The Talbot Mundy Megapack. Talbot Mundy

know, then, what it is! The rumour is true that those cursed Zionists intend to desecrate the place. This fellow, who you say is deaf and dumb, is one of your spies—is he not? Perhaps he can smell a Zionist—eh? Well, there are others! Better tell me the truth, Jimgrim, and in fifteen minutes I will pack this place so full of true Moslems that no conspirator could worm his way in! Then if the Jews start anything let them beware!”

      “By the beard of your Prophet,” Grim answered impiously, “this has nothing to do with Zionists.”

      “Neither have I, then, anything to do with this trespass. You have my leave to depart at once, Jimgrim!”

      “After the ruin—”

      “There will be no ruin, Jimgrim! I will fill the place with men.”

      “Better empty it of men! The more there are in it, the bigger the death-roll! Shall I say afterwards that I begged leave to set a watch, and you refused?”

      “You—you, Jimgrim—you talk to me of ruin and a death-roll? You are no every-day alarmist.”

      “Did you ever catch me in a lie?”

      “No, Jimgrim. You are too clever by far for that! If you were to concoct a lie it would take ten angels to unravel it! But—you speak of ruin and a death-roll, eh?” He stroked his beard for about a minute.

      “You have heard, perhaps, that Moslems are sharpening their swords for a reckoning with the Jews? There may be some truth in it. But there shall be no gathering in this place for any such purpose, for I will see to that. You need set no watch in here on that account.”

      “The time always comes,” Grim answered, “when you must trust a man or mistrust him. You’ve known me eleven years. What are you going to do?”

“In the name of God, what shall I answer! Taib,19 Jimgrim, I will trust you. What is it you wish?”

      “To leave this deaf-and-dumb man and the boy, below the Rock, undisturbed.”

      “That cannot well be. Occasionally others go to pray in that place. Also, there is a Moslem who has made the pilgrimage from Trichinopoli. I myself have promised to show him the mosque tonight, because he leaves Jerusalem at dawn, and only I speak a language he can understand. There will be others with him, and I cannot refuse to take them down below the Rock.”

      “That is nothing,” Grim answered. “They will think nothing of a deaf-and-dumb man praying or sleeping in a a corner.”

      “Is that all he wishes to do? He will remain still in one place? Then come.”

      “One other thing. That fellow who went and fetched you—he sits over there by the north door now—he will ask you questions about me presently. Tell him I’m leaving for Damascus in the morning. If he asks what we have been speaking about so long, tell him I brought you the compliments of Mustapha Kemal.”

      “I will tell him to go to jahannam!”

      “Better be civil to him. His hour comes tomorrow.”

      The sheikh led the way along one side of the inner of three concentric parts into which the mosque is divided by rows of marble columns, until we came to a cavernous opening in the floor, where steps hewn in the naked rock led downward into a cave that underlies the spot on which tradition says Abraham made ready to sacrifice his son.

      It was very dark below. Only one little oil lamp was burning, on a rock shaped like an altar in one corner. It cast leaping shadows that looked like ghosts on the smooth, uneven walls. The whole place was hardly more than twenty feet wide each way. There was no furniture, not even the usual mats—nothing but naked rock to lie or sit on, polished smooth as glass by centuries of naked feet.

      I was going to sit in a corner, but Grim seized my arm and pointed to the centre of the floor, stamping with his foot to show the exact place I should take. It rang vaguely hollow under the impact, and Suliman, already frightened by the shadows, seized my hand in a paroxysm of terror.

      “You’ve got to prove you’re a man tonight and stick it out!” Grim said to him in English; and with that, rather than argue the point and risk a scene, he followed the sheikh up the steps and disappeared. Grim’s methods with Suliman were a strange mixture of understanding sympathy and downright indifference to sentiment that got him severely criticized by the know-it-all party, who always, everywhere condemn. But he certainly got results.

      A legion of biblical and Koranic devils owned Suliman. They were the child’s religion. When he dared, he spat at the name of Christianity. Whenever Grim whipped him, which he had to do now and again, for theft or for filthy language, he used to curse Grim’s religion, although Grim’s religion was a well-kept secret, known to none but himself. But the kid was loyal to Grim with a courage and persistence past belief, and Grim knew how to worm the truth out of him and make him keep his word, which is more than some of the professional reformers know how to do with their protégés. I believe that Suliman would rather have earned Grim’s curt praise than all the fabulous delights of even a Moslem paradise.

But the kid was in torment. His idea of manliness precluded any exhibition of fear in front of me, if he could possibly restrain himself. He would not have minded breaking down in front of Grim, for he knew that Grim knew him inside out. On the contrary, he looked down on me, as a mere amateur at the game, who had never starved at the Jaffa Gate, nor eaten candle-ends, or gambled for millièmes20 with cab-drivers’ sons while picking up odds and ends of gossip for a government that hardly knew of his existence. In front of me he proposed to act the man—guide—showman—mentor. He considered himself my boss.

      But it was stern work. If there had been a little noise to make the shadows less ghostly; if Suliman had not been full of half digested superstition; or if he had not overheard enough to be aware that a prodigious, secret plot was in some way connected with that cavern, he could have kept his courage up by swaggering in front of me.

      He nearly fell asleep, with his head in my lap, at the end of half an hour. But when there was a sound at last he almost screamed. I had to clap my hand over his mouth; whereat he promptly bit my finger, resentful because he knew then that I knew he was afraid.

      It proved to be approaching footsteps—the sheikh of the mosque again, leading the man from Trichinopoli and a party of three friends. Their rear was brought up by Noureddin Ali’s spy, anxious about me, but pretending to want to overhear the sheikh’s account of things.

      The sheikh reeled it all off in a cultured voice accustomed to using the exact amount of energy required, but even so his words boomed in the cavern like the forethought of thunder. You couldn’t help wondering whether a man of his intelligence believed quite all he said, however much impressed the man from Trichinopoli might be.

      “We are now beneath the very rock on which Abraham was willing to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. This rock is the centre of the world. Jacob anointed it. King Solomon built his temple over it. The Prophet of God, the Prince Mahommed, on whose head be blessings! said of this place that it is next in order of holiness after Mecca, and that one prayer said here is worth ten elsewhere. Here, in this place, is where King Solomon used to kneel in prayer, and where God appeared to him. This corner is where David prayed. Here prayed Mahommed.

      “Look up. This hollow in the roof is over the spot where the Prophet Mahommed slept. When he arose there was not room for him to stand upright, so the Rock receded, and the hollow place remains to this day in proof of it. Beneath us is the Bir-el-Arwah, the well of souls, where those who have died come to pray twice weekly. Listen!”

      He stamped three times with his foot on the spot about two feet in front of where I sat, and a faint, hollow boom answered the impact.

      “You hear? The Rock speaks! It spoke in plain words when the Prophet prayed here, and was translated instantly to heaven on his horse El-Burak. Here, deep in the Rock, is the print of the hand of the angel, who restrained the Rock from following