IN WHICH THE TAXIDERMIST AND A BASHA
PREVAIL OVER A BLIND MAN
He went at once to the taxidermist's shop. M. Fournier expected him,
but not the story which he had to tell.
"You wish to discover the man who shouted through your door six months
ago," said Charnock. "It was I."
M. Fournier got together his account-books and laid them on the
counter of the shop. "I have much money. Where is my friend Mr. Jeremy
Bentham?"
"It is Hassan Akbar whom we must ask," said Charnock, and he told
Fournier of what he had seen on the day of his previous visit to
Tangier.
The two men walked up to the cemetery gate, where Hassan still sat in
the dust, and swung his body to and fro and reiterated his cry "Allah
Ben!" as on that day when, clothed as a Moor, Ralph Warriner had come
down the hill. It was the tune which that Moor had hummed, and which
Miranda had repeated, that had led Charnock to identify the victim and
the enemy.
Charnock hummed over that tune again as he stood beside the Moor, and
the Moor stopped at once from his prayer.
"Hassan Akbar, what hast them done with the Christian who hummed that
tune and dropped a silver dollar in thy lap at this gate?"
Hassan made no answer, and as though his sole anxiety had been lest
Warriner should have escaped and returned, he recommenced his cry.
"Hassan," continued Charnock, "was it that Christian who betrayed thy
wealth? Give him back to us and thou shalt be rich again."
"Allah Beh!" cried Hassan. "Allah Beh!"
"It is of no use for us to question him," said M. Fournier. "But the
Basha will ask him, and in time he will answer. To-morrow I will go to
the Basha."
Charnock hardly gathered the purport of Fournier's proposal. He went
back into the town, and that evening M. Fournier related to him much
about Ralph Warriner which he did not know.
The idea of running guns in Morocco had appealed to Warriner some time
before he put it into practice, and whilst he was still at Gibraltar.
"I did not know him then," said Fournier. "He had relations with
others, very likely with Hassan Akbar, but nothing came of those
relations. When he ran from Gibraltar in the _Ten Brothers_, he landed
at Tangier, and lay hid somewhere in the town, while he sent the _Ten
Brothers_ over to South America and ordered the mate to sell her for
as much as she would fetch. But in a little while Ralph Warriner met
me and asked me to be his partner in his scheme. He had a little money
then, and indeed it was just about the time when Hassan's fortune was
discovered. It is very likely that our friend told the Basha of
Hassan's wealth. If he knew, he would certainly have told," said M.
Fournier, with a lenient smile, "for there was money in it. Anyway, he
had some money then, I had some, I could get more, and I like him very
much. I say yes. He tells me of his ship. We want a ship to carry over
the guns. I telegraph to the Argentine and stop the sale. Warriner
sent orders to change her rig, as he call it, and her name, and she
comes back to us as the _Tarifa_. The only trouble left was this. The
most profitable guns to introduce are the Winchester rifles. But for
that purpose one of us must go between England and Tangier, must sail
the _Tarifa_ between England and Tangier. I could not sail a toy-boat
in a pond without falling into the water. How then could I sail the
_Tarifa?_ So Warriner must do it. But Warriner, my poor dear friend,
he has made little errors. He must not go to England, not even as
Bentham. To make it safe for Jeremy Bentham to go to England, Ralph
Warriner must be dead. You see?"
"Yes, I see. But why in the world did he call himself Jeremy Bentham?"
asked Charnock.
"Because he was such an economist. Oh, but he was very witty and
clever, my poor friend, when he was not swearing at you. At all events
he decided that Ralph Warriner must die, and that there must be proofs
that he was dead. So he packed up a few letters--one from his wife
before he was married to her--that was clever, _hein?_ A love-letter
from his _fiancée_ which he has carried about next to his heart for
six years! So sweet! So convincing to the great British public, eh? He
found that letter by chance among his charts. He gives it to me and
some others in an oilskin case, and sends me with one of his sailors
to the Scilly Islands. And then Providence helped us.
"All that we hoped to do was to hear of a wreck, in which many lives
were lost, to go out amongst the rocks, where the ship was wrecked,
and to pick up that little oilskin case. You understand? Oh, but we
were helped. There was a heavy storm for many days at Scilly, and
after the storm for many days a fog. On one day the sailor and I--we
go out in the fog to the Western Islands, to see if any ship had come
ashore. But it was dangerous! I can tell you it was very dangerous and
very wet. However, we come to Rosevear, and there was the remnant of a
ship, and no sailor anywhere. We landed on Rosevear, and just as I was
about to place the oilskin case among the rocks where it would be
naturally found, we came upon one dead sailor, lying near to the sea
just as if asleep. I slipped the oilskin case into his pocket, and
then with stones we broke in his face. Ah, but that was horrible! It
made me sick then and there. But we did it, until there was no face
left. Then for fear the waves might come up and wash him away, we
dragged him up the rocks and laid him amongst the grass, again as
though he was asleep. We made a little mistake there. We dragged him
too far from the sea. But the mistake did not matter."
"I see," said Charnock. "And that day I shouted through the door
Warriner sailed for England?"
"Yes," replied Fournier. "I hired that morning a felucca to sail
himself across to Tarifa."
"I remember."
"The boat lay at Tarifa. He set sail that night."
"Yes," said Charnock. "I spent the night here. I waited two days for
the P. and O. at Gibraltar, we passed the _Tarifa_ off Ushant, and
three days later I met Warriner in Plymouth. Yes, the times fit."
"It is very likely Ralph who told about Hassan," mused M. Fournier,
with a lenient smile. "If he knew, he would have been sure to have
told; for there was money in it. To-morrow I will see the Basha."
M. Fournier went down to the Kasbah and found the Basha delivering
justice at the gates. The suitors were dismissed, and M. Fournier
opened his business.
"We do not wish to trouble the Legation," said he. "The Legation would
make much noise, and his Shereefian Majesty, whom God preserve, would
never hear the end of it. Besides, we do not wish it." And upon that
money changed hands. "But if the Englishman told your nobility that
Hassan Akbar was hoarding his money in utter selfishness, then your
nobility will talk privately with Hassan and find out from him where
the Englishman is."
The Basha stroked his white beard.
"The Nazarene speaks wisely. We will not disturb the dignity of his
Majesty, whom Allah preserve, for such small things. I will talk to
Hassan Akbar and send for you again."
That impenetrable man was fetched from the cemetery gates, and the
Basha addressed him.
"Hassan, thou didst hide and conceal thy treasure, and truly the Room
told me of it; and since thy treasure was of no profit to thee, I took
it."
"When I was blind and helpless," said Hassan.
"So thou wast chastened the more thoroughly for thy profit in the next
world, and thy master and my master, the Sultan, was served in this,"
said the Basha, with great dignity, and he reverently bowed his head
to the dust. "Now what hast thou done with the Room?"
But Hassan answered never a word.
"Thou stubborn man! May Allah burn thy great-great-grandfather!" said
the Basha, and chained his hands and his feet, and had him conveyed to
an inner room, where he talked to him with rods of various length and
thickness. At the end of the third day the Basha sent a message to M.
Fournier that Hassan's heart was softened by the goodness of God, and
that now he would speak.
The Basha received Charnock and M. Fournier in a great cool domed room
of lattice-work and tiles. He sat upon cushions on a dais at the end
of the room; stools were brought forward for his visitors; and M.
Fournier and the Basha exchanged lofty compliments, and drank much
weak sweet tea. Then the Basha raised his hand; a door was thrown
open; and a blind, wavering, broken man crawled, dragging his fetters,
across the floor.
"Good God!" whispered Charnock; "what have they done to him?"
"They have made him speak, that is all," returned M. Fournier,
imperturbably. He kept all his pity for Ralph Warriner.
M. Fournier translated afterwards to Charnock the story which Hassan
told as he grovelled on the ground, and it ran as follows:--
"When the son of the English first came into Morocco I showed him
great kindness and hospitality, and how he returned it you know. So
after I was blind I waited. More than once I heard his voice in the
Sôk, and in the streets of Tangier, and I knew that he had quarrelled
with his own people the Nazarenes, and dared not turn to them for
help. I sit by the gate of the cemetery, and many Arabs, and Moors,
and Negroes, and Jews come down the road from the country to the
market-place, and at last one morning I heard the steps of one whose
feet shuffled in his _babouches_; he could not walk in the loose
slippers as we who are born to the use of them. And it was not an old
man, whose feet are clogged by age, for his stride was long; that my
ears told me which are my eyes. It was an infidel in the dress of the
faithful. It may be that if I had seen with my eyes, I should never
have known; but my ears are sharpened, and I heard. When he passed me
he gave me greeting, and then I knew it was the Room. He dropped a
dollar into my hands and whistled a tune which he had often whistled
after he had eaten of my _kouss-kouss_, and so went on his way. I rose
up and followed him, thinking that my time had come. Across the Sôk I
followed him, hearing always the shuffle of the slippers amidst the
din of voices and the hurrying of many feet. He did not see me, for he
never turned or stopped, but went straight on under the gate of the
town, and then turned through the horse-market, and came to a house
which he entered. I heard the door barred behind him, and a shutter
fixed across the window, and I sat down beneath the shutter and
waited. I heard voices talking quickly and earnestly within the room,
and then someone rose and came out of the door and walked down the
street towards the port. But it was not the man for whom I waited.
This one walked with little jaunty, tripping steps, and I was glad
that he went away; for the bolt of the door was not shut behind him,
and the dog of a Nazarene was alone. I rose and walked to the door. A
son of the English stood in the way: I asked him for alms with the one
hand and felt for the latch with the other; but the son of the English
saw what I was doing and shouted through the door."
"It was I," said Charnock.
Hassan turned his sightless face towards Charnock and reflected. Then
he answered: "It was indeed you. And after you had spoken the bolt was
shot. Thereupon I went back to the Sôk, and asking here and there at
last fell in with some Arabs from Beni Hassan with whom in other days
I had traded. And for a long while I talked to them, showing that
there was no danger, for the Room was without friends amongst his own
people, and moreover that he would fetch a price, every okesa of which
was theirs. And at the last they agreed with me that I should deliver
him to them at night outside the walls of Tangier and they would take
him away and treat him ill, and sell him for a slave in their own
country. But the Room had gone from Tangier and the Arabs moved to
Tetuan and Omara and Sôk-et-Trun, but after a while they returned to
Tangier and the Room also returned; and the time I had waited for had
come."
"What have you done with him?" said the Basha. "Speak."
"I besought a lad who had been my servant to watch the Room Bentham,
and his goings and comings. With the dollar which he had given me I
bought a little old tent of palmetto and set it up in the corner of
the Sôk apart from the tents of the cobblers."
"Well?" interrupted M. Fournier, "speak quickly."
"One evening the lad came to me and said the Room had gone up to a
house on the hill above the Sôk, where there were many lights and much
noise of feasting. So I went down the Sôk to where the Arabs slept by
their camels and said to them, 'It will be to-night.' And as God
willed it the night was dark. The lad led me to the house and I sat
outside it till the noise grew less and many went away. At last the
Nazarene Bentham came to the door and his mule was brought for him and
he mounted. I asked the boy who guided me, 'Is it he?' and the boy
answered 'Yes.' So I dismissed him and followed the mule down the hill
to the Sôk, which was very quiet. Then I ran after him and called, and
he stopped his mule till I came up with him. 'What is it?' he asked,
and I threw a cloth over his head and dragged him from the mule. We
both fell to the ground, but I had one arm about his neck pressing the
cloth to his mouth so that he could not cry out. I pressed him into
the mud of the Sôk and put my knee upon his chest and bound his arms
together. Then I carried him to my tent and took the cloth from his
head, for I wished to hear him speak and be sure that it was Bentham.
But he understood my wish and would not speak. So I took his
mule-hobbles which I had stolen while he feasted, and made them hot in
a fire and tied them about his ankles and in a little while I made him
cry out and I was sure. Then I stripped him of his clothes and put
upon him my own rags. The Arabs came to the tent an hour later. I
gagged Bentham and gave him up to them bound, and in the dark they
took him away, with the mule. His clothes I buried in the ground under
my tent, and in the morning stamped the ground down and took the tent
away."
"And the chief of these Arabs? Give me his name," said the Basha.
"Mallam Juzeed," replied Hassan.
The Basha waved his hand to the soldiers and Hassan was dragged away.
"I will send a soldier with you, give you a letter to the Sheikh of
Beni Hassan, and he will discover the Room, if he is to be found in
those parts," said the Basha to M. Fournier.
Charnock spent the greater part of a month in formalities. He took the
letter from the Basha and many other letters to Jews of importance in
the towns with which M. Fournier was able to provide him; he hired the
boy Hamet who had acted as his guide on his first visit, and getting
together an equipment as for a long journey in Morocco, rode out over
the Hill of the Two Seas into the inlands of that mysterious and
enchanted country.