LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

the left wrist too.

      Suddenly Suliman leaped to his feet. Catesby clapped a hand on his mouth and dragged him down again only in the nick of time.

      “Keep quiet, you little—!” he whispered. “Yes, I know it’s Jimgrim.”

      He knew exactly what to do now; needed no advice or urging from Narayan Singh. He waiting only until he could speak without risk of the twelve men hearing him. There was not the slightest need to hurry. He let them go a hundred yards and disappear beyond the ruined village wall before he gave an order. Then:

      “Narayan Singh, you wait here and watch the door. If anyone comes out, arrest him. If anyone else goes in, all right; wait and watch. But in that case don’t let anyone out on any terms; drive ’em back with your pistol; shoot if you must, but hold ’em in there somehow until help comes. If nothing happens don’t show yourself. Do you understand?”

      “Malum, sahib.”

      “Now Suliman—how long is it since you begged? Have you forgotten? Off with your boots—socks too—leave ’em here. You’re dirty enough, Lord knows. Better leave your head-gear too. Tear your pants a bit; you’re too well cared for to look plausible. Now some more dust in your hair. You’ll do.

      “Follow now, and beg from Jimgrim. Don’t look back at me, and don’t take no for an answer. If they turn and beat you, stick to them. Pretend you’re so hungry that you don’t mind being hurt. Cut along.”

      He lifted the youngster out of the dark hole and pitched him on to his feet outside. A moment later he followed as far as the gap in the wall. From that point he could watch what happened without any risk of being seen.

      * * * *

      The missionaries and police know best what perfectly consummate actors Arab children are. Their elders have grown set in the accepted ways, so that a grown man or woman seldom varies from a given method; usually the people of one village thieve and lie to a pattern, and are all at sea when anyone gets acquainted with their habit.

      But the children are less conservative, until the years bring on that eastern intellectual inertia that is partly due to Koran teaching and partly to polygamy. Suliman had lost none of his natural alertness yet, and he had not been long enough in Jim’s control to lose delight in mischief for the sake of lawlessness.

      So he accepted that part perfectly. Running until he was breathless—fingering the sweat into the corners of his eyes until it looked like tears—plucking grass as he ran, to chew and make the corners of his mouth filthy with green slime, he overtook the procession and begged alms in the name of Allah.

      Nor did he go to Jim first, but singled out the owner of the donkey; for the beggar’s principle is to flatter with first attention whoever had most in view of this world’s goods, thus sometimes stirring a ridiculous unconscious sense of rivalry. Human nature is absurd stuff, or the beggars would all be at work producing.

      Clearly those twelve men were in no mood to be generous. They cursed the boy as he approached them one by one; and when he would not go, but clung to them like one of those persistent Palestinian flies, bleating his parrot-cry of hunger with the same indifference to “Imshi!” (“Clear out!”) that the flies show to an angry hand, they picked up clods to heave at him. But he dodged those, cursed the throwers as a matter or etiquette, and came back with the same persistence.

      If the thirteenth man recognized him he gave no sign of it; and Suliman seemed to consider him not worth an effort, judging him with the beggar’s rule in mind as a maskin (poor man) because he walked last. It would have been an insult to the rest and rank bad form, clods notwithstanding, to have begged from him before giving the men ahead first chance to show their quality.

      So when he did at last approach Jim and cling to the skirt of his abyi nobody suspected old acquaintance. Jim told him gruffly to “imshi,” like the rest of them, although one corner of his mouth quivered slightly in the faint beginnings of a smile. He might as well have tried to “imshi” the weather. Suliman clung on, and begged like an old hand at the game. The East believes in importunity and sets as high a value on reiteration as do the advertisers of the West.

      The clod-throwing ceased because, unlike the curses that did not cease, one could not throw them any longer without hitting Jim. So Jim had to pause a minute to shake the persistent little nuisance off. And as most of the other twelve were shouting coarse obscenities, that gave him a chance to whisper without being overhead.

      “Get away, you little—!” Then, in sotto voce—

      “Where is Captain Catesby?”

      “He is in sight. Oh, in the name of Allah—”

      “Let Allah feed you! (Follow me then.) Go and scavenge. Go and steal. Am I God that I should feed you?”

      Bleating piteously, and shedding tears that would have made the fabulous weeping crocodile look like a very poor actor indeed, Suliman turned aside to squat by the side of what had once been a cart-road but had grown to a mere track since bombardment wiped the village out. But he did not stay in that position much longer than was needed to be out of range of missiles.

      * * * *

      The normal daylight activity of camp and town was under way. Bugles were blowing. Guards had been relieved. Long strings of mules and horses were being led to water at the troughs. Engines were moving in the station yard, and strings of Egyptian laborers were slouching sullenly to work in the railroad sheds. Donkeys, women and other beasts of burden were emerging from the town, where the muezzin had long since finished wailing his injunction to the four winds.

      One cartload of merchandise was already on its way from railway to town, and the kites were patrolling overhead on the watch for offal and remains. Suliman had a perfect right to head for the town, too, if he saw fit.

      So had Catesby, looking like any other shiftless Arab mediating breakfast. He strolled along the cart track leisurely with his head down, imitating the measured native gait that looks so dignified but oftener than not means merely pride in laziness.

      As he walked, fingering the pistol under his heavy brown cloak, he began wondering just how much the night’s work had accomplished in the matter between Jenkins and himself. Adding it all up he could not make the total come to anything at all.

      Suddenly he laughed, though. There was a hundred-piaster bank-note taken from a dead man! But Narayan Singh had found that, and if the real ownership should never be established no doubt it would be awarded to the Sikh. He took out the crumpled note and examined it, taking care to keep Suliman in sight.

      He was not at all expert in Arabic, but presently he whistled, for he could spell out the thin, cramped, right-to-left writing when he took the time. An Arab writing with a fine pen can condense a deal of information on a half-sheet of ordinary notepaper.

      The strip that fastened the halves of the note together was of generous proportions; it had been cut off with scissors, and looked like the lower third of a half-sheet. The gum used was very ordinary office paste, with the result that one corner had come loose and curled upward, betraying writing on both sides.

      And because of the fact that Arabs write from right to left and, like some careless Westerners, reverse the sheet by turning it end over end, the name of the man to whom the document had originally been addressed and of the man who wrote it were both on the cut-off strip of paper. The fist name—that on the gummed side—was Brigadier-General Jenkins. The other name was “your honor’s humble servant, Ibrahim Charkas.”

      Having spelled out the information, Catesby returned the note to his pocket and hurried forward, for Suliman was just entering the town street. He was not going to be fool enough to trust Suliman with the hundred piasters to pass along to Jim, having considerable less than Jim’s high opinion of the boy. That was reciprocated.

      Catesby’s specialty was Sikhs. Being an Arab, Suliman’s gift lay in personal devotion to whoever fed, clothed and favored him. It is not a bad gift, that personal loyalty, but there is nothing in it of the Sikh’s wider idealism that attaches him to persons only because

Скачать книгу