"Why should you lie to me like that?" I said. "You know the Christian is
dead, and that this Larby was the means of killing him!"
"Shoo! What is my lord saying?" cried Alee, lifting his fat hands with a
warning gesture. "What did my lord tell the Basha? My lord must know
nothing--nothing. It would not be safe."
Then with glances of fear toward Larby, and dropping his voice to a
whisper, Alee added, "It is true the Christian is dead; he died last
sunset. Allah corrected him. So Larby is going back alone, going back to
his shop, to his house, to his wives, to his little daughter Hoolia.
Allah send Larby a safe return. Not following us, Sidi. No, no; Larby is
going back the same way--that is all."
The answer did not content me, but I could say no more. Nevertheless, my
uneasiness at the man's presence increased hour by hour. I could not
think of him without thinking also of the American and of the scene of
horror near to the Karueein Mosque. I could not look at him but the
blood down my back ran cold. So I called my guide again, and said, "Send
that man away; I will not have him in our company."
Alee pretended to be deeply wounded. "Sidi," he said, "ask anything else
of me. What will you ask? Will you ask me to die for you? I am ready, I
am willing, I am satisfied. But Larby is my friend. Larby is my brother,
and this thing you ask of me I can not do. Allah has not written it.
Sidi, it can not be."
With such protestations--the common cant of the country--I had need to
be content. But now the impression fixed itself upon my mind that the
evil-faced scoundrel who had betrayed the American to his death was not
only following _us_ but _me_. Oh! the torment of that idea in the
impatience of my spirit and the racking fever of my nerves! To be dogged
day and night as by a bloodhound, never to raise my eyes without the
dread of encountering the man's watchful eye--the agony of the incubus
was unbearable!
My first thought was merely that the rascal meant robbery. However far I
might ride ahead of my own people in the daytime he was always close
behind me, and as surely as I wandered away from the camp at nightfall I
was overtaken by him or else I met him face to face.
"Alee," I said at last, "that man is a thief."
Of course Alee was horrified. "Ya Allah!" he cried. "What is my lord
saying? The Moor is no thief. The Moor is true, the Moor is honest. None
so true and honest as the Moor. Wherefore should the Moor be a thief? To
be a thief in Barbary is to be a fool. Say I rob a Christian. Good. I
kill him and take all he has and bury him in a lonely place. All right.
What happens? Behold, Sidi, this is what happens. Your Christian Consul
says, 'Where is the Christian you took to Fez?' I can not tell. I lie, I
deceive, I make excuses. No use. Your Christian Consul goes to the
Kasbah, and says to the Basha: 'Cast that Moor into prison, he is a
robber and a murderer!' Then he goes to the Sultan at Marrakesh, in the
name of your Queen, who lives in the country of the Nazarenes, over the
sea. 'Pay me twenty thousand dollars,' he says, 'for the life of my
Christian who is robbed and murdered,' Just so. The Sultan--Allah
preserve our Mulai Hassan!--he pays the dollars. Good, all right, just
so. But is that all, Sidi? No, Sidi, that is not all. The Sultan--God
prolong the life of our merciful lord--he then comes to my people, to my
Basha, to my bashalic, and he says, 'Pay me back my forty thousand
dollars'--do you hear me, Sidi, _forty_ thousand!--'for the Nazarene who
is dead.' All right. But we can not pay. Good. The Sultan--Allah save
him!--he comes, he takes all we have, he puts every man of my people to
the sword. We are gone, we are wiped out. Did I not say, Sidi, to be a
thief in Barbary is to be a fool?"
It was cold comfort. That the man Larby was following me I was
confident, and that he meant to rob me I was at first convinced. Small
solace, therefore, in the thought that if the worst befell me, and my
boy at home died for want of his father, who lay robbed and murdered in
those desolate wastes, my Government would exact a claim in paltry
dollars.
My next thought was that the man was merely watching me out of the
country. That he was aware that I knew his secret was only too certain;
that he had betrayed my knowledge to the authorities at the capital
after I had parted from them was more than probable, and it was not
impossible that the very men who had taken bribes of me had in their
turn bribed him that he might follow me and see that I did not inform
the Ministers and Consuls of foreign countries of the murder of the
American in the streets of Fez.
That theory partly reconciled me to the man's presence: Let him watch.
His constant company was in its tormenting way my best security. I
should go to no Minister, and no Consul should see me. I had too much
reason to think of my own living affairs to busy myself with those of
the dead American.
But such poor unction as this reflection brought me was dissipated by a
second thought. What security for the man himself, or for the
authorities who might have bribed him--or perhaps menaced him--to watch
me would lie in the fact that I had passed out of the country without
revealing the facts of the crime which I had witnessed? Safely back in
England, I might tell all with safety. Once let me leave Morocco with
their secret in my breast, and both the penalties these people dreaded
might be upon them. Merely to watch me was wasted labor. They meant to
do more, or they would have done nothing.
Thinking so, another idea took possession of me with a shock of
terror--the man was following me to kill me as the sole Christian
witness of the crime that had been committed. By the light of that
theory everything became plain. When I visited the Kasbah nothing was
known of my acquaintance with the murdered man. My bribes were taken,
and I was allowed to leave Fez in spite of public orders. But then came
Larby with alarming intelligence. I had been a friend of the American,
and had been seen to speak with him in the public streets. Perhaps Larby
himself had seen me, or perhaps my own guide, Alee, had betrayed me to
his friend and "brother." At that the Kaid or his Kaleefa had raised
their eyebrows and sworn at each other for simpletons and fools. To
think that the very man who had intended to betray them had come with an
innocent face and a tale of a sick child in England! To think that they
had suffered him to slip through their fingers and leave them some
paltry bribes of fifty pounds! Fifty pounds taken by stealth against
twenty thousand dollars to be plumped down after the Christian had told
his story! These Nazarenes were so subtle, and the sons of Ishmael were
so simple. But diamond cut diamond. Everything was not lost. One hundred
and twenty-five miles this Christian had still to travel before he could
sail from Barbary, and not another Christian could he encounter on that
journey. Then up, Larby, and after him! God make your way easy!
Remember, Larby, remember, good fellow, it is not only the pockets of
the people of Fez that are in danger if that Christian should escape.
Let him leave the Gharb alive, and your own neck is in peril. You were
the spy, you were the informer, you were the hotheaded madman who led
the attack that ended in the spilling of Christian blood. If the Sultan
should have to pay twenty thousand dollars to the Minister for America
at Tangier for the life of this dead dog whom we have grubbed into the
earth in a garden, if the Basha of Fez should have to pay forty thousand
dollars to the Sultan, if the people should have to pay eighty thousand
dollars to the Basha, then you, Larby, you in your turn will have to pay
with your _life_ to the people. It is _your_ life against the life of
the Christian. So follow him, watch him, silence him, he knows your
secret--away!
Such was my notion of what happened at the Kasbah of Fez after I had
passed the gates of the city. It was a wild vision, but to my
distempered imagination it seemed to be a plausible theory. And now
Larby, the spy upon the American, Larby, my assassin-elect, Larby, who
to save his own life must take mine, Larby was with me, was beside me,
was behind me constantly!
_God help you, my son, God help you! Larby! O Larby! Again, again!_
What was I to do? Open my heart to Larby; to tell him it was a blunder;
that I meant no man mischief; that I was merely hastening back to my
sick boy, who was dying for want of me? That was impossible; Larby would
laugh in my face, and still follow me. Bribe him? That was useless;
Larby would take my money and make the surer of his victim. It was a
difficult problem; but at length I hit on a solution. Father, you will
pity me for a fool when you hear it. I would bargain with Larby as Faust
bargained with the devil. He should give me two weeks of life, and come
with me to England. I should do my work here, and Larby should never
leave my side. My boy's life should be saved by that operation, which I
alone knew how to perform. After that Larby and I should square accounts
together. He should have all the money I had in the world, and the
passport of my name and influence for his return to his own country. I
should write a confession of suicide, and then--and then--only then--at
home--here in my own room--Larby should kill me in order to satisfy
himself that his own secret and the secret of his people must be safe
forever.
It was a mad dream, but what dream of dear life is not mad that comes to
the man whom death dogs like a bloodhound? And mad as it was I tried to
make it come true. The man was constantly near me, and on the third
morning of our journey I drew up sharply, and said:
"Larby!"
"Sidi," he answered.
"Would you not like to go on with me to England?"
He looked at me with his glittering eyes, and I gave an involuntary
shiver. I had awakened the man's suspicions in an instant. He thought I
meant to entrap him. But he only smiled knowingly, shrugged his
shoulders, and answered civilly: "I have my shop in the Sok de Barra,
Sidi. And then there are my wives and my sons and my little Hoolia--God
be praised for all his blessings."
"Hoolia?" I asked.
"My little daughter, Sidi."
"How old is she?"
"Six, Sidi, only six, but as fair as an angel."
"I dare say she misses you when you are away, Larby," I said.
"You have truth, Sidi. She sits in the Sok by the tents of the
brassworkers and plaits rushes all the day long, and looks over to where
the camels come by the saints' houses on the hill, and waits and
watches."
"Larby," I said, "I, too, have a child at home who is waiting and
watching. A boy, my little Noel, six years of age, just as old as your
own little Hoolia. And so bright, so winsome. But he is ill, he is
dying, and he is all the world to me. Larby, I am a surgeon, I am a
doctor, if I could but reach England--"
It was worse than useless. I stopped, for I could go no farther. The
cold glitter of the man's eyes passed over me like frost over flame, and
I knew his thought as well as if he had spoken it. "I have heard that
story before," he was telling himself, "I have heard it at the Kasbah,
and it is a lie and a trick."
My plan was folly, and I abandoned it; but I was more than ever
convinced of my theory. This man was following me to kill me. He was
waiting an opportunity to do his work safely, secretly, and effectually.
His rulers would shield him in his crime, for by that crime they would
themselves be shielded.
Father, my theory, like my plan, was foolishness. Only a madman would
have dreamt of concealing a crime whereof there was but one witness, by
a second crime, whereof the witnesses must have been five hundred. The
American had traveled in disguise and cut off the trace of his identity
to all men save myself. When he died at the hands of the fanatics whose
faith he had outraged, I alone of all Christians knew that it was
Christian blood that had stained the streets of Fez. But how different
my own death must have been. I had traveled openly as a Christian and an
Englishman. At the consulate of Tangier I was known by name and repute,
and at that of Fez I had registered myself. My presence had been
notified at every town I had passed through, and the men of my caravan
would not have dared to return to their homes without me. In the case of
the murder of the American the chances to the Moorish authorities of
claim for indemnity were as one to five hundred. In the case of the like
catastrophe to myself they must have been as five hundred to one. Thus,
in spite of fanaticism and the ineradicable hatred of the Moslem for the
Nazarene, Morocco to me, as to all Christian travelers, traveling openly
and behaving themselves properly, was as safe a place as England itself.
But how can a man be hot and cold and wise and foolish in a moment? I
was in no humor to put the matter to myself temperately, and, though I
had been so cool as to persuade myself that the authorities whom I had
bribed could not have been madmen enough to think that they could
conceal the murder of the American by murdering me, yet I must have
remained convinced that Larby himself was such a madman.
As a surgeon, I had some knowledge of madness, and the cold, clear,
steely glitter of the man's eyes when he looked at me was a thing that I
could not mistake. I had seen it before in religious monomaniacs. It was
an infallible and fatal sign. With that light in the eyes, like the
glance of a dagger, men will kill the wives they love, and women will
slaughter the children of their bosom. When I saw it in Larby I shivered
with a chilly presentiment. It seemed to say that I should see my home
no more. I have seen my home once more; I am back in England, I am here,
but--
_No, no, not_ THAT! _Larby! Don't tell_ ME _you did_ THAT.
Father, is my crime so dark? That hour comes back and back. How long
will it haunt me? How long? For ever and ever. When time for me is
swallowed up in eternity, eternity will be swallowed up in the memory of
that hour. Peace! Do you say peace? Ah! yes, yes; God is merciful!
Before I had spoken to Larby his presence in our company had been only
as a dark and fateful shadow. Now it was a foul and hateful incubus.
Never in all my life until then had I felt hatred for any human
creature. But I hated that man with all the sinews of my soul. What was
it to me that he was a madman? He intended to keep me from my dying boy.
Why should I feel tenderness toward him because he was the father of his
little Hoolia? By killing me he would kill my little Noel.
I began to recall the doctrines of the American as he propounded them on
the ship. It was the life of an honest man against the life of a
scoundrel. These things should be rated _ad valorem_. If the worst came
to the worst, why should I have more respect for this madman's life than
for my own?
I looked at the man and measured his strength against mine. He was a
brawny fellow with broad shoulders, and I was no better than a weakling.
I was afraid of him, but I was yet more afraid of myself. Sometimes I
surprised my half-conscious mind in the act of taking out of its
silver-mounted sheath the large curved knife which I had bought of the
hawker at Tangier, and now wore in the belt of my Norfolk jacket. In my
cowardice and my weakness this terrified me. Not all my borrowed
philosophy served to support me against the fear of my own impulses.
Meantime, I was in an agony of suspense and dread. The nights brought me
no rest and the mornings no freshness.
On the fourth day out of Fez we arrived at Wazzan, and there, though the
hour was still early, my men decided to encamp for the night. I
protested, and they retorted; I threatened, and they excused themselves.
The mules wanted shoeing. I offered to pay double that they might be
shod immediately. The tents were torn by a heavy wind the previous
night. I offered to buy new ones. When their trumpery excuses failed
them, the men rebelled openly, and declared their determination not to
stir out of Wazzan that night.
But they had reckoned without their host this time. I found that there
was an English Consul at Wazzan, and I went in search of him. His name
was Smith, and he was a typical Englishman--ample, expansive, firm,
resolute, domineering, and not troubled with too much sentiment. I told
him of the revolt of my people and of the tyranny of the subterfuges
whereby they had repeatedly extorted bribes. The good fellow came to my
relief. He was a man of purpose, and he had no dying child twelve
hundred miles away to make him a fool and a coward.
"Men," he said, "you've got to start away with this gentleman at
sundown, and ride night and day--do you hear me, night and day--until
you come to Tangier. A servant of my own shall go with you, and if you
stop or delay or halt or go slowly he shall see that every man of you is
clapped into the Kasbah as a blackmailer and a thief."
There was no more talk of rebellion. The men protested that they had
always been willing to travel. Sidi had been good to them, and they
would be good to Sidi. At sundown they would be ready.
"You will have no more trouble, sir," said the Consul; "but I will come
back to see you start."
I thanked him and we parted. It was still an hour before sunset, and I
turned aside to look at the town. I had barely walked a dozen paces when
I came face to face with Larby. In the turmoil of my conflict with the
men I had actually forgotten him for one long hour. He looked at me with
his glittering eyes, and then his cold, clear gaze followed the Consul
as he passed down the street. That double glance was like a shadowy
warning. It gave me a shock of terror.
How had I forgotten my resolve to baffle suspicion by exchanging no word
or look with any European Minister or Consul as long as I remained in
Morocco? The expression in the man's face was not to be mistaken. It
seemed to say, "So you have told all; very well, Sidi, we shall see."
With a sense as of creeping and cringing I passed on. The shadow of
death seemed to have fallen upon me at last. I felt myself to be a
doomed man. That madman would surely kill me. He would watch his chance;
I should never escape him; my home would see me no more; my boy would
die for want of me.
A tingling noise, as of the jangling of bells, was in my ears. Perhaps
it was the tinkling of the bells of the water-carriers, prolonged and
unbroken. A gauzy mist danced before my eyes. Perhaps it was the
palpitating haze which the sun cast back from the gilded domes and
minarets.
Domes and minarets were everywhere in this town of Wazzan. It seemed to
be a place of mosques and saints' houses. Where the wide arch and the
trough of the mosque were not, there was the open door in the low
white-washed wall of the saint's house, surmounted by its white flag. In
my dazed condition, I was sometimes in danger of stumbling into such
places unawares. At the instant of recovered consciousness I always
remembered the warnings of my guide as I stood by the house of Sidi Gali
at Tangier: "Sacred place? Yes, sacred. No Nazarene may enter it. But
Moslems, yes, Moslems may fly here for sanctuary. Life to the Moslem,
death to the Nazarene. So it is."
Oh, it is an awful thing to feel that death is waiting for you
constantly, that at any moment, at any turn, at any corner it may be
upon you! Such was my state as I walked on that evening, waiting for the
sunset, through the streets of Wazzan. At one moment I was conscious of
a sound in my ears above the din of traffic--the _Arrah_ of the
ass-drivers, the _Balak_ of the men riding mules, and the general clamor
of tongues. It was the steady beat of a footstep close behind me. I knew
whose footstep it was. I turned about quickly, and Larby was again face
to face with me. He met my gaze with the same cold, glittering look. My
impulse was to fly at his throat, but that I dare not do. I knew myself
to be a coward, and I remembered the Moorish prison.
"Larby," I said, "what do you want?"
"Nothing, Sidi, nothing," he answered.
"Then why are you following me like this?"
"Following you, Sidi?" The fellow raised his eyebrows and lifted both
hands in astonishment.
"Yes, following me, dogging me, watching me, tracking me down. What does
it mean? Speak out plainly."
"Sidi is jesting," he said, with a mischievous smile. "Is not this
Wazzan--the holy city of Wazzan? Sidi is looking at the streets, at the
mosques, at the saints' houses. So is Larby. That is all."
One glance at the man's evil eyes would have told you that he lied.
"Which way are you going?" I asked.
"This way." With a motion of the head he indicated the street before
him.
"Then I am going to this," I said, and I walked away in the opposite
direction.
I resolved to return to the English Consul, to tell him everything, and
claim his protection. Though all the Moorish authorities in Morocco were
in league with this religious monomaniac, yet surely there was life and
safety under English power for one whose only offense was that of being
witness to a crime which might lead to a claim for indemnity.
_That it should come to this, and I of all men should hear it! God help
me! God lead me! God give me light! Light, light, O God; give me light!_