CHAPTER XVI

IN WHICH CAPTAIN WELFARE MAKES A SIGNAL

Both Edmund’s temper and my own were naturally worn a little thin under the tension of this uncertainty, and the friction of our futile calculations of chances. But neither of us could leave the subject alone or settle our minds to anything else. Each of us made guesses which to the other seemed more and more foolish and irritating. Edmund set himself to prove the inevitability of disaster, really, I suppose, in order to elicit my arguments in favour of optimism, which nevertheless he took a morbid pleasure in demolishing.

The bishop’s arrival on the following afternoon was only just in time to dispel something like a positive mutual dislike which was being engendered between us by the strain.

But, as I knew he would, the bishop brought with him an atmosphere of sanity and hopefulness. He did not attempt to minimise the gravity of our position when it was explained to him, but helped us to look the hard facts in the face.

“If the man has been arrested,” he said, “it seems to me that we are powerless. The whole of the facts are bound to come out. Your conduct,” he added, turning to me, “has of course been blameless, even, I should imagine, from the legal point of view. At least I do not quite see in what form any charge could be made against you. The extreme difficulty of the circumstances in which you were placed would of course be appreciated. I do not see how your action could be described as abetting, since you did all in your power to break up the conspiracy and defeat its ends.

“Your brother’s case is of course quite different. The fact that he had no direct financial interest in the sale of the drug is only an extenuating circumstance. You were aware of the whole transaction,” he said, addressing Edmund; “you aided in it, if only by helping to navigate the boat. I do not think there is the least doubt that a judge would take a very grave view of your offence, and of its effect on the prestige of the English in Egypt. In your case discovery would of course mean irretrievable disgrace, a punishment utterly out of all proportion to the real sinfulness of your act, at least as I see it. It is because of the injustice involved in that, in what would be the real sentence, and because of the damage that would be done to our countrymen in the East, that I feel we are justified in circumventing the law, if that be still possible.”

I could see the tide of humiliation pass across Edmund’s face, as he sat with folded arms, listening to the bishop’s calm judicial statement of the position, but when at last he looked up, I thought I saw in his eyes that it had been a cleansing tide.

“I am afraid,” he said very slowly, “it would be impertinent in me, my lord, to thank you for what you are doing, for what you have proposed to do, even for speaking to me, after you have known all this about me. God knows I understand now the rottenness of my whole life so far. If I could only keep my brother’s name out of it, I would rather that everything came out; I would rather take the punishment. I do not mind, since you and he think I might have made good still, if the chance had come. I can face everything but disgrace coming home to him. You know he has been more than any brother to me. I had forgotten what it was to be a gentleman. But if I have to make my new start in prison I shall act as one now. I can do it, since you believe I could. I wish I knew how to thank you.”

Edmund’s voice broke in a sob very painful to us to hear.

The bishop rose and went over to him. “My dear boy,” he said, laying a hand on his shoulder with an instinctive pastoral gesture, “you are welcome to thank me. I know it is a natural, wholesome desire. But you must understand that I am only trying to interpret what I believe to be our Lord’s attitude to sinners who repent. You have probably come to disbelieve in what is called prayer. Nevertheless prayer is a natural instinct implanted in all of us; a desire we cannot get rid of, whatever our beliefs or disbeliefs may be. I advise you to leave us now and go and yield to that instinct. Whatever may happen now we need say no more about this aspect of the case.”

As Edmund rose to obey him, the bishop took his hand for a moment in silence, and there was a look in his face that made me think of Him who rose “with healing in his wings.”

“Poor warped boy!” he exclaimed as the door closed; “there is a great capacity for goodness and nobility in him, all stunted by mere circumstance. Davoren, I feel that we must save him at almost any cost. Why should we desire the punishment even of this nefarious Arab? It will surely be better to make him ‘cease to do evil and learn to do well.’ Have you ever thought out the distinction between crime and sin?”

“I have never regarded them as necessarily related,” I answered.

“No, they are not. If we could establish that essential relationship we should have achieved the ideal State. Probably that was what Plato really meant. But now we must come down to sordid details. Assuming that this Arab escapes the police and finds you here, have you any plan for dealing with him?”

“None. We have discussed it up and down since yesterday, but could come to no conclusion.”

“I should be inclined to offer him a chance to accompany your brother and Captain Welfare, that is if they decided to go to Nyasaland. We could offer him congenial employment, fair pay, and above all a chance of escape from ‘justice.’ We must remember that the one strength of our position is that he is a hunted man. A desperate man is dangerous, therefore the proper treatment for him is to offer him hope.”

We spent a long time discussing what our course should be if the worst came to pass, and how we were to make a future for Edmund when he should have purged his folly. The afternoon was fading into evening, when Bates came in with a perturbed expression.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, “there is a man at the door who refuses to go away until he has seen you.”

“Well, Bates? Why should he not see me? What is his business?”

“He wouldn’t say, sir. Excuse me, sir, but he is a foreign looking person, though not dressed as such. I think he is one of those Arabs that came in the yacht, sir.”

The bishop and I looked at each other with a great relief. Here was Jakoub, and he was still at liberty, the worst had not yet come to pass.

“I’ll go and see him, Bates,” I said; “will you excuse me, bishop?”

“Don’t mind me if you wish to bring him in here,” the bishop answered in a perfectly natural manner.

I went out to meet Jakoub at the door, Bates following me like a dog bristling with distrust of some instinctive foe.

As soon as he opened the door a man stepped quickly inside, in spite of a protesting movement from Bates.

For a moment my heart misgave me, for in this cloth-capped stranger, clad in cheap but respectable brown tweed, I failed to recognise Jakoub. But a flash from his eyes reassured me, and there was no mistaking his greeting. “All raight, effendi!” he said in his old mocking tone, “it is I, Jakoub.”

I think his quick intuition was disconcerted at my manifest pleasure in welcoming him! No doubt he had calculated on meeting fear or anger.

“Come in,” I said cordially. “I am very glad to see you again, Jakoub. It is quite right, Bates, just go and tell Mr. Edmund he will find an old friend with us in the study.”

Bates went upstairs distrustfully, and I led Jakoub into the study.

“Bishop, this is Jakoub,” I said with a happy smile; “Jakoub, this is my sheikh.”

The bishop nodded pleasantly and Jakoub instinctively salaamed, touching his forehead and breast.

He stood with his hands folded before him looking uneasily from one to the other of us. He was evidently nonplussed and suspicious, and doubtless felt at a disadvantage in the strange ugly clothes which vulgarised and robbed him of all his natural dignity.

“I came to speak with you private,” he said sullenly.

“Sit down then. We are private. The sheikh knows all about our business, Jakoub. Mr. Montgomery is here too. He will be with us in a moment.”

I used the false name purposely to try if Jakoub knew Edmund by any other, but he made no comment.

“If you think I am in a trap, you mistake. Very big mistake,” he muttered viciously.

“None of us thinks so, Jakoub. If you are in trouble, we want to help you. Have a cigarette?” He took the cigarette greedily, as one who had fasted for some time. It seemed to restore a little of his confidence.

“Jakoub is in no trouble,” he remarked, as he sat uneasily on the edge of a low chair.

Edmund came in at this moment, quite calm and collected, without a trace of his recent emotional crisis.

“Well, Jakoub,” he said, “you have turned up?”

“Yes. I have come. I have come for my rights, for my money and for Van Ermengen, effendi’s. We will not be robbed.”

“No,” said Edmund, “but you may be arrested, you know. The police----”

“Bah! Your police--I fear them not. We knew they would wait for me at your harbour. So I make myself to have the job to go away in the little boat with a line to the buoy. Last night before the steamer stop, before the gangway is out, I am away from her in the dark. I wrap my galabieh round a stone and drop her in the water. Then I put on these, these clothes, boots, hat; and I row to a good place on the shore, while your police are looking for me on the ship! Who will find Jakoub now? I am not a mouse to walk in a trap!”

“That was very clever,” the bishop put in.

“It is my business to be clever!” said Jakoub, showing his teeth a little, as he looked round from one to the other of us, malignant and implacable.

I was at a loss as to how to continue the conversation. I felt as I have sometimes felt when trying to play chess for the entertainment of better players, uncertain even as to whose move it was next. It was therefore a great relief to me when Edmund spoke in a tone that suggested his intention of taking command of our side.

“You had better tell us,” he said, “why you have come here, and what it is that you want.”

“I have come for the money I am owed, I and Van Ermengen effendi. I have my papers, my account.”

He sought in the unfamiliar pockets of what tailors call a “lounge suit,” and produced a folded sheet of foolscap which Edmund took from him.

“We have already had all this by post from Van Ermengen,” Edmund remarked as he looked over the paper. “Why did he send you here?”

“Because you did not answer. You sent no money,” Jakoub answered doggedly.

“And suppose we send this money to Van Ermengen, how are you going to get your share from him? If we enable you to escape the police here, will you go back to Egypt? Don’t take me for a fool, Jakoub. It won’t help you.”

“You pay me my share here. I care no more for Van Ermengen.”

The bishop and I looked at each other. We began to see the drift of Edmund’s diplomacy; to detach Jakoub from Van Ermengen was decidedly a gain.

“I don’t suppose you do care for him,” Edmund said, “and yet you are trying to play his game, knowing he will swindle you in the end.”

“But without him I could not have come here,” Jakoub pointed out with another smile of cool effrontery.

“I could stay no more in Egypt,” he added, “so I use Van Ermengen to find you and Captain Ringrose, and the effendi here. It is you who have gone with my property--you are the thieves, and you will give back my share, or come with me to the prison.”

“You might get us into prison, Jakoub, but you could not get us hanged. Do you know,” he asked suddenly, taking a step towards Jakoub and standing over him in a threatening attitude, “do you know that we can have you hanged? Do you know that we found Achmed in Marseilles and he told us all that happened in that house at Damanhour where the merchant was murdered two years ago? We know where to find Achmed whenever we want him.”

Jakoub’s face was distorted with the spasm of sudden terror, like that of a man who suddenly sees some unsuspected object close by him in the dark. His right hand made a movement towards the unaccustomed breast pocket, but Edmund seized his wrist in a flash. His grasp brought a cry from Jakoub.

“Effendi! You break my arm! Let me go.”

“Hand over your weapon first.”

“I have none. I swear it. Search me, effendi!”

Edmund slowly relinquished his grasp. I thought of the knife I had seen in Jakoub’s hand that night at Alexandria when I was awakened by the brushing of that hand along my bedroom wall. But I was paralysed by the sudden violence of this scene in my quiet study. I saw the bishop sitting tense, braced for sudden action. But Edmund did not trouble to search Jakoub; he lounged back to the mantelpiece and it seemed that a crisis had ended.

“It does not matter if you have a weapon, Jakoub, for you dare not use it. Now listen, we offer you safety, or at least to help you to safety if we can. You may not believe it, but it is a fact that the whole of the hashish is at the bottom of the sea. We threw it overboard and sank it for reasons of our own. We may help you to earn an honest living in safety, if you choose to. At least, that is what we meant to offer you. But these gentlemen did not know for certain until this minute that you were a murderer. When I tell them what the man was whom you killed, they may still help you. I do not know.”

Edmund paused and looked enquiringly at the bishop.

“We ought to have known of this,” the bishop said very gravely.

“I was going to tell you, my lord. If I may send Jakoub out of the room I will tell you the whole story. He had better think over our offer, in case it still holds good. But understand, Jakoub, that alone and unaided in England you can no more escape our police than a quail can escape your net when it lands in Egypt. This is not Egypt. If you choose to quarrel with us you know now what to expect.”

I felt a kind of pity for Jakoub as I looked at him. He was changed from the masterful villain I had known, the man to whose skill and courage in the desert I probably owed my life.

He was now a huddled figure in his chair, and under Edmund’s new threat he looked beaten, weak, and forlorn. It occurred to me that he might have had little or no food on his journey, and I always find something pathetic in the more primitive human needs. I was sure, too, that Jakoub would regard Edmund’s last remark as a warning that the whole system of backshish would, in this country, be against him as a foreigner without money. It would seem to him quite natural that a person like myself should have the entire legislature in his pay, and this would of course be a depressing thought. My feelings as a host were aroused on his behalf, but I recognised the impossibility of suggesting that he should join us at dinner.

“Perhaps,” I said, “Jakoub is ready for some food and a glass of wine? I am sorry not to have thought of it sooner. I am afraid you are tired, Jakoub.”

I noticed a flicker of humorous appreciation of the situation pass between Edmund and Jakoub, and as the latter must have had murder in his heart but a moment before, and the other had used force to frustrate the intention, I suppose my conventional words were really somewhat absurd.

But Jakoub rose and salaamed with the ceremony demanded of an Oriental when hospitality is in question.

“Jakoub is never tired,” he said, “but he has come far, fasting. The effendi is kind, and Jakoub gives thanks to Allah and to him. Jakoub needs food and remembers the red wine he drank in the Temple of Osiris. It is not yet Ramadan.”

“That’s all right,” I said, “I’ll ring for Bates.”

Bates at the door, in response to my summons, gave us a wonderful piece of acting. He was representing the part of a servant unconscious of the existence of the foreign element in our conclave. The perfect correctness of his demeanour made all three of us feel abject in a way that no threat from Jakoub could have done.

“Bates,” I said, “this gentleman will have some dinner in the morning-room. And tell Mrs. Rattray that we shall be ready in a quarter of an hour.”

Bates’s aspect relaxed its severity at once, and I perceived that I had acquired merit in his eyes. He knew that I never referred to my friends as “gentlemen,” and my use of the term now was, in his eyes, opprobrious. I think he may have suspected me of an intention to have Jakoub in the dining-room, which would have involved his giving me notice, and wrecking his own life’s happiness. As it was, he made an imperious gesture to Jakoub, who followed him out of the room quite meekly.

“I think we had better go and dress,” I said, looking at my watch, “we can talk things over after dinner.”

We said no more to each other then, but as we went upstairs in silence it occurred to me that Bates might handle Jakoub more successfully even than the bishop.

Dinner that night was a meal purposely abbreviated, for we could not resume our discussion until Bates had completed his functions and left us with the walnuts and a decanter of port for Edmund and myself.

The lingering twilight of summer reduced the shaded candles on the table to the level of an agreeable but adventitious ornament. There are few things more lovely than the ruby patch on white damask of candle-light focussed through cut glass containing some ancient vintage of the grape of sun-soaked Portugal. That crimson spot, with radiating lines and concentric curves of topaz light, has always given me, since childhood days, the thrill of joy that jewellery provides, and stained-glass windows, and distant rockets bursting inaudible in a summer sky.

I think we all three were conscious of the hedonistic influence of our surroundings, and found it difficult to bring our minds back to the sinister presence in the adjoining room, to the idea of Jakoub there, calculating his line of conduct from an ethical standpoint unintelligible to us.

I certainly felt an intense reluctance to return to the consideration of our clouded future, and I am sure the others shared it.

We might have sat there indefinitely as far as I was concerned. But the bishop with a sigh recalled us to the immediate necessities of our situation.

We had been discoursing pleasantly of many things interesting but remote from our immediate circumstances, when he broke in on our artificial calm.

“Well, we are keeping Jakoub waiting,” he said; “had we not better know the facts about this new charge against him?”

“Yes. You must know the facts. I have been waiting to tell you,” Edmund answered. “I can only give you the facts as I have heard them from a man who has no reason to love Jakoub. All I can say is that both Welfare and I have every reason to believe the story, for we both knew the man who was killed. Either of us would have killed him if we could. It is a disgusting story.”

It was a story so loathsome in its details that I have tried to blot them from my mind. It concerned an elderly Egyptian who had made vast sums of money by land speculations at the time when the Egyptian cotton industry was embryonic. He had chosen one of his sons as his heir, and sent the youth to Europe to be “educated.” The young man had absorbed all the villainy and corruption that can be found in the lowest classes of the great cities of England and the continent, and returned to inherit his father’s wealth with his native Oriental brutality instructed and refined by Western cunning and Western niceties of debauchery and greed. As he lost his inherited wealth to more cunning rogues, he tried to recover it by becoming the principal organiser of the hashish trade. In this capacity he came to owe Jakoub the wages of subordinate villainy. Jakoub had taken him by surprise in his secret villa at Damanhour. He had found him torturing a woman who had been a girl in Jakoub’s village in the Delta. Jakoub had slain him and escaped undetected. Edmund had now found a witness who could prove Jakoub to be the murderer.

“I have threatened Jakoub with this knowledge,” Edmund concluded, “but sooner than use it against him really, I would have my tongue torn out.”

Neither of us made any comment on the story, and Edmund remained silent during a considerable pause, nervously fidgeting with his napkin ring.

“I think we must have the man in, Davoren,” the bishop said at last, “but first we must be quite assured as to what we are to say to him.”

“Yes. We had better get it over,” I agreed.

“Am I to understand definitely,” the bishop asked Edmund, “that if all goes well you will accept this offer of the Colonial Secretary?”

“I will indeed, most thankfully,” Edmund assured him.

“And you think it probable that Captain Welfare would join you?”

“I cannot imagine his refusing.”

“Well, that’s all right so far----”

He was interrupted by a metallic clang, twice repeated. It was the old sound of the hammer on the anvil in the forge, brought to us along the tunnel. But it was an unusual time to hear it, and to all of us there was something minatory in the sound of those three strokes.

The bishop broke off in his sentence, and we all three listened, silent and uneasy.

The three loud strokes were repeated.

“They are working late at the forge,” the bishop remarked.

“That is not blacksmith’s work,” I answered with an apprehensive note in my voice.

There came a succession of blows, apparently from a lighter hammer, yet with a sound unusual and unfamiliar to me, making as it were a kind of tune.

Suddenly Edmund’s face “sprang to attention” as it were. He took a pencil from his pocket, and seizing a menu card, began making rapid marks on it, as the tune on the anvil rang on.

The bishop and I watched him in amazement.

“It’s Welfare,” he said; “our private call in Morse. Here’s his message coming. Excuse me.”

For some minutes the noise went on, the bishop and I, elbows on table, watching Edmund as he jotted down dots and dashes on the cardboard. He put out his hand for a fresh card, and I had had the sense to have one ready for him, so there was no interruption in his recording of the message.

Presently the hammering ceased.

We listened for a moment, but no more sound came from the anvil. Edmund set himself to deciphering and transcribing the message.

Finally he read aloud: “Police traced Jakoub to vicarage. Doors watched. Will arrest at once. Send him down passage. I will meet him at end.”

“We must act at once,” the bishop observed, rising from his chair; “perhaps you had better get him away,” he added to Edmund. Edmund nodded and moved towards the door.

“One moment,” I said, “I must get Mrs. Rattray and the maid out of the kitchen. We shall have to take Bates into our confidence.”

I left the room, and finding Mrs. Rattray sent her and her assistant to carry out some extraordinary rearrangement of the bishop’s room. I told her that his Lordship had been unwell, and these arrangements were the doctor’s orders. This silenced her protests of amazement, and having got rid of the women I spoke hurriedly to Bates in the hall.

“Bates,” I said, “the police are coming here for this Arab. They will be here any moment now.”

“Very good, sir.” Bates answered with evident gratification.

“But he is not to be arrested here. Mr. Edmund has particular reasons for not wishing it.”

“Oh, very well, sir.”

“Mr. Edmund is going to let him out through the cellar, into the passage. When the police call you will show them into the dining-room. In the meantime you must make it appear that the man has gone through the morning-room window. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I am afraid, Bates, it may not be possible for you to speak the precise truth about the business--to the police, I mean. Have you any objection?”

“Well, sir, as long as you and his Lordship say so, I have no doubt it is all correct.”

“That’s all right then.”

As I spoke Edmund came out of the morning-room with Jakoub.

“The idiot swears it’s a trap. He says he won’t go unless the ‘sheikh,’ as he calls him, promises we are doing the straight thing.”

“It is Ringrose,” growled Jakoub; “I know him; this is his plan to trap me.”

“I swear, Jakoub----” I began, but then the bishop, who had overheard the conversation, joined us.

“I promise you,” he said, “in the name of the one God whom we both worship, that we are doing what we believe to be the best thing for you as well as for others. I promise that in this we are dealing faithfully with you. Now go quickly. It is your only chance of safety.”

Jakoub followed Edmund down to the cellar without another word.

The bishop and I returned to the dining-room and resumed our seats at the table.

My heart was beating painfully as we heard through the floor the harsh grating of the door that led from the cellar to the passage. We heard it opened, and it seemed an age before it was dragged to, and the rusty bolts shot back. I think the bishop breathed a little rapidly too.

As Edmund rejoined us with an enquiring glance I shook my head.

“I wonder what is keeping them,” he said as he sat down in his place.

I explained briefly what I had arranged with Bates.

“Don’t you think, bishop,” I asked, “that it would be better for you to leave us? If anything were to go wrong, it would be intolerable that your name should even be mentioned.”

“It is certainly disagreeable,” he replied; “it is intensely painful to deceive these men in the execution of their duty. We are unquestionably aiding a criminal to escape, in fact ‘compounding a felony.’ Nevertheless, my conscience is quite definite in the matter and approves of what we are doing. It is the old question, Davoren, of the difference between crime and sin. The crime for which the law would put this man to death was not a sin. It was manifestly a righteous action. It was an impulse which no decent man would have resisted. Of course, society could not exist if everyone were to be allowed to decide such questions. But I claim as much right to judge of wickedness as a judge has to decide questions of crime. But if I left you now it would be cowardice, and my conscience would not acquit me.”

“But how terribly the world would misjudge you!”

“That is not a thing from which a Christian should shrink,” the bishop observed quietly, and so closed the discussion.

Edmund helped himself to a glass of wine.

“It will look more natural when they come in,” he said, “as if we were only just finishing dinner.”

I was glad to follow his example, for in truth the sudden development of our perplexities, the strange manner of its announcement, and the necessity for sudden action had left me shaken in mind and body and, I fear, a little tremulous.

As Edmund lit a cigarette the hall-door bell was rung.