"And the rest of the acts of Ahaziah--"
I have no idea what Grim did during the next few days. I spent
the time studying Arabic, and saw nothing of him until he walked
into my room at the hotel one afternoon, sat down and came
straight to the point.
"Had enough?"
"No."
"Got the hang of it?"
"Yes, I think so," I answered. "Allah's peace, as they call it,
depends on the French. They intend to get Damascus and all
Syria. So they sent down Abdul Ali of Damascus to make trouble
for the British in Palestine; the idea being to force the
British to make common cause with them. That would mean total
defeat for the Arabs; and Great Britain would save France scads
of men and money. But you pulled that plug. I saw you do it. I
heard Abdul Ali of Damascus tell you Scharnhoff's name. Did you
go after Scharnhoff?"
"No, not yet," he answered. "You're no diplomat."
I knew that. I have never wished to be one, never having met a
professional one who did not, so to speak, play poker with a cold
deck and at least five aces. The more frankly they seem to be
telling the truth, the more sure you may be they are lying.
"Neither are you," I answered. "You're a sportsman. Are you
allowing Scharnhoff weight for age, and a fair start--or what?"
He chuckled. "You believed old Abdul-Ali of Damascus? He's a
French secret political agent. So whatever he told us is
certainly not true. Or, if it is true, or partially true, then
it's the kind of truth that is deadlier deceptive than a good
clean God-damned lie. Get this: such men as Abdul Ali would
face torture rather than betray an associate--unless they're sure
the associate is a traitor or about to become one. A government
can't easily punish its own spies on foreign territory. But by
betraying them, it can sometimes get the other government to do
it. That Abdul Ali betrayed Scharnhoff to me, proves one of two
things. Abdul Ali was lying, and Scharnhoff harmless--or in
some way Scharnhoff has fallen foul of his French paymasters
and they want him punished. Very likely he has drawn French
money, for their purposes, and has misused it for his own ends.
Or perhaps they have promised him money, and wish to back down.
Possibly he knows too much about their agents, and they want
him silenced. They propose to have us silence him. I'm going
to call on Scharnhoff."
"You suspect him of double treachery?"
"I suspect him of being a one-track-minded, damned old
visionary."
I had met Hugo Scharnhoff. Long before the War he had been a
professor of orientology at Vienna University. At the moment he
was technically an "enemy alien." But he had lived so many years
in Jerusalem, and was reputed so studious and harmless, that the
British let him stay there after Allenby captured the city. A
man of moderate private means, he owned a stone house in the
German Colony with its back to the Valley of Hinnom.
"Care to come?" Grim asked me.
"Yes."
"Know your Bible?" He proceeded to quote from it: "And the rest
of the acts of Ahaziah which he did are they not written in the
book of the chronicles of the Kings of Israel?"'
"What of it?"
"That was set down in Aramaic, nowadays called Hebrew, something
like three thousand years ago," said Grim. "It's Aramaic magic.
Let's take a look at it."
We trudged together down the dusty Bethlehem Road, turned to the
east just short of the Pool of the Sultan (where they now had a
delousing station for British soldiers) and went nearly to the
end of the colony of neat stone villas that the Germans built
before the War, and called Rephaim. It was a prosperous colony
until the Kaiser, putting two and two, made five of them and had
to guess again.
The house we sought stood back from the narrow road, at a corner,
surrounded by a low stone wall and a mass of rather dense shrubs
that obscured the view from the windows. The front door was a
thing of solid olive-wood. We had to hammer on it for several
minutes. There was no bell.
A woman opened it at last--an Arab in native costume, gazelle-
eyed, as they all are, and quite good looking, although hardly in
her first youth. Her face struck me as haunted. She was either
ashamed when her eyes met Grim's or else afraid of him. But she
smiled pleasantly enough and without asking our business led the
way at once to a room at the other end of a long hall that was
crowded with all sorts of curios. They were mostly stone bric-a-
brac-fragments of Moabite pottery and that kind of thing, with a
pretty liberal covering of ordinary house dust. In fact, the
house had the depressing "feel" of a rarely visited museum.
The room she showed us into was the library--three walls lined
with books, mostly with German titles--a big cupboard in one
corner, reaching from floor to ceiling--a big desk by the
window--three armchairs and a stool. There were no pictures,
and the only thing that smacked of ornament was the Persian rug
on the floor.
We waited five minutes before Scharnhoff came in, looking as if
we had disturbed his nap. He was an untidy stout man with green
goggles and a grayish beard, probably not yet sixty years of age,
and well preserved. He kept his pants up with a belt, and his
shirt bulged untidily over the top. When he sat down you could
see the ends of thick combinations stuffed into his socks. He
gave you the impression of not fitting into western clothes at
all and of being out of sympathy with most of what they represent.
He was cordial enough--after one swift glance around the room.
"Brought a new acquaintance for you," said Grim, introducing
me. "I've told him how all the subalterns come to you for
Palestinian lore--"
"Ach! The young Lotharios! Each man a Don Juan! All they come
to me for is tales of Turkish harems, of which I know no more
than any one. They are not interested in subjects of real
importance. 'How many wives had Djemal Pasha? How many of them
were European?' That is what they ask me. When I discuss
ancient history it is only about King Solomon's harem that they
care to know; or possibly about the modern dancing girls of El-
Kerak, who are all spies. But there is no need to inform you as
to that. Eh? I haven't seen you for a long time, Major Grim.
What have you been doing?"
"Nothing much. I was at the Tomb of the Kings yesterday."
Scharnhoff smiled scornfully.
"Now you must have some whiskey to take the taste of that untruth
out of your mouth! How can a man of your attainments call that
obviously modern fraud by such a name? The place is not nearly
two thousand years old! It is probably the tomb of a Syrian
queen named Adiabene and her family. Josephus mentions it. This
land is full--every square metre of it--of false antiquities with
real names, and real antiquities that never have been discovered!
But why should a man like you, Major Grim, lend yourself to
perpetuating falsity?"
He walked over to the cupboard to get whiskey, and from where we
sat we could both of us see what he was doing. The cupboard was
in two parts, top and bottom, without any intervening strip of
wood between the doors, which fitted tightly. When he opened the
top part the lower door opened with it. He kicked it shut again
at once, but I had seen inside--not that it was interesting at
the moment.
He set whiskey and tumblers on the desk, poured liberally, and
went on talking.
"Tomb of the Kings? Hah! Tomb of the Kings of Judah? Hah! If
any one can find that, he will have something more important than
Ludendorff's memoirs! Something merkwurdig, believe me!"
He stiffened suddenly, and looked at Grim through the green
goggles as if he were judging an antiquity.
"Perhaps this is not the time to make you a little suggestion, eh?"
Grim's face wrinkled into smiles.
"This man knows enough to hang me anyhow! Fire away!"
"Ah! But I would not like him to hang me!"
"He's as close as a clam. What's your notion?"
"Nothing serious, but--between us three, then--you and I are both
foreigners in this place, Major Grim, although I have made it my
home for fifteen years. You have no more interest in this
government and its ridiculous rules than I have. What do you
say--shall we find the Tomb of the Kings together?"
Grim wrinkled into smiles again and glanced down at his uniform.
"Yes, exactly!" agreed Scharnhoff. "That is the whole point.
They call me an enemy alien. I am to all intents and purposes a
prisoner. You are a British officer--can do what you like--go
where you like. You wear red tabs; you are on the staff;
nobody will dare to question you. These English have stopped all
exploration until they get their mandate. After that they will
take good care that only English societies have the exploration
privilege. But what if we--you and I, that is to say--between
us extract the best plum from the pudding before those miscalled
statesmen sign the mandate--eh? It can be done! It can be done!"
Grim chuckled:
"I suppose you already see a picture of you and me with an
ancient tomb in our trunks--say a few tons of the more artistic
parts--beating it for the frontier and hawking the stuff
afterward to second-hand furniture dealers? Pour me another
whiskey, prof, and then we'll go steal the Mosque of Omar!"
"Ach! You laugh at me--you jest--you mock--you sneer. But I
know what I propose. Do you know what will be found in that Tomb
of the Kings of Judah when we discover it?"
"Bones. Dry bones. A few gold ornaments perhaps. A stale
smell certainly."
"The Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel! Think of it!
A parchment roll--perhaps two or three rolls--not too big to go
into a valise--worth more than all the other ancient manuscripts
in the world all put together! Himmel! What a find that would
be! What a record! What a refutation of all the historians and
the fools who set themselves up for authorities nowadays! What a
price it would bring! What would your Metropolitan Museum in New
York not pay for it! What would the Jews not pay for it! They
would raise millions among them and pay any price we cared
to ask! The Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel--
only think!"
"But why the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel in the tomb of the
Kings of Judah?" Grim asked, more by way of keeping up the
conversation, I think, than because he could not guess the
answer. He is an omnivorous reader, and there is not much
recorded of the Near East that he does not know.
"Don't you know your history? You know, of course, that after
King Solomon died the Jews divided into two kingdoms. The
latter-day Jews speak of themselves as Israelites, but they are
nothing of the kind; they are Judah-ites. The tribe of Judah
remained in Jerusalem, forming one small kingdom; their
descendants are the Jews of today. Part of the tribe of Benjamin
stayed with them. The other seceding ten tribes called
themselves the kingdom of Israel."
"Everybody knows that," said Grim. "What of it?"
"Well, the Assyrians came down and conquered the kingdom of
Israel--marched all the Israelites away into captivity--and they
vanished out of history. From that day to this their Book of
Chronicles, so often referred to in the Old Testament, has never
been seen nor heard of."
"Of course not," said Grim. "The King of Assyria used it to wipe
his razor on when he was through shaving every morning."
"Ach! You joke again; but I tell you I am not joking. Such
people as those Hebrews are naturally secretive and so proud that
they wrote down for posterity all the doings of their puny kings,
would never have let their records fall into the hands of the
Assyrians. They themselves were marched away in slave-gangs, but
they left their Book behind them, safely hidden. Be sure of it!
Ten years ago I found a manuscript in the place they now call
Nablus, which in those days was Schechem. Schechem was the
capital of the Kingdom of Israel, just as Jerusalem was the
capital of the Kingdom of Judah, or the Jews. I sold that
manuscript for a good price after I had photographed it. The
idiots to whom I sold it--historians they call themselves!--value
it only as a relic of antiquity. I made a digest of it--analyzed
it--studied it--compared it with other authentic facts in my
possession--and came to the definite conclusion that I hold the
clue to the whereabouts of that lost Book of Chronicles."
"Let's see the photograph," Grim suggested.
"It has been impounded with other so-called 'enemy property' by
your friends the British. I suppose they thought the German
General Staff might get hold of it and conquer the Suez Canal!
But what good would the sight of it do? You couldn't understand
a word of it. It convinced me, after months of study, that when
the Ten Tribes were carried away into captivity by the Assyrians
they sent their records secretly to Jerusalem. Ever since the
secession the Israelites and Jews had been jealous enemies. But
they were relatives after all, boasting a common ancestor, proud
of the same history, more or less observing the same religion.
And Schechem was only about thirty miles from Jerusalem, which
was considered an impregnable fortress until the Babylonians took
it later on. So they sent their records to Jerusalem, and the
Jews hid them. Where? Where do you suppose?"
"The likeliest place would be Solomon's Temple."
"You think so? Then you think superficially, my young friend.
Let us return to that Tomb of the Kings again for a moment. That
place that you visited is such an obvious fake that even the
guide-books make light of it. The one all-important thing in
Palestine that never yet has been discovered is the real Tomb of
the Kings. Yet Jerusalem, where it certainly must be, has been
searched and looted a hundred times from end to end. Therefore--
you follow me?--the Jews must have concealed it very cunningly.
Answer me, then: would the Jews, who were always a practical
people and not corpse-worshippers like the Egyptians, have taken
all that trouble to hide the tomb of their kings unless there
were important treasure in it? Answer me!"
"So you expect to find treasure in addition to the lost Book of
Chronicles?"
"Certainly I do! The treasure will make the whole proceeding
safe. Let the British have it! The fools will be so blinded by
the glamour of gold, that I shall easily extract the things of
real value--the invaluable manuscripts! Then let the men who
call themselves historians take a back seat!"
He rubbed his hands together in anticipation.
"Were you looking for the Tomb of the Kings, then, before the
War?" Grim asked him.
"Not exactly. Under the Turks it was difficult. The Turks were
beautifully corrupt. By paying for it I could get permission to
excavate on any property owned by Christians. But the minute I
touched Moslem places the Turks became fanatical. The Arabs,
now, are different--fanatics, too, but with a new sort of
fanaticism--new to them, I mean--the kind that made the French
revolutionists destroy everything their ancestors had set value
on. There are plenty of Arabs so full of this disease of
Bolshevism that they would make it easy for me to desecrate what
others believe is holy ground. But these idiots of English are
worse than the Turks! They have stopped all excavation. They
are so afraid of Bolshevism that, if they could, they would
imitate Joshua and make the sun stand still!"
"Well, what's the idea?" asked Grim, finishing his whiskey.
Scharnhoff shrugged his shoulders.
"You know my position. I am helpless--here on suffrance--obliged
by idiotic regulations to sit in idleness. But if I could find a
British officer with brains--surely there must be one somewhere!
--one with some authority, who is considered above suspicion, I
could show him, perhaps, how to get rich without committing any
crime he need feel ashamed of."
I could not see Grim's eyes from where I sat, and he did not make
any nervous movement that could have given him away. Yet I was
conscious of a new alertness, and I think Scharnhoff detected it,
too, for he changed his tactics on the instant.
"Hah! Hah! I was joking! Nobody who is fool enough to be a
professional soldier would be clever enough to find the Tomb of
the Kings and keep the secret for ten minutes! Hah! Hah! But I
have a favour I would like to beg of you, Major Grim."
"I've no particular authority, you know."
"Ach! The Administrator listens to you; I am assured of that."
"He listens sometimes, yes, then usually does the other thing.
Well, what's the request?"
"A simple one. There is a risk--not much, but just a little risk
that some fool might stumble on that secret of the Tomb of the
Kings and get away with the treasure. Now, did you ever set a
thief to catch a thief? Hah! Hah! I would be a better watch-dog
than any you could find. I know Jerusalem from end to end. I
know all the likely places. Why don't you get permission for me
to wander about Jerusalem undisturbed and keep my eye open for
tomb-robbers? If I am not to have the privilege of discovering
that Book of Chronicles, at least I would like to see that no
common plunderer gets it. Surely I am known by now to be
harmless! Surely they don't suspect me any longer of being an
agent of the Kaiser, or any such nonsense as that! Why not make
use of me? Get me a permit, please, Major Grim, to go where I
please by day or night without interference. Tomb-robbers
usually work at night, you know."
"All right," said Grim. "I'll try to do that."
"Ah! I always knew you were a man of good sense! Have more
whiskey? A cigar then?"
"Can't promise anything, of course," said Grim, "but you shall
have an answer within twenty-four hours."
Outside, as we turned our faces toward Jerusalem's gray wall,
Grim opened up a little and gave me a suggestion of something in
the wind.
"Did you see what he has in that cupboard?"
"Yes. Two Arab costumes. Two short crow-bars."
"Did you notice the grayish dust on the rug--three or four
footprints at the corner near the cupboard?"
"Can't say I did."
"No. You wouldn't be looking for it. These men who pose as
intellectuals never believe that any one else has brains. They
fool themselves. There's one thing no man can afford to do, East
of the sun or West of the moon. You can steal, slay, intrigue,
burn--break all the Ten Commandments except one, and have a
chance to get away with it. There's just one thing you can't do,
and succeed. He's done it!"
"And the thing is?"
"Cheat a woman!"
"You mean his house keeper? She who answered the door?"
Grim nodded.