THE INNER SECRET OF ISLAM
The chief handed him a pencil. Rrisa intelligently studied the map for
nearly two minutes, then raised his hand and made a dot a few miles
north-east of the intersection of fifty degrees east and twenty
degrees north. The Master's eye was not slow to note that the
designated location formed one point of a perfect equilateral
triangle, the other points of which were Bab el Mandeb on the south
and Mecca on the north.
"There, _M'almé_," whispered the Arab, in a choking voice. "Now I
have told you the secret of all secrets, and have lost my soul. I have
revealed the inner mystery of Islam, that to this day no man of the
Feringi hath ever known. I am a very great man of sin, and should have
first torn out my tongue.
"But my life is in your hands, Master, and I have shared your salt.
Allah knows I was forced to speak. _Shal'lah!_ (It is _Allah's_
will!) Allah will weigh my heart and will forgive, for he is the
Compassionate, the Merciful! I beg you, Master, now let me go!"
"Soon, Rrisa," the chief answered, turning away from the map. "But
first there is something of highest import I must show thee."
"And what may that be, my sheik?" the Arab queried, his widening eyes
fixed on the blanket that covered the loot from Mecca. Instinctively
he sensed that some horrible sight was about to be presented to him.
His face paled even more. He licked dry lips with a tongue equally
dry, and leaned against the table to steady himself. "What have you
now to show me, O _M'almé?_"
"Listen!" the chief commanded sternly. "The Meccans are a people
corrupt and accursed. 'Their hearts are black as their skins are
white.' They live by fleecing the _Hujjaj_, by making sale and barter
of relics, by turning the holy places into marts of trade. All this is
well known throughout Islam. Ah, the degenerate breed of the sons of
the Prophet!"
"That is true, Master. And what then?"
"Is it not a fact that they could not even safeguard the Kaukab el
Durri from the hand of the Great Apostate Sheik? How much less, then,
could they protect their other and more sacred things, if some Shiah
dog should come to rob them of the things they value?
"Would it not be better that such things should be carried far from
danger, to the hidden, inner city? I ask thee this, Rrisa; would it
not be better far?"
"And what is the meaning of my master's strange words?" ventured
Rrisa, a sort of dazed horror dawning in his eyes. "The other and more
sacred things of Islam--are they there under that cloth, O Master?"
"Thou hast said it, Rrisa! Now, behold them!"
With a quick, dramatic gesture, well-calculated to strike at the roots
of the superstitious Arab's nature, he flung away the blanket. To
Rrisa's horrified gaze appeared the Myzab and the sacred Black Stone.
"_Ya Allah!_" gulped the orderly, in a choking whisper. His face
became a dull gray. His eyes, rimmed with white, stared in terror. His
teeth began to chatter; and on his forehead appeared little glistening
drops.
"O Master, that is not--."
"Truly, yea! The Golden Waterspout, Rrisa, and the Black Stone
itself! I am carrying them to the Very Heavenly City, far in the Iron
Mountains! They shall be given to the Great Olema, there, who is more
fit to guard and keep them than the Sheriff of Mecca or than his sons
Feisal and the two Alis. No harm shall befall them, and--"
"And your hand--the hands of other Feringi who are not my
masters--have touched these things?" stammered Rrisa. "O my calamity!
O my grief!"
"Thou canst go now, Rrisa," the Master said. "Go, and think well of
what I have told thee, and--"
But Rrisa, falling prone to the metal of the cabin floor, facing the
Black Stone, gave vent to his feelings and burst into a wild cry of
"_La Illaha_--" and the rest of the immemorial formula.
The Master smiled down at him, quizzical and amused yet still more
than a little affected by the terror and devotion of his orderly.
Wise, he waited till Rrisa had made the compulsory prayers of
_Labbayk, Takbir_, and _Tahiti_, as all Moslems must do when coming
near the Black Stone. Then, as the orderly's voice suddenly died away,
he bent and laid a hand on the quivering Arab's shoulder.
"Come, come, Rrisa," said he, not unkindly. "Be thou not so
distressed. Is it not better that these very precious things be kept
in greater safety at the Jannati Shahr? Come, Rrisa! Arise!"
The orderly made no move, uttered no sound. The Master dragged him
up, held him, peered into his face that had gone quite ashen under its
brown.
"Why, Lord! the man has fainted dead away!" exclaimed the Master. He
gathered Rrisa in his powerful arms, carried him to his own cabin and
laid him in the berth, there; then he bathed his face with water and
chafed his hands and throat.
In a few minutes, Rrisa's eyes vaguely opened. He gulped, gasped, made
shift to speak a few feeble words.
"Master!" he whispered.
"Well, what dost thou wish?"
"One favor, only!"
"And what is that?"
"Leave me, a little while. I must be alone, all alone with Allah--to
think!"
The Master nodded.
"It shall be as thou wishest," said he. "Think, yes. And understand
that what I do is best for all of Sunnite Islam! As for the Shiah
dogs, what hast thou to trouble about them?"
Saying no more, he withdrew to his own cabin, wrapped the Myzab and
the Stone in the blanket and laid them carefully under his berth.
Opening his desk-drawer, he assured himself the Pearl Star was still
there. This done, he turned again to the map, carefully studied
the location of the point Rrisa had designated, and--going to the
pilot-house--gave directions for a new course to "Captain Alden," now
at the wheel.
This course, he calculated by allowing for wind and lateral
drift, would carry _Nissr_ directly toward the site of the still
half-mythical Iron Mountains and the Bara Jannati Shahr.
He now returned to his cabin, locked himself in and--pondering over
a few khat leaves--passed the remainder of the afternoon sunk in deep
abstraction.
Evening and night still found him in profound thought, while the giant
air-liner steadily rushed into the south-east, bearing him and the
Legion onward toward dim regions now veiled in purple darkness under
strange stars.
At nine o'clock he ordered _Nissr_ stopped, and had the body of Dr.
Lombardo sent down with six men in the nacelle, for burial. No purpose
could be served by keeping the body, and all unnecessary complications
had to be dispensed with before the morrow. Lombardo, who had fully
atoned for his fault by having given his life in the service of the
now depleted Legion, was buried in his service-uniform, in a fairly
deep grave on which the Legionaries heaped a great tumulus of sand.
The only witnesses were the Arabian Desert stars; the only requiem
the droning of the helicopters far above, where _Nissr_ hung with her
gleaming lights like other, nearer stars in the dense black sky.
By ten o'clock, the air-liner had resumed her course, leaving still
another brave man to his last sleep, alone. The routine of travel
settled down again on the ship and its crew of adventurers.
At half-past eleven, the Master issued from his cabin. All alone, and
speaking with no man, he took a quarter-hour constitutional up and
down the narrow gallery along the side of the fuselage--the gallery
on which his cabin window opened. His face, by the vague light of the
glows in this gallery, looked pale and worn; but a certain gleam of
triumph and proud joy was visible in his dark eyes.
All about him, stretched night unbroken. Far behind, lay vast
confusions involving hundreds of millions of human beings violently
wrenched from their accustomed routines of faith and prayer, with
potential effects beyond all calculation. Ahead lay--what?
"It may be glory and power, wealth past reckoning, incredible
splendor," thought the Master, "and it may be ignominy, torture,
death. 'Allah knows best and time will show.' But whatever it may
be--is it completion? The human heart, alone--can that ever be
complete in this world?"
He bent at the rail, gazing far out into the vague emptiness through
which the air-liner was pushing.
"Come what may," he murmured, "for tonight, at any rate, it is peace.
'It is peace, till the rising of the dawn!'"
In a strange mood, still holding no converse with any man, he returned
to the main corridor and went toward his cabin. His way led past the
door of "Captain Alden." There he paused a moment, all alone in the
corridor. The lights in the ceiling showed a strange look in his eyes.
His face softened, as he laid a hand on the metal panels of the door,
silently almost caressingly.
To himself he whispered:
"I wonder who she really is? What can her name be--who can she be,
and--and--"
He checked himself, impatiently:
"What thoughts are these? What nonsense? Such things are not for me!"
Silently he returned to his cabin, undressed, switched off the light
and turned into his berth, under which lay the incalculable treasures
of Islam. For a long time he lay there, thinking, wondering, angry
with himself for having seemed to give way for a single moment to
softer thoughts than those of conquest and adventure.
Gradually the cradling swing, the quivering power of the airship,
lulled his fevered spirit. Sleep won upon him, dulled the excitements
of the past twenty-four hours, sank him into oblivion. His deep,
regular breathing sounded in the gloom of the cabin that contained
the Great Pearl Star, the Myzab, the sacred Black Stone of infinite
veneration.
An hour he slept. On, on roared _Nissr_, swaying, rising, falling
a little as she hurled herself through the Arabian night toward
the unknown Bara Jannati Shahr, hidden behind the Iron Mountains of
mystery as yet unseen by any unbelieving eye.
Peace, all seemed peace, for one dark hour.
But as the hour ended, a shadow fell along the narrow gallery outside
the cabin window. A silent shadow it was, that crept, paused, came on
again. And now in the dark, had there been any eye to see, the shadow
would have been identified as a barefoot man, lithe, alert, moving
silently forward with the soundless stealth of an Arab versed in the
art of _asar_, or man-stalking.
To the Master's window this shadow crept, a half-invisible thing in
the gloom. It paused there, listening to the deep, regular breathing
within. Then a lean, brown hand was laid on the sill. It still seemed
to hesitate.
Something gleamed vaguely in that hand--a crooked _jambiyeh_,
needle-sharp at the point, keen-edged and balanced for the stroke that
silently slays.
Motionless, unbreathing even, the shadow waited a long minute. Then
all at once over the sill it writhed, quick, lithe as a starved
panther.
Dagger in hand, the shadow slid to the berth where lay the Master of
the Legionaries. There Rrisa paused, listening to the slow respiration
of the White Sheik with whom he had shared the inviolable salt, to
whom he owed life itself.
Up, in the gloom, came the dagger-blade.
Over the unconscious Master it poised, keen, cold, avenging in the
dark of the cabin where lay the three supreme treasures of all Islam.