The Talbot Mundy Megapack. Talbot Mundy

seems to be a natural law that when chicanery has reached a certain stage of ripeness, and the elements of decency begin to rebel, all the clues required to link the crimes with the criminal appear on the surface one by one, almost exactly as when two chemicals are mixed and one of them disintegrates. Examination of the career of any criminal or of any public scandal will confirm the phenomenon.

      It is easy to talk airily of luck and coincidence. Luck is an element of crime and loose thinking. The fact is that honest persistency sets natural laws to working, with the result, for instance, that an inventor on the trail of one idea discovers an entirely different one that he never dreamed of; a general, wholly bent on a definite, ably worked-out line of strategy discovers an unexpected flaw in the enemy’s design that he would have missed if his own arrangements had been careless. There is no luck about it. It is law.

      So, although Jim was surprised and rather annoyed at the moment, he stumbled that minute on a clue. Aaronsohn, the vitriolic journalist in gold-rimmed glasses, was sitting outside the tent on a camp-stool, a hand on either knee in an attitude of suppressed impatience. He got to his feet the instant Jim appeared.

      “You are Major Grim, I think. I would like to talk to you.”

      “I’m in a hurry,” Jim warned him.

      “I am not. Why not do your errand and I will wait here for you? I have waited already two hours. You were asleep and I did not care to disturb you.”

      “Something important, eh?”

      “To me, yes. To you, perhaps not.”

      “All right. Wait in my tent. Help yourself to cigarettes, and I’ll be right back.”

      Instead of going to Catesby as he had intended, Jim went straight to the hospital tent, where he found Narayan Singh sitting at the end of the cot in glowering impatience.

      “Have you slept?” he asked him.

      “Ask the orderly, sahib.”

      Jim beckoned the orderly and put the question.

      “Hah! Never was such a sleeper! He has snored so for five hours on end that the very tent-poles shook, and I had to wake him twice lest the other patients get out of bed to murder him.”

      Jim laughed and went to find the doctor.

      “Is Narayan Singh fit to be discharged?” he asked.

      “No, but I’ll discharge him like a shot. Most Sikhs enjoy a short spell in hospital, but that man has more excuses for discharging him than a porcupine has bristles. He’s an interesting specimen, and not badly hurt; three days would see him as right as a trivet. I’ve talked with him on and off for about three hours just for the fun of it.”

      “Hasn’t he slept at all?”

      “Not much. But you know what Sikhs are; they can go without sleep for a tremendous time, and make it up afterwards. The last excuse he tried on me was a story that his father died of hydrophobia because he couldn’t stand hospital environment at night, and he suggested the disease might be hereditary.

      “Sure, I’ll let him out—a liar like that deserves anything. Tell him to come back and have his head dressed again after he has seen the lady.”

      Outside between the tents Jim gave Narayan Singh his warrant to arrest the iblis.

      “Have you any idea where to look for him?” he asked.

      “Surely, sahib. That Suliman played a game with other young sprouts of wickedness outside the place where I lay. Afterwards they talked until Suliman grew sleepy and went off with all their money.

      “They told the gossip of the lines: how certain men had seen the iblis cross the railway line this morning, but were afraid to interfere with him. He was heading due east. I think, sahib, he will dance again tonight to summon thieves and learn from them how much has happened. If he does—!”

      “You’d better take some men with you.”

      “Aye, sahib—four men if I may choose them.”

      “Will you go in disguise?”

      “Not I! We will take rifles with bayonets, wear our uniforms and bring back that iblis in the name of a Sikh, whose head is no proper target for roof-stones. There is honor involved.”

      “All right.”

      Jim made arrangements for Narayan Singh to have the selection of four volunteers, and got written permits for them all to leave camp after dark. Then he returned to Aaronsohn.

      * * * *

      The Zionist had lit the lamp and was reading a Hebrew magazine in Jim’s chair with that peculiar manner of armed intensity that characterizes the thinkers of the movement. His Vandyke beard and thin, Semitic nose, and a narrow shawl thrown loosely over his shoulders, made him look in that uncertain light like one of the statesmen-priests who used to intrigue in medieval history.

      “Now I’m at your service.”

      “I have come to appeal to you as a fellow American, Major Grim.”

      “Don’t forget I’m in British uniform.”

      “I am also an American, as it were in service under British rules and regulations.”

      “The positions seem different to me. However—”

      “You are the only American in British uniform to whom I can appeal. I am not under arrest for the present. They have spared me that indignity, although I understand that General Jenkins demanded it.

      “I am charged with plotting to steal British rifles, and with hiding them under the floor of our store-shed, where they were discovered this morning by a Captain Ticknor. Now I know nothing about those rifles. We have never used that space beneath the floor. We only hire the place.

      “I have no notion how the rifles got there; how should I have? I am only quite sure that no Zionist had a hand in it, for I know what every Zionist in Ludd has been doing all the time. But how can I prove it?

      “I am told you exposed a plot against Zionists in Jerusalem. Will you help us now?”

      Jim sat down on the bed and smiled. Aaronsohn took the smile for mere politeness covering hesitation, and turned loose all his persuasive power.

      “Whatever your racial prejudices, Major Grim, the predicament we Zionist are placed in surely must appeal to you. On the one hand the British Government promises us everything—a national home for Jews in Palestine—assistance—fair play; and some of their officers try to make good that promise. I give them full credit. They haven’t much intelligence from our point of view, but they act according to their lights.

      “On the other hand some of the officers, General Jenkins among them, stop at nothing to put us in a bad light, and do everything within their power to handicap us in every way. Such men have even less intelligence than the others, but their official position gives them opportunity.”

      “The British are not all fools,” said Jim.

      “That is after all a matte of opinion. Certainly some of them are just according to their lights; but it is the very sense of justice that I dread in this instance.

      “General Anthony will order a court martial on me and a handful of others. All the officers who are anti-Zionist will exert themselves to discover circumstantial evidence against us. We have none whatever—”

      “Oh, yes, you have,” said Jim.

      “But what? I have been allowed to visit the place since the discovery, and it is true that it can be shown that the rifles were carried in through a door connecting with a place next door that is own by Arabs.

      “But they will answer, ‘What does that prove?’ Only that we paid Arabs to do the stealing for us! I am told that Ibrahim Charkas, who is the worst kind of criminal, will swear that we Zionist paid him.”

      “Don’t