but there was nothing else there of much interest to
see, only dead donkeys, a dying camel with the vultures already
beginning on him, some dead dogs, heaps of refuse, and a lot more
vultures too gorged to fly--the usual Arab scheme of sanitation.
I asked one of my bodyguard to shoot the camel and he obliged me,
with the air of a keeper making concessions to a lunatic. Nobody
took any notice of the rifle going off.

It was when we turned back into the town again that the first
inkling of Grim's presence in the place turned up. A bulky-
looking Arab in a sheepskin coat that stank of sweat so vilely
that you could hardly bear the man near you, came up and stood in
my way. Barring the smell, he was a winning-looking rascal--
truculent, swaggering, but possessed of a good-natured smile that
seemed to say: "Sure, I'm a rogue and a liar, but what else did
you expect!"

He spoke perfectly good English. He said he wished to speak to
me alone. That was easy enough; Ahmed and the bodyguard
withdrew about ten paces, and he and I stepped into a doorway.

"I am Mahommed ben Hamza," he said, with his head on one side, as
if that explanation ought to make everything clear to me at once.
"From Hebron," he added, when I did not seem to see the light.

The wiser one looks, and the less one says, in Arab lands, the
less trouble there's likely to be. I tried to look extremely
wise, and said nothing.

"Where is Jimgrim?" he demanded.

"If you can tell me that I'll give you ten piastres," I answered.

"I will give you fifty if you tell me!"

"Why do you want to know?"

"He is my friend. He said I should see him here. But I have not
seen him. He said also I should see you. You are the Amerikani?
And you don't know where he is? Truly? Then, when you see him,
will you say to him, 'Mahommed ben Hamza is here with nine men at
the house of Abu Shamah?' Jimgrim will understand."

I nodded, and the man from Hebron walked away without another word.

"Did he steal your watch?" asked Ahmed. They are as jealous as
children, those Arabs.

There was a second execution while I walked back through the
city. A wide-eyed, panic-stricken poor devil with slobber on his
jaws came tearing down-street with a mob at his heels. We
stepped into an alley to let the race go by, but he doubled down
the alley opposite. Before he had run twenty yards along it some
one hit the back of his head with a piece of rock. A second
later they