The next morning Dimoussi came out of the Fondak Henna and walked to the
little booth in the Sôk Kubba. Mustapha was squatting upon the floor,
and with a throbbing heart Dimoussi noticed the familiar pistol shining
against the dark wall behind. It had not been sold.
“Give it to me,” he said.
Mustapha took the pistol from the nail on which it hung.
“It is worth fourteen dollars,” said he. “But, see, to every man his
chance comes. I am in a good mind to-day. My health is excellent and my
heart is light. You shall have it for twelve.”
Dimoussi took the pistol in his hand. It had a flint lock and was
mounted in polished brass, and a cover of brass was on the heel of the
butt.
“It is not worth twelve. I will give you seven for it.”
Mustapha raised his hands in a gesture of indignation.
“Seven dollars!” he cried in a shrill, angry voice. “Hear him! Seven
dollars! Look, it comes from Agadhir in the Sus country where they make
the best weapons.”
He pointed out to Dimoussi certain letters upon the plate underneath the
lock. “There it is written.”
Dimoussi could not read, but he nodded his head sagely.
“Yes. It is worth seven,” said he.
The shopman snatched it away from the boy.
“I will not be angry, for it is natural to boys to be foolish. But I
will tell you the truth. I gave eight dollars for it after much
bargaining. But it has hung in my shop for a year, and no one any more
has money. Therefore, I will sell it to you for ten.”
He felt behind his back and showed Dimoussi a tantalising glint of the
brass barrel. Dimoussi was unshaken.
“It has hung in your shop for four months,” said he.
“A year. That is why I will sell it to you at the loss of a dollar.”
“Liar, and son of a liar,” replied the boy, without any heat, “and
grandson of a liar. I sold it to you for five dollars four months ago. I
will give you eight for it to-day.”
He counted out the eight dollars one by one on the raised floor of the
booth, and the shopman could not resist.
“Very well,” he cried furiously. “Take it, and may your children starve
as mine surely will!”
“You are a pig, and the son of a pig,” replied Dimoussi calmly. “Have
you any powder?”
He changed his ninth dollar and bought some powder.
“You will need bullets, too,” said Mustapha. “I will sell you them very
cheap. Oh, you are lucky! Do you see those signs upon the barrel? The
pistol is charmed and cannot miss.”
Dimoussi looked at the signs engraved one above the other on the barrel.
There was a crown, and a strange letter, and a lion. He had long
wondered what those signs meant. He was very glad now that he
understood.
“But I will not buy lead bullets,” said Dimoussi wisely. “The pistol may
be enchanted so that it cannot miss, but there are also enchantments
against lead bullets so that they cannot hurt.”
So Dimoussi walked away, and begged a lump of rock salt from another
booth instead. He cut down the lump until it fitted roughly into the
hexagonal barrel of his pistol. Then he loaded the pistol, and hiding
the weapon in the wide sleeve of his jellaba, sauntered to the great
square before the Renegade’s Gate. There were groups of people standing
about watching the tents, and the inevitable ring of sentries. But while
Dimoussi was still loitering—he would have loitered for a fortnight if
need be, for there were no limits to Dimoussi’s patience—Arden came out
of the tent with his camera, and Challoner followed with a tripod stand.
The two consools passed the line of guards and set up the camera in
front of the Renegade’s Gate. Dimoussi was quite impartial which of the
two should be sacrificed to begin the djehad, but again an ironical fate
laid its hand upon him. It was Arden who was to work the camera. It was
Arden, therefore, who was surrounded by the idlers, and was safe.
Challoner, on the other hand, had to stand quite apart, so as to screen
the lens from the direct rays of the sun.
“A little more to the right, Challoner,” said Arden. “That’ll do.”
He put his head under the focussing cloth, and the next instant he heard
a loud report, followed by shouts and screams and the rush of feet; and
when he tore the focussing cloth away he saw Challoner lying upon the
ground, the sentries agitatedly rushing this way and that, and the
bystanders to a man in full flight.
Dimoussi had chosen his opportunity well. He stood between two men, and
rather behind them, and exactly opposite Challoner. All eyes were fixed
upon the camera, even Challoner’s. It was true that he did see the sun
glitter suddenly upon something bright, that he did turn, that he did
realise that the bright thing was the brass barrel of a big flintlock
pistol. But before he could move or shout, the pistol was fired, and a
heavy blow like a blow from a cudgel struck him full on the chest.
Challoner spoke no more than a few words afterwards. The lump of rock
salt had done the work of an explosive bullet. He was just able to
answer a question of Arden’s.
“Did you see who fired?”
“The boy who came from Mulai Idris,” whispered Challoner. “He shot me
with a brass-barrelled pistol.” That seemed to have made a most vivid
impression upon his mind, for more than once he repeated it.
But Dimoussi was by this time out of the Renegade’s Gate, and running
with all his might through the olive grove towards the open, lawless
country south of Mequinez. By the evening he was safe from capture, and
lifted up with pride.
Certainly no djehad had followed upon the murder, and that was
disappointing. But it was not Dimoussi’s fault. He had done his best
according to his lights. Meanwhile, it seemed prudent to him to settle
down quietly at Agurai. He was nearly sixteen now. Dimoussi thought that
he would settle down and marry.
Here the episode would have ended but for two circumstances. In the
first place Dimoussi carried back with him from Mequinez the
brass-barrelled pistol; and in the second place Arden, two years later,
acted upon a long-cherished desire to penetrate the unmapped country
south of Mequinez.
He travelled with a mule as a Jew pedlar, knowing that such a man, for
the sake of his wares, may go where a Moor may not. Of his troubles
during his six months’ wanderings now is not the time to speak. It is
enough that at the end of the six months he set up his canvas shelter
one evening by the village of Agurai.
The men came at once and squatted, chattering, about his shelter.
“Is there a woman in the village,” asked Arden, “who will wash some
clothes for me?”
And the sheikh of the village rose up and replied:
“Yes; the Frenchwoman. I will send her to you.”
Arden was perplexed. It seemed extraordinary that in a little village in
a remote and unusually lawless district of Morocco there should be a
French blanchisseuse. But he made no comment, and spread out his wares
upon the ground. In a few moments a woman appeared. She had the Arab
face, the Arab colour. But she stood unconcernedly before Arden, and
said in Arabic:
“I am the Frenchwoman. Give me the clothes you want washing.”
Arden reached behind him for the bundle. He addressed her in French, but
she shook her head and carried the bundle away. Her place was taken by
another, a very old, dark woman, who was accompanied by a youth carrying
a closed basket.
“Pigeons,” said the old woman. “Good, fat, live pigeons.”
Arden was fairly tired of that national food by this time, and waved her
away.
“Very well,” said she. She took the basket from the youth, placed it on
the ground, and opened the lid. Then she clapped her hands and the
pigeons flew out. As they rose into the air she laughed, and cried out
in English—“One, two, three, and away!”
Arden was fairly startled.
“What words are those?” he exclaimed.
“English,” the old woman replied in Arabic. “I am the Englishwoman.”
And the men of the village who were clustered round the shelter agreed,
as though nothing could be more natural:
“Yes, she is the Englishwoman.”
“And what do the words mean?”
The old woman shrugged her shoulders.
“My father used them just as I did,” she said. She spoke with a certain
pride in the possession of those five uncomprehended words. “He learned
them from his father. I do not know what they mean.”
It was mystifying enough to Arden that, in a country where hardly a Moor
of a foreign tribe, and certainly no Europeans, had ever been known to
penetrate, there should be a Frenchwoman who knew no French, and an
Englishwoman with five words of English she did not understand.
But there was more than this to startle Arden. He had heard those same
words spoken once before, by a Moorish boy who had declared himself to
be an Englishman, and that Moorish boy had murdered his friend
Challoner.
Arden glanced carelessly at the youth who stood by the old woman’s side.
“That is your son?” said he.
“Yes. That is Dimoussi.”
Dimoussi’s cheeks wore the shadow of a beard. He had grown.
Arden could not pretend to himself that he recognised the boy who had
sprung up from the asphodel-bushes a few miles from Mulai Idris.
He bethought himself of a way to test his suspicions. He took from his
wares an old rusty pistol and began to polish it. A firearm he knew to
be a lure to any Moor. Dimoussi drew nearer. Arden paid no attention,
but continued to polish his pistol. A keen excitement was gaining on
him, but he gave no sign. At last Dimoussi reached out his hand. Arden
placed the pistol in it. Dimoussi turned the pistol over, and gave it
back.
“It is no good.”
Arden laughed.
“There is no better pistol in Agurai,” said he contemptuously. In his
ears there was the sound of Challoner’s voice repeating and repeating:
“He shot me with a brass-barrelled pistol—a brass-barrelled pistol.”
The contempt in his tone stung Dimoussi.
“I have a better,” said he, and at that the old woman touched him
warningly on the arm. Dimoussi stopped at once, and the couple moved
away.
Arden wondered whether this was the end. There was a chance that it was
not. Dimoussi might return to compare his pistol with Arden’s, and to
establish its superiority. Arden waited all the evening in a strong
suspense; and at ten o’clock, when he was alone, Dimoussi stepped
noiselessly into the shelter, and laid his brass-barrelled pistol on the
ground in the light of the lamp.
“It is better than yours. It comes from Agadhir, in the Sus country,
where the best pistols are made. See, those letters prove it.”
Arden had no doubt that he had now Challoner’s murderer sitting at his
side. But he looked at the letters on the pistol-barrel to which
Dimoussi pointed. The letters were in English, and made up the name
“Bennett.” There was also engraved upon the brass of the barrel
“London.” The pistol was an old horse-pistol of English make. Even its
period was clear to Arden. For above the lion and the crown was the
letter C. Arden pointed to those marks.
“What do they mean?”
“They are charms to prevent it missing.”
Arden said nothing. His thoughts were busy on other matters. This pistol
was a pistol of the time of Charles II, of the time of the Tangier
siege.
“How long have you had it?” he asked.
“My father owned it before me.”
“And his father before him?”
“Very likely. I do not know.”
Arden’s excitement was increasing. He began to see dim, strange
possibilities. Suppose, he reasoned, that this pistol had travelled up
to Mequinez in the possession of an English prisoner. Suppose that by
some chance the prisoner had escaped and wandered; and suddenly he saw
something which caught his breath away. He bent down and examined the
brass covering to the heel of the butt. Upon that plate there was an
engraved crest. Yes! and the crest was Challoner’s!
Arden kept his face bent over the pistol. Questions raced through his
mind. Had that pistol belonged to Luke Challoner, who had turned
renegade two hundred years ago? Had he married in his captivity? Had his
descendants married again, until all trace of their origin was lost
except this pistol and five words of English, and the name
“Englishwoman”? Ah! but if so, who was the Frenchwoman?
It was quite intelligible to Arden why Dimoussi had slain Challoner.
Fanaticism was sufficient reason. But supposing Dimoussi were a
descendant of Luke! It was all very strange. Challoner was the last of
his family, the last of his name. Had the family name been extinguished
by a Challoner?
Arden returned to Mequinez the next day, and, making search, through the
help of the Bashaw, who was his friend, amongst documents which existed,
he at last came upon the explanation.
The renegades, who were made up not merely of English prisoners of
Tangier, but of captives of many nationalities taken by the Salee
pirates, had, about the year 1700, become numerous enough to threaten
Mequinez. Consequently the Sultan had one fine morning turned them all
out of the town through the Renegade’s Gate and bidden them go south and
found a city for themselves.
They had founded Agurai, they had been attacked by the Beni M’tir; with
diminishing numbers they had held their own; they had intermarried with
the natives; and now, two hundred years later, all that remained of them
were the Frenchwoman, Dimoussi, and his mother.
There could be no doubt that Challoner had been murdered because he was
a European, by one of his own race.
There could be no doubt that the real owner of the Challoner property,
which went to a distant relation on the female side, was a Moorish youth
living at the village of Agurai.
But Arden kept silence for a long while.