“‘You can drive,’ I says, ‘like Jehu son o’ Nimshi what made Israel to sin.  Let’s see you make bricks now without no bleedin’ straw’!  I knew there weren’t no tools under the seat—­there never are in this ‘ere country if you’ve left your car out o’ your sight for five minutes.  ‘You take off them two back tires,’ I says, ’while I sit ’ere an meditate on the ways of Harabs!  Maybe you’re Moses,’ I says, ’an know ‘ow to work a miracle.’

“But the only miracle about that bloke’s ’is nerve.  ’E gets out, ’an begins to walk straight on up’ill without as much as a by-your-leave.  I shouts to ’im to come back.  But ’e walks on.  So I picks up a stone off the pile I was sittin’ on, an’ I plugs ’im good—­’its ’im fair between the shoulder-blades.  You’d think, if ’e was a Harab, that’ud bring ’im to ’is senses, wouldn’t you?  But what d’you suppose the blighter did?

“Did you notice my left eye when you got in the car?  ’E turns back, an’ thinks I, ‘e’s goin’ to knife me.  But that sport could use ‘is fists, an’ believe me, ’e done it!  I can use ’em a bit myself, an’ I starts in to knock ’is block off, but ’e puts it all over me—­weight, reach an’ science.  Mind you, science!  First Arab ever I see what ‘ad science; an’ I don’t more than ’alf believe it now!

“Got to ’and it to ’im.  ’E was merciful.  ’E let up on me the minute ’e see I’d ’ad enough.  ’E starts off up’ill again.  I sits where ‘e’d knocked me on to a stone pile, wishin’ like ’ell for a drink.  It was full moonlight, an’ you could see for miles.  After about fifteen minutes, me still meditatin’ murder an’ considerin’ my thirst I seen ’em fetch a camel out o’ the khan at the Inn o’ the Good Samaritan; an’ next thing you know, ’e’s out o’ sight.  Thinks I, that’s the last of ‘im, an’ good riddance!  But not a bit of it!

“The men what fetched the camel for ‘im comes down to me an’ says the sheikh ‘as left word I’m to be fed an’ looked after.  They fixes me up at the inn with a cot an’ blankets an’ a supper o’ sorts, an’ I lies awake listenin’ to ’em talkin’ Arabic, understandin’ maybe one word out of six or seven.  From what I can make o’ their conjecturin’, they think ’e ain’t no sheikh at all, but a bloomin’ British officer in disguise!

“Soon as morning comes I jump a passing commissariat lorry.  As soon as I gets to Jerusalem I reports that sheikh for arson, theft, felo de se, busting a gov’ment car, usin’ ’is fists when by right ‘e should ha’ knifed me, an’ every other crime I could think of.  An’ all I gets is laughed at!  What d’you make of it?  Think ’e was a Harab?”

I wondered whether he was Jimgrim, but did not say so.  Grim had not appeared to me like a man who would use his fists at all readily; but he was such an unusual individual that it was useless trying to outline what he might or might not do.  It was also quite likely that the chauffeur had omitted mention of, say, nine-tenths of the provocation he gave his passenger.  What interested me most was the thought that, if that really was Jimgrim, he must have been in a prodigious hurry about something; and that most likely meant excitement, if not danger across the Dead Sea.