‘What came you forth to seek?’ she asked. ‘You are not like the stout American Blenkiron, a lover of shoddy power and a devotee of a feeble science. There is something more than that in your face. You are on our side, but you are not of the Germans with their hankerings for a rococo Empire. You come from America, the land of pious follies, where men worship gold and words. I ask, what came you forth to seek?’ As she spoke I seemed to get a vision of a figure, like one of the old gods looking down on human nature from a great height, a figure disdainful and passionless, but with its own magnificence. It kindled my imagination, and I answered with the stuff I had often cogitated when I had tried to explain to myself just how a case could be made out against the Allied cause.
‘I will tell you, Madam,’ I said. ‘I am a man who has followed a science, but I have followed it in wild places, and I have gone through it and come out at the other side. The world, as I see it, had become too easy and cushioned. Men had forgotten their manhood in soft speech, and imagined that the rules of their smug civilization were the laws of the universe. But that is not the teaching of science, and it is not the teaching of life. We have forgotten the greater virtues, and we were becoming emasculated humbugs whose gods were our own weaknesses. Then came war, and the air was cleared. Germany, in spite of her blunders and her grossness, stood forth as the scourge of cant. She had the courage to cut through the bonds of humbug and to laugh at the fetishes of the herd. Therefore I am on Germany’s side. But I came here for another reason. I know nothing of the East, but as I read history it is from the desert that the purification comes. When mankind is smothered with shams and phrases and painted idols a wind blows out of the wild to cleanse and simplify life. The world needs space and fresh air. The civilization we have boasted of is a toy-shop and a blind alley, and I hanker for the open country.’
This confounded nonsense was well received. Her pale eyes had the cold light of the fanatic. With her bright hair and the long exquisite oval of her face she looked like some destroying fury of a Norse legend. At that moment I think I first really feared her; before I had half-hated and half-admired. Thank Heaven, in her absorption she did not notice that I had forgotten the speech of Cleveland, Ohio.
‘You are of the Household of Faith,’ she said. ‘You will presently learn many things, for the Faith marches to victory. Meantime I have one word for you. You and your companion travel eastward.’
‘We go to Mesopotamia,’ I said. ‘I reckon these are our passports,’ and I pointed to the envelope.
She picked it up, opened it, and then tore it in pieces and tossed it in the fire.
‘The orders are countermanded,’ she said. ‘I have need of you and you go with me. Not to the flats of the Tigris, but to the great hills. Tomorrow you will receive new passports.’
She gave me her hand and turned to go. At the threshold she paused, and looked towards the oak cupboard. ‘Tomorrow I will relieve you of your prisoner. He will be safer in my hands.’
She left me in a condition of pretty blank bewilderment. We were to be tied to the chariot-wheels of this fury, and started on an enterprise compared to which fighting against our friends at Kut seemed tame and reasonable. On the other hand, I had been spotted by Rasta, and had got the envoy of the most powerful man in Constantinople locked in a cupboard. At all costs we had to keep Rasta safe, but I was very determined that he should not be handed over to the lady. I was going to be no party to cold-blooded murder, which I judged to be her expedient. It was a pretty kettle of fish, but in the meantime I must have food, for I had eaten nothing for nine hours. So I went in search of Peter.
I had scarcely begun my long deferred meal when Sandy entered. He was before his time, and he looked as solemn as a sick owl. I seized on him as a drowning man clutches a spar.
He heard my story of Rasta with a lengthening face.
‘That’s bad,’ he said. ‘You say he spotted you, and your subsequent doings of course would not disillusion him. It’s an infernal nuisance, but there’s only one way out of it. I must put him in charge of my own people. They will keep him safe and sound till he’s wanted. Only he mustn’t see me.’ And he went out in a hurry.
I fetched Rasta from his prison. He had come to his senses by this time, and lay regarding me with stony, malevolent eyes.
‘I’m very sorry, Sir,’ I said, ‘for what has happened. But you left me no alternative. I’ve got a big job on hand and I can’t have it interfered with by you or anyone. You’re paying the price of a suspicious nature. When you know a little more you’ll want to apologize to me. I’m going to see that you are kept quiet and comfortable for a day or two. You’ve no cause to worry, for you’ll suffer no harm. I give you my word of honour as an American citizen.’
Two of Sandy’s miscreants came in and bore him off, and presently Sandy himself returned. When I asked him where he was being taken, Sandy said he didn’t know. ‘They’ve got their orders, and they’ll carry them out to the letter. There’s a big unknown area in Constantinople to hide a man, into which the _Khafiyeh never enter.’
Then he flung himself in a chair and lit his old pipe.
‘Dick,’ he said, ‘this job is getting very difficult and very dark. But my knowledge has grown in the last few days. I’ve found out the meaning of the second word that Harry Bullivant scribbled.’
‘_Cancer?’ I asked.
‘Yes. It means just what it reads and no more. Greenmantle is dying - has been dying for months. This afternoon they brought a German doctor to see him, and the man gave him a few hours of life. By now he may be dead.’ The news was a staggerer. For a moment I thought it cleared up things. ‘Then that busts the show,’ I said. ‘You can’t have a crusade without a prophet.’
‘I wish I thought it did. It’s the end of one stage, but the start of a new and blacker one. Do you think that woman will be beaten by such a small thing as the death of her prophet? She’ll find a substitute - one of the four Ministers, or someone else. She’s a devil incarnate, but she has the soul of a Napoleon. The big danger is only beginning.’
Then he told me the story of his recent doings. He had found out the house of Frau von Einem without much trouble, and had performed with his ragamuffins in the servants’ quarters. The prophet had a large retinue, and the fame of his minstrels - for the Companions were known far and wide in the land of Islam - came speedily to the ears of the Holy Ones. Sandy, a leader in this most orthodox coterie, was taken into favour and brought to the notice of the four Ministers. He and his half-dozen retainers became inmates of the villa, and Sandy, from his knowledge of Islamic lore and his ostentatious piety, was admitted to the confidence of the household. Frau von Einem welcomed him as an ally, for the Companions had been the most devoted propagandists of the new revelation.
As he described it, it was a strange business. Greenmantle was dying and often in great pain, but he struggled to meet the demands of his protectress. The four Ministers, as Sandy saw them, were unworldly ascetics; the prophet himself was a saint, though a practical saint with some notions of policy; but the controlling brain and will were those of the lady. Sandy seemed to have won his favour, even his affection. He spoke of him with a kind of desperate pity.
‘I never saw such a man. He is the greatest gentleman you can picture, with a dignity like a high mountain. He is a dreamer and a poet, too - a genius if I can judge these things. I think I can assess him rightly, for I know something of the soul of the East, but it would be too long a story to tell now. The West knows nothing of the true Oriental. It pictures him as lapped in colour and idleness and luxury and gorgeous dreams. But it is all wrong. The _Kaf he yearns for is an austere thing. It is the austerity of the East that is its beauty and its terror … It always wants the same things at the back of its head. The Turk and the Arab came out of big spaces, and they have the desire of them in their bones. They settle down and stagnate, and by the by they degenerate into that appalling subtlety which is their ruling passion gone crooked. And then comes a new revelation and a great simplifying. They want to live face to face with God without a screen of ritual and images and priestcraft. They want to prune life of its foolish fringes and get back to the noble bareness of the desert. Remember, it is always the empty desert and the empty sky that cast their spell over them - these, and the hot, strong, antiseptic sunlight which burns up all rot and decay . -. It isn’t inhuman. It’s the humanity of one part of the human race. It isn’t ours, it isn’t as good as ours, but it’s jolly good all the same. There are times when it grips me so hard that I’m inclined to forswear the gods of my fathers!