The Talbot Mundy Megapack. Talbot Mundy

is in there, and alive. I heard his voice. I could not hear the words. He seemed to be close to the door and to be carrying on a conversation. Shall I go back and rap on the door softly as a signal?”

      “No. It might be the signal for his death. How many voices did you hear?”

      “One other.”

      “He’d be sure to yell if they tried to murder him. In that case, down with the door. But if we go to his rescue before he needs us we might spoil his game.”

      “Atcha, sahib,” said the Sikh; but he examined both pistols again and plainly did not like the inactivity.

      It relieved his anxiety a little, however, when Catesby chose a black hole to hide in among the tumbled ruins of the mosque within twenty paces of the minaret door.

      * * * *

      Nobody who has not tried it, out hunting or in war, can guess how hard it is to listen attentively and scratch himself at the same time. Suliman, who not so many months ago had been clothed in little else than paupers’ lice and had hardly had time to forget the indifference that goes with it, suffered least. Perhaps, too, his carcass was less appetizing.

      But the Sikh is a clean race, prone to look down on even the tubbed and scrubbed British officer as none too particular. And that heap of ruins was alive with myriads of body-insects, “whose seed is in themselves” and that exist apparently eternally on nothing until warm-blooded provender arrives.

      Yet they did not dare move away. The moon was too low in the sky, and whoever had brought Jim to that place would likely to make a move of some kind before morning, or at least soon after sunrise. If this were a rendezvous of thieves, whoever approached it would likely do some careful scouting in advance. There was nothing for it by to lie still and scratch—and swear—and scratch.

      The Sikh’s ears were sharpest, and once he swore he heard the voice of a man begging for mercy.

      “Maybe Jimgrim has a man down?” ventured Suliman.

      But the other two grew nervous, and this time it was Catesby who crawled to the door to listen while Narayan Singh watched the coast. Catesby, too, distinguished the voices of two men, or thought he did; but the door was too thick for him to hear one word or establish Jim’s identity. He crept back again into hiding in that divided frame of mind from which small comfort ever comes, wondering what he would think of himself should it turn out afterward that Jim had been all along in peril of his life—already dead perhaps; yet recalling Jim’s words earlier that night, that it would be better to wait for a week than spoil things by a false move.

      When dawn came, what with insects and indecision they were thoroughly miserable, stiff, sore, hungry and depressed by the zero-hour self-consciousness that sheds the drear light of cold unreason on every circumstance. Suliman, who had been blubbering, fell asleep again.

      Catesby’s thoughts were back on Jenkins and the hopelessness of clearing himself of a false charge in view of the brigadier’s notorious ability to lie plausibly. Narayan Singh was squatting with eyes half-closed, dreaming in another language and another dimension, for that matter; not even the Sikhs can tell each other what thoughts reach them when the far-away look settles on their faces.

      None of them saw the morning visitors arrive until the twelfth and last of them came abreast and the first one struck the door with cautious knuckles. They were ordinary-looking fellaheen—villagers, that is—and each man carried some ordinary-looking load or other—baskets, mats, bags, a patchwork quilt.

      The last man led a donkey—one of those bruised and tortured little insects that make less noise than a ghost and eat endless Arab blows and insult in return for overwork. None of the men had a weapon as far as it was possible to see; for lack of the customary thick club the last man used his fist on the donkey’s nose as a hint that it was time to stand still.

      The leading man knocked half a dozen times; then the door opened and they all filed in, but from where the watchers lay it was not possible to see who opened it. The donkey went in too, and the lock squealed again behind her.

      There followed further agonies of indecision and impatience; for, weapons or no weapons, there is no limit at all to the senseless cruelty of which the fellaheen are capable. Like their prototypes of Egypt the Palestinians have such a heritage of oppression to look back on that their actions are simply a matter of mood.

      They smolder, as it were, in childlike harmlessness for periods whose probably duration no psychologist can guess; and burst out into senseless, superstitious fury without any apparent cause. Fear they understand always; fair treatment never, having no education in it. Jim would be about as safe in their hands as among sheep or wolves, whichever mood was uppermost.

      It was probably intuition that held Catesby’s hand. Narayan Singh was all for action—for storming the door and holding up the crowd within at pistol-point, his one obsession being that order given him half-jokingly by Colonel Goodenough to bring Jim back to Jerusalem alive. He snarled between his teeth at Catesby, urging force, and laughing. It is a bad sign when a Sikh does that.

      “Hold your tongue,” Catesby ordered him.

      Having to control the other did him good. He realized almost for the first time how the court martial hanging over his head had lowered his own opinion of himself to a degree that the Sikh’s more subtly receptive mind had found contagious. He braced himself deliberately.

      Hitherto he had almost unconsciously admitted to the rule that, being technically under arrest, he was technically void of the right to command. Now he fell back on the racial issue. Right or wrong, the white man has his place above the black, and above all the grades of color whether ebony or yellow, Aryan, Mongol or Ethiopian.

      Narayan Singh recognized the change. The world being what it is, a product of history, improving only gradually, men still like leaders; and the braver and more self-disciplined the man the less he appreciates a leader in whose face he may sneer with impunity.

      There was absolutely nothing menial about Narayan Singh; he was a high-chinned man, who would polish his officer’s boots for pride in the well-groomed officer. But the officer good enough to have his harness cleaned by him and lead him must know his own mind. He would rather be told to hold his tongue by a mistaken strong man than be allowed his own way by a weakling. If it were not so, there would be no leaders and no led.

      Having made up his mind to await the event and shoulder the full responsibility, Catesby scratched himself philosophically. He was no longer a victim, nor could the fact that he was lousy lower his self-respect. Whatever he had done rightly hitherto that night was due to intuition and old habits of thinking that survive under imposed disgrace, making it impossible for a true man to become untrue, or a leader incapable of leading, except gradually, step by step.

      Now it was as if a cloud of depression vanished. He did thenceforward what he consciously chose to do, captain of his own soul and master of his destiny. Even Suliman, waking drowsily, sensed the difference.

      They did not wait very long. The door opened again and the donkey came forth first, loaded so heavily that it could barely stagger and showing its teeth because of the biting tightness of the cords that kept the load in place.

      Over it all like a Joseph’s coat of many colors they had tied the patchwork quilt, knotting it under the animal’s belly; the suggestion that conveyed, whether it was intentional or not—you can’t ever gage the fellaheen’s simplicity or artfulness—was that they were honest villagers removing their household goods. Only a very suspicious observer would have balked at their having no women with them to carry the heaviest burdens.

      The men filed out one by one after the donkey, each with a heavier load that he took in with him, but using what he had brought to cover or contain what he had come for—sacks—baskets—mats and an old tarpaulin knotted by the corners and carried between two men. The only remarkable difference was that whereas twelve men had entered, thirteen now came out, and there remained at least one inside to lock the door after them.

      The thirteenth man looked cleaner than the rest, and carried no bundle.