Part 11 (1/2)

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 Ha.s.san!--he pays the dollars. Good, all right, just so. But is that all, Sidi? No, Sidi, that is not all. The Sultan--G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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! G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sa.s.sin-elect, Larby, who to save his own life must take mine, Larby was with me, was beside me, was behind me constantly!

_G.o.d help you, my son, G.o.d 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 pa.s.sport 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 s.h.i.+ver. 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--G.o.d 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 bra.s.sworkers 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 pa.s.sed 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.”