Adventure, February 20, 1922 — page 40: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

—~, _ Sort of prince when he thrust them out. He had a cataract in one eye, but the other made up for it by being preternaturally _ bright and black and cunning; and his ears ee _ were set far back like an angry dog’s. “Peace! Peace!” urged Ali Baba, as Grim aS _ and Mustapha and I stood upright ‘with our backs to the entrance. Grim had put his pistol out of sight, but the policeman stood on guard like a terrier watching rats. “Peace! Peace!” all sixteen sons repeated after the patriarch. “Fools! Idiots!’’- yelled the eighteenth _ man and tried to spring to his feet, but the men on either side restrained him. I think even a gotilla would have been helpless in = Se om ce = . —s- 2s" ae me _ ; those titanic arms that pressed him down- ward like a cork into a bottle until he seemed . a full foot shorter than he actually was and gasped under the strain. “What will you, Jimgrim?” asked Ali Baba. Grim nodded in the direction of the eighteenth man. “T’ve come for him.” But the gentleman did not propose to be _ fetched and he had a way of his own of mak- ing the objection obvious. He couldn’t ant move for the giant on one side and the mon- - strous-armed fellow on the other continued to lean their weight on him, but he could speak and yell blasphemy ‘and threaten; and he surely did, filling the cave with a clamor like a dog-fight. The blasphemy was his great mistake, for they were simply a pious gang of thieves, despite their own sacrilege, and his coarsely _mouthed Egyptian liberties with sacred _ words hurt tee feelings. They might have - taken his part with more determination but for that. “You focls! Kill them! Kill all three of them!” he yelled and followed it with fright- _ ful imprecations—foul, filthy epithets all _ mixed up with the names of angels and Allah go that Ali Baba protested and his sixteen sons clucked after him in chorus like a lot of scandalized hens. “What else have you got in the cave be- sides that beauty?” Grim inquired. “Nothing, Jimgrim. This is but a meet- ing-place, ” said Ali Baba. “Um-m-m! Nothing under that stone you're sitting on?” “Nothing, Jimgrim. I am old. The Seg of the cave is cold. My sons give me ~ the place of honor.” _ “Suppose you let me look.” Adventure Ali Baba hesitated and collected eyes like a hostess breaking up a dinner-party. It was perfectly obvious that at a word from their chief the whole gang would resist, but ~ Grim stepped into the midst of the circle very coolly with his back to the most danger- © ous men and waited smiling. I knew what he had in mind. At the first symptom of attack he was going to put his foot on the candle. I got ready to bolt ito the throat of the cave ahead of him where, with one rifle and one pistol he and I could keep the lot of them at bay while the policeman could run for help. He told -me afterwards that he would have sent me running and kept the policeman by him; so the imaginary glory of a scrap that never happened is not mine after all. ‘What saved the situation was the Egyp- tian’s tactics. Fired by his-own savage imagination he supposed. Grim was going to lay hands on Ali Baba and he was one of the all-too-plentiful gentry who believe that numbers are the only unanswerable argu- ment. “Tdiots! Kull him!’ he screamed and be- gan to struggle with the men who held him, burying his yellow teeth in the giant’s hand and striking out like a great ape simultane- ously with arms and legs. Now that giant was a great good-natured fellow—the apple of old Ali Baba’s eye and — the pride of the gang. The blood squirted from his hand and the patriarch sprang up from his place to interfere, but not so quick- ly as the youngest, Mahommed, he who had helped us once at El-Kerak. He sprang across the floor from behind Grim and beat the Egyptian over the eyes with a fist like an olive-knot until he let go, stunned. Then, while they crowded to make a fuss about the big man’s injury Grim very calm- ly lifted up the stone on which Ali Baba had been sitting. Funnily enough, I ex- pected to see jewels and all the rest of the trimmings of the legendary robbers’ cave— golden money at any rate and perhaps a big iron chest with rings to lift it by. But Grim looked perfectly contented with the little paper packages that lay in the hole, neatly fastened with red string and laid in a circle like a clutch of flattened eggs. “Who stole these from the doctor?” he asked, stowing them carefully away about his person. “You, Ali Baba?” “Allah forbid! I would not rob the hakim. This dog of an Egyptian was in the —Gcomicbhoo () im eee FS ee (e(o) -