Lion of Petra (Unabridged). Talbot Mundy
be here in an hour or so. Would you be ready to leave at once for Petra?”
“As soon as I can join a caravan.”
“Today? This evening, for instance?”
“Allah provide it!”
“That’s settled, then.”
He turned toward Grim.
“This is Sheik Hajji,* Jimgrim bin Yazid of El-Abdeh, who has twice made the pilgrimage to Mecca. He is my honored friend. He starts tonight with a caravan toward Petra. You may travel with him and be in safe hands all the way.”
She eyed Grim curiously, startled, it seemed to me. Then her expression changed slowly to excitement, followed by a look of baffling wisdom, as much as to say she knew something and would not tell. I don’t think it was his name that startled her; that sounded Arabic enough.
“What business has he at Petra?” she asked.
De Crespigny let Grim answer that conundrum.
“Ya sit Ayisha,”* said Grim, “I carry a letter to Sheikh Ali Higg from someone in Arabia. I will deliver you along with the letter. You may have a place in my caravan—provided you have camels, provisions, and a litter,” he added; for the surest way to increase her already alert suspicion would have been to offer to provide everything.
“Let me see the letter!”
Grim produced one instantly—an envelope with a big red seal on it. It was marked across the top in large letters “On His Majesty’s Service,” but addressed in Arabic to somebody, and as she could not read she was satisfied.
“Ali Higg will hold you answerable for my safety if he has to destroy armies to reach you!” she said simply.
“Ya sit Ayisha,” Grim answered solemnly, “may Allah turn my face cold if Sheikh Ali Higg shall have fault to find with me in this matter!”
“How many is in your caravan?” she asked. “Twenty armed men.”
She nodded. “I will pay for my place in the caravan, according to the custom—the half now and the other half on arrival.”
Without gesture, without moving a muscle of his face, Grim turned down that proposal desert-fashion, that is emphatically, with a reservation.
“Ya sit Ayisha, may Allah do so to me, and more, if I will accept a price for this. Between Ali Higg and me let this thing be.”
“Taib,” she answered. “My men shall look for camels. I will go with you tonight.”
She went away then, leaving a smile behind her that would have coaxed the Sphinx, and rode down-street toward the ancient city on a big gray donkey guarded by two Bedouins armed with swords and spears.
“Did I do all right?” asked de Crespigny.
“Fine!” Grim answered. “You’ll be ruling England one of these days, ‘Crep. Good job I had that letter to show her, though, wasn’t it?”
* Bazaar.
* The Moslems attribute all their favorite proverbs to the Koran, whether they are in the book or, as in this case, not.
* An exclamation of contempt.
* Lit., gentleman-sir.
* One who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca.
* O lady Ayisha.
CHAPTER 3
“Ali Higg’s brains live in a black tent!”
I hate to have to admit that there was any virtue in Suliman, or anything other than vice in his new chum Abdullah. The two little devils stole my cigarettes, and deviled me unmercifully about my disguise, making improper jokes, at which Ali Baba and his sons laughed uproariously, and which they recalled at intervals for days afterwards.
But almost immediately after the “lady Ayisha” had left the governorate I was forced to admit that the brats were useful. In their own way they served Grim as a pair of hounds work for a man out hunting rabbits, for they could penetrate places and be welcome where a grown man would be killed—at the very least—for intruding or attempting to intrude. Harems, for instance. And they could be naive and wheedling toward a woman when they chose.
They came in with their tongues hanging out like a pair of pups, and sticky with the awful stuff men sell for candy in the El-Kalil bazaars. Evidently some woman had been pumping them for information, and Grim made them stand in front of him on the carpet.
“Well?”
They both spoke at once. Now and then one paused for breath and then the other, but on the whole it was a neck-and-neck race to tell the tale first.
“There was a woman in the suk who had heard of Jimgrim but never saw him, and she bought us sweets and took us to her house, and she asked us questions about Jimgrim, and we told lies, and she asked us what we were doing in El-Kalil, and we said nothing, and she said wallah! That was very little, and then she asked us all over again about Jimgrim. (Gasp)
“So we said Jimgrim has already gone back to Jerusalem, and she did not believe; but we swore by the beard of the Prophet, so she said what were we going to do now, and we said we would go to the governorate and beg for bread. (Gasp)
“So she said what next, and we said there is a great sheikh here from Arabia, who makes a journey to Petra, and inshallah he will take us with him, and she said why did we want to go to Petra, and we said because our mothers were carried off by the Turks and sold to the Arabs and inshallah we should find them near Petra. (Gasp)”
“So far, good!” said Grim. “That’s what she got out of you. Now what did you get out of her?”
“She said wallah! There is Ali Higg at Petra and he grinds the face of the poor and is a great chief and will make us prisoners and sell us for slaves or have us turned into eunuchs, and we said (gasp) that we are msakin* and not afraid of Ali Higg and he may as well have us as anybody, and if it is written that we shall be eunuchs then it is written and who shall change it? (Gasp.)
“And she said what made us think that the great sheikh will take us to Petra, and we said because he had promised, but he may be a big liar and we don’t know yet.”
“What kind of woman is she?” Grim asked.
“A big fat woman with a belly like two waterbags one on top of the other, thus!”
“What is her name?”
“She is the wife of Ismail ben Rafiki, the wool-dealer.”
“Uh-huh. Yes. Go on.”
“So she said we should come back here and find out if the sheikh will really take us and say to the sheikh (gasp) there is a lady in the city who can be of service to him in a certain matter and he should come back with us and we should lead him to the house and she will give us money and the sheikh will understand.”
“Good!” pronounced Grim. “Not half bad. Just for that I’ll go with you.”