“If I haven’t made good so far,” I said, “I’ll consider myself fired, and hold my tongue.  Otherwise, I see this thing through!  Send some one else on the joy-ride.”

“Good for you!” said Davey.

“Dammit, man!” said Goodenough, staring at me through his monocle.  “The rest of us get paid for taking chances.  The only tangible reward you can possibly get will be a knife in your back.  Better be sensible and take the ride to Haifa.”

“My bet is down,” said I.

“Good,” Grim nodded.  “It goes.  All the same, you get a joy-ride.  Can’t take too many chances.  Tell you about that later.  Meanwhile, will you detail an officer to come and spend the night in this hotel and masquerade as me at dawn, sir?  He can wear this uniform that I’ve got on—­somebody about my height.”

“Turner will do that.  What are you going to put in the bags?” asked Goodenough.

“Cartridges.  They’re heavy.  You might tell Turner over the phone to bring them with him.”

At that point Suliman returned, sooner than expected, with news that made Grim whistle.  Suliman had not been inside the place where his mother was.  She would not let him.  But he had seen around her skirts as she stood in the partly opened door.

“There was a hole in the floor,” said Suliman, “and a great stone laid beside it.  Also much gray dust.  And I think there was a light a long way down in the hole.”

But that was not what made Grim whistle.

“What else?  Did your mother say anything?”

“She was ill-tempered.”

“That Scharnhoff had beaten her.”

“I knew he’d make a bad break sooner or later.  What did he beat her for?”

“Because she was afraid.”

“That’s a fine reason.  Afraid of what?”

“He says she is to sell oranges.  Four wooden benches have been brought, and tomorrow they are to be set outside the door in the street.  Oranges and raisins have been bought, and she is to sit outside the door and sell them.  She is afraid.”

“Fruit bought already?  Can’t be.  Was it inside there?”

“No.  It is to come tomorrow.  She says she does not know how to sell fruit, and is afraid of the police.”

Grim and Goodenough exchanged glances.

“She says that if the police come everybody will be killed, and that I am to keep watch in the street in the morning and give warning of the police.”

“That should teach you, young man, never to take a woman into your confidence—­eh, Mrs. Davey?” said Goodenough.

“We’re certainly the slow-witted sex,” she answered, piling the finished bags one on top of the other on the table.

Grim took me after that to the hotel roof, whence you can see the whole of Jerusalem.  It was just before moonrise.  The ancient city lay in shadow, with the Dome of the Rock looming above it, mysterious and silent.  Down below us in the street, where a gasoline light threw a greenish-white glare, three Arabs in native costume were squatting with their backs against the low wall facing the hotel.