered in a voice loud enough for all to hear. “It is best that he should not go back to Hebron to tell tales! I have attended to it.”

      My blood ran cold. I tried to catch Grim’s eye, but he would not look in my direction. I wondered whether he had heard Abdul Ali’s threat. It seemed to me that if Mahommed ben Hamza were either murdered or imprisoned Grim’s whole chance of success was gone. The danger would be multiplied tenfold. Anazeh seemed the only remaining hope. The old-rose individual who followed ben Hamza had not reached the door yet.

      “How about your men?” I asked.

      “They are all right.” Anazeh’s eyes pursued the liquor bottle.

      “Why not go and see?” I suggested.

      “Ilhamdul’illah, they are good men. I know them. If there is trouble they will come and tell me.”

      The door opened softly. The gorgeous old-rose parasite slipped through. I had a mental vision of Mahommed ben Hamza lying face-downward with his new coat stained with blood. There was nothing for it, it seemed, but the magic formula to move Anazeh.

      “Jimgrim says, ‘See that ben Hamza gets safely away!”’

      “Dog of a Hebron tanner’s son—let him die! What is that to me?”

      “It is Jimgrim’s command.”

      “Wallahi haida fasl! (By God, this is a strange affair!) Wait here!”

      Old Anazeh, with the name of the Prophet of God on his lips, cast an envious glare at the bottle of liquor and seized action by the forelock. There was nothing to excite comment in his getting up to leave the room. A dozen men had done that and come in again. He strode out, straight down the middle of the carpet. Suliman ben Saoud—Jimgrim—went on talking, and to judge by Abdul Ali of Damascus’ increasingly restless retorts he was getting that gentleman’s goat as promised. Finally Abdul Ali got to his feet and said that if the Ichwan would see him alone he would show him certain documents that would satisfy him, but that it would not be policy to produce them in public. He offered to send for the documents, and to show them during or after the banquet.

      So Jimgrim sat down, and there was a good deal of quiet nudging and nodding. Every one seemed to understand that the Ichwan was going to be bribed; they seemed to admire his ability to get for himself a share of the funds that most of them had tapped.

      A man nearly opposite me leaned over and said in fairly good French, with the manner of a doctor assuring his patient that the worst is yet to come:

      “It has been decided that you are to be detained here in the castle until there is no danger of your carrying away important news.”

      While I was turning that over in my mind Anazeh came back, grinning. Something outside had tickled him immensely, but he would not say anything. He sat down beside me and chuckled into his beard; and when his neighbour on the right asked what had amused him he turned the question into a bawdy joke.

      “Did ben Hamza get away?” I whispered.

      He only nodded. He continued chuckling until the man on duty by the door announced to the “assembled lords and princes” that the muezzin summoned them to prayer. All except three Christian sheikhs trooped up the narrow stairway in Ali Shah al Khassib’s wake, Anazeh going last with a half serious joke about not caring to be stabbed in the back.

      I expected the three non-Moslems would take advantage of the opportunity to ask me a string of questions. But they took exactly the opposite view of the situation. They avoided me, withdrawing into a corner by themselves. I suppose they thought that to be seen talking to me was more risky than the amusement merited.

      So I went up to the ramparts, too, to watch the folk at prayer, minded to keep out of sight, for they don’t like being regarded as a curious spectacle; and on the way up I did something that may have had a lot to do