Jimgrim and Allah's Peace Part 18

I had met Hugo Scharnhoff. Long before the War he had been a professor of orientology at Vienna University. At the moment he was technically an "enemy alien." But he had lived so many years in Jerusalem, and was reputed so studious and harmless, that the British let him stay there after Allenby captured the city. A man of moderate private means, he owned a stone house in the German Colony with its back to the Valley of Hinnom.

"Care to come?" Grim asked me.

"Yes."

"Know your Bible?" He proceeded to quote from it: "And the rest of the acts of Ahaziah which he did are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the Kings of Israel?"'

"What of it?"

"That was set down in Aramaic, nowadays called Hebrew, something like three thousand years ago," said Grim. "It's Aramaic magic. Let's take a look at it."

We trudged together down the dusty Bethlehem Road, turned to the east just short of the Pool of the Sultan (where they now had a delousing station for British soldiers) and went nearly to the end of the colony of neat stone villas that the Germans built before the War, and called Rephaim. It was a prosperous colony until the Kaiser, putting two and two, made five of them and had to guess again.

The house we sought stood back from the narrow road, at a corner, surrounded by a low stone wall and a ma.s.s of rather dense shrubs that obscured the view from the windows. The front door was a thing of solid olive-wood. We had to hammer on it for several minutes. There was no bell.

A woman opened it at last-an Arab in native costume, gazelle- eyed, as they all are, and quite good looking, although hardly in her first youth. Her face struck me as haunted. She was either ashamed when her eyes met Grim's or else afraid of him. But she smiled pleasantly enough and without asking our business led the way at once to a room at the other end of a long hall that was crowded with all sorts of curios. They were mostly stone bric-a- brac-fragments of Moabite pottery and that kind of thing, with a pretty liberal covering of ordinary house dust. In fact, the house had the depressing "feel" of a rarely visited museum.

The room she showed us into was the library-three walls lined with books, mostly with German t.i.tles-a big cupboard in one corner, reaching from floor to ceiling-a big desk by the window-three armchairs and a stool. There were no pictures, and the only thing that smacked of ornament was the Persian rug on the floor.

We waited five minutes before Scharnhoff came in, looking as if we had disturbed his nap. He was an untidy stout man with green goggles and a grayish beard, probably not yet sixty years of age, and well preserved. He kept his pants up with a belt, and his s.h.i.+rt bulged untidily over the top. When he sat down you could see the ends of thick combinations stuffed into his socks. He gave you the impression of not fitting into western clothes at all and of being out of sympathy with most of what they represent.

He was cordial enough-after one swift glance around the room.

"Brought a new acquaintance for you," said Grim, introducing me. "I've told him how all the subalterns come to you for Palestinian lore-"

"Ach! The young Lotharios! Each man a Don Juan! All they come to me for is tales of Turkish harems, of which I know no more than any one. They are not interested in subjects of real importance. 'How many wives had Djemal Pasha? How many of them were European?' That is what they ask me. When I discuss ancient history it is only about King Solomon's harem that they care to know; or possibly about the modern dancing girls of El- Kerak, who are all spies. But there is no need to inform you as to that. Eh? I haven't seen you for a long time, Major Grim. What have you been doing?"

"Nothing much. I was at the Tomb of the Kings yesterday."

Scharnhoff smiled scornfully.

"Now you must have some whiskey to take the taste of that untruth out of your mouth! How can a man of your attainments call that obviously modern fraud by such a name? The place is not nearly two thousand years old! It is probably the tomb of a Syrian queen named Adiabene and her family. Josephus mentions it. This land is full-every square metre of it-of false antiquities with real names, and real antiquities that never have been discovered! But why should a man like you, Major Grim, lend yourself to perpetuating falsity?"

He walked over to the cupboard to get whiskey, and from where we sat we could both of us see what he was doing. The cupboard was in two parts, top and bottom, without any intervening strip of wood between the doors, which fitted tightly. When he opened the top part the lower door opened with it. He kicked it shut again at once, but I had seen inside-not that it was interesting at the moment.

He set whiskey and tumblers on the desk, poured liberally, and went on talking.

"Tomb of the Kings? Hah! Tomb of the Kings of Judah? Hah! If any one can find that, he will have something more important than Ludendorff's memoirs! Something merkwurdig, believe me!"

He stiffened suddenly, and looked at Grim through the green goggles as if he were judging an antiquity.

"Perhaps this is not the time to make you a little suggestion, eh?"

Grim's face wrinkled into smiles.

"This man knows enough to hang me anyhow! Fire away!"

"Ah! But I would not like him to hang me!"

"He's as close as a clam. What's your notion?"

"Nothing serious, but-between us three, then-you and I are both foreigners in this place, Major Grim, although I have made it my home for fifteen years. You have no more interest in this government and its ridiculous rules than I have. What do you say-shall we find the Tomb of the Kings together?"

Grim wrinkled into smiles again and glanced down at his uniform.

"Yes, exactly!" agreed Scharnhoff. "That is the whole point. They call me an enemy alien. I am to all intents and purposes a prisoner. You are a British officer-can do what you like-go where you like. You wear red tabs; you are on the staff; n.o.body will dare to question you. These English have stopped all exploration until they get their mandate. After that they will take good care that only English societies have the exploration privilege. But what if we-you and I, that is to say-between us extract the best plum from the pudding before those miscalled statesmen sign the mandate-eh? It can be done! It can be done!"

Grim chuckled:

"I suppose you already see a picture of you and me with an ancient tomb in our trunks-say a few tons of the more artistic parts-beating it for the frontier and hawking the stuff afterward to second-hand furniture dealers? Pour me another whiskey, prof, and then we'll go steal the Mosque of Omar!"

"Ach! You laugh at me-you jest-you mock-you sneer. But I know what I propose. Do you know what will be found in that Tomb of the Kings of Judah when we discover it?"

"Bones. Dry bones. A few gold ornaments perhaps. A stale smell certainly."

"The Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel! Think of it! A parchment roll-perhaps two or three rolls-not too big to go into a valise-worth more than all the other ancient ma.n.u.scripts in the world all put together! Himmel! What a find that would be! What a record! What a refutation of all the historians and the fools who set themselves up for authorities nowadays! What a price it would bring! What would your Metropolitan Museum in New York not pay for it! What would the Jews not pay for it! They would raise millions among them and pay any price we cared to ask! The Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel- only think!"

"But why the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel in the tomb of the Kings of Judah?" Grim asked, more by way of keeping up the conversation, I think, than because he could not guess the answer. He is an omnivorous reader, and there is not much recorded of the Near East that he does not know.

"Don't you know your history? You know, of course, that after King Solomon died the Jews divided into two kingdoms. The latter-day Jews speak of themselves as Israelites, but they are nothing of the kind; they are Judah-ites. The tribe of Judah remained in Jerusalem, forming one small kingdom; their descendants are the Jews of today. Part of the tribe of Benjamin stayed with them. The other seceding ten tribes called themselves the kingdom of Israel."

"Everybody knows that," said Grim. "What of it?"

"Well, the a.s.syrians came down and conquered the kingdom of Israel-marched all the Israelites away into captivity-and they vanished out of history. From that day to this their Book of Chronicles, so often referred to in the Old Testament, has never been seen nor heard of."

"Of course not," said Grim. "The King of a.s.syria used it to wipe his razor on when he was through shaving every morning."

"Ach! You joke again; but I tell you I am not joking. Such people as those Hebrews are naturally secretive and so proud that they wrote down for posterity all the doings of their puny kings, would never have let their records fall into the hands of the a.s.syrians. They themselves were marched away in slave-gangs, but they left their Book behind them, safely hidden. Be sure of it! Ten years ago I found a ma.n.u.script in the place they now call Nablus, which in those days was Schechem. Schechem was the capital of the Kingdom of Israel, just as Jerusalem was the capital of the Kingdom of Judah, or the Jews. I sold that ma.n.u.script for a good price after I had photographed it. The idiots to whom I sold it-historians they call themselves!-value it only as a relic of antiquity. I made a digest of it-a.n.a.lyzed it-studied it-compared it with other authentic facts in my possession-and came to the definite conclusion that I hold the clue to the whereabouts of that lost Book of Chronicles."

"Let's see the photograph," Grim suggested.

"It has been impounded with other so-called 'enemy property' by your friends the British. I suppose they thought the German General Staff might get hold of it and conquer the Suez Ca.n.a.l! But what good would the sight of it do? You couldn't understand a word of it. It convinced me, after months of study, that when the Ten Tribes were carried away into captivity by the a.s.syrians they sent their records secretly to Jerusalem. Ever since the secession the Israelites and Jews had been jealous enemies. But they were relatives after all, boasting a common ancestor, proud of the same history, more or less observing the same religion. And Schechem was only about thirty miles from Jerusalem, which was considered an impregnable fortress until the Babylonians took it later on. So they sent their records to Jerusalem, and the Jews hid them. Where? Where do you suppose?"

"The likeliest place would be Solomon's Temple."

"You think so? Then you think superficially, my young friend. Let us return to that Tomb of the Kings again for a moment. That place that you visited is such an obvious fake that even the guide-books make light of it. The one all-important thing in Palestine that never yet has been discovered is the real Tomb of the Kings. Yet Jerusalem, where it certainly must be, has been searched and looted a hundred times from end to end. Therefore- you follow me?-the Jews must have concealed it very cunningly. Answer me, then: would the Jews, who were always a practical people and not corpse-wors.h.i.+ppers like the Egyptians, have taken all that trouble to hide the tomb of their kings unless there were important treasure in it? Answer me!"

"So you expect to find treasure in addition to the lost Book of Chronicles?"

"Certainly I do! The treasure will make the whole proceeding safe. Let the British have it! The fools will be so blinded by the glamour of gold, that I shall easily extract the things of real value-the invaluable ma.n.u.scripts! Then let the men who call themselves historians take a back seat!"

He rubbed his hands together in antic.i.p.ation.

"Were you looking for the Tomb of the Kings, then, before the War?" Grim asked him.

"Not exactly. Under the Turks it was difficult. The Turks were beautifully corrupt. By paying for it I could get permission to excavate on any property owned by Christians. But the minute I touched Moslem places the Turks became fanatical. The Arabs, now, are different-fanatics, too, but with a new sort of fanaticism-new to them, I mean-the kind that made the French revolutionists destroy everything their ancestors had set value on. There are plenty of Arabs so full of this disease of Bolshevism that they would make it easy for me to desecrate what others believe is holy ground. But these idiots of English are worse than the Turks! They have stopped all excavation. They are so afraid of Bolshevism that, if they could, they would imitate Joshua and make the sun stand still!"

"Well, what's the idea?" asked Grim, finis.h.i.+ng his whiskey.

Scharnhoff shrugged his shoulders.